Mates that are difficult for engines

Have a nice crazy mate in 26.

white to move and mate in 26:

Er, possibly not exactly a walk over.

This is what SF15.1 (no NNUE) makes of it at 15 secs fixed time per move in my Arena version.

That doesn't say much about the theoretical outcome, especially given that its valuations were wildly swinging between large values for White and large values for Black from ply to ply and between consecutive moves by the same side for a considerable number of moves at the outset. But it could suggest that "walk over" is at the least an exaggeration.

hmm

31 vs 23

optimum trade is 1 queen for 2 knights, but for the sheer number of knights means that it will be more like 3 for 4 or something

then there is the fact that 2v0 in favor of the knights is a draw while 1v1 is a win for the queen

i would say that the knights probably dont win, but maybe they somehow do

White to move and mate in 27:

The interesting thing about this one is that all white must do is move his King between the e1 and e2 squares (because as long as blaack's King is forced to stay on c8 he cannot free his Bishop and Rook) while black exhausts all of his pawn moves. Black eventually must play a pawn to h6 or h5 and then the lone white pawn just moves to g6 and queens and it's game over.

Might have been better to include the variations that show that 1.Ke2 doesn't cook it or make it the main line. (Similar comment in #94 etc.)

Probably true since 1.Ke2 would be a mate in 28.

Here is a mate in 40:

White to move and mate in 40

Mate in 28.

White to move and mate in 28:

push the pawns

The last moves of that are just winning an easy endgame though, so should they really count toward the 28 moves?

If they shouldn't count then cook me with a shorter mate, remember these are mate in x and not white to play and win.

Here is a mate in 29

Whit to move and mate in 29:

pog

Here is a very interesting and easier one for you.

White to move and mate in 6:

Or better still take the king with the pawn on g3.

I'm assuming you are joking

I'm afraid the black pawns are moving the other way.

The black Knight is FORCED to move because black has no other moves.

Notice how I said black's Knight is FORCED to move, but I did not say where, even if black moves the Knight to g4 the result is the same which is 6.Nh3 mate, and it does not matter where black's King is at as this was clearly not a game that was played between 2 players, but it is a composed problem for white to move and mate in 6. All of these problems in this thread are composed problems and not games that were actually played (well one of them might have been).

Once again, another relatively "easy" one.

White to move and mate in 6: