Plaskett's Puzzle

Sort:
Avatar of Akuni

This is a puzzle I found while browsing through articles on chessbase. Apparently the author first saw it when British GM Jim Plaskett who presented it at the tournament in Brussels 1987 (Kasparov and Ljubomir won with 8.5/11, Karpov was second with 7/11). None of the grandmasters at the tournament could solve it, except for Tal who looked at it for a few minutes and went for a walk in the park. He came back with the solution. I thought about it for more than a week, before I broke and looked at the solution. I hope you all have more will power than I did.

 

Avatar of erik
what was amazingly wild!!! who is the author?
Avatar of georgewashington
this makes me sick
Avatar of JackC
Unbelievable
Avatar of Akuni
georgewashington wrote: this makes me sick

Why does it make you sick?

And the author is Gijs van Breukelen according to Chessbase's sources.

Avatar of theCandyman
That was really insane. Do you have any more of his puzzles?
Avatar of Akuni

Sadly, no I don't.

Avatar of medievalchess
Wow, and that is about all I can get out.
Avatar of Don1
got the 1st move but went downhill quickly after that!
Avatar of hacker700
a very nice puzzle.. thanks for sharing...
Avatar of WolF

My only problem with the puzzle, while it is good especially to see a reason for an underpromotion is this....which in no way did I figure out.

 Black's first responisbility should be to keep the pawn from promotion, which if someone is promoting into an obvoius fork....they probably know what is going to happen next! Which would cause KingF7 ...ND6, and by move 11. just resign man!

Avatar of WolF
King and night move are in the beginning of the puzzle by the way.
Avatar of JF1
unbelievable
Avatar of bastiaan
briliant play, I couldn't get far either.
Avatar of KillaBeez
Tal must be smarter than Einstein to have solved this!
Avatar of TheBlueOwls

dude taht was one of the beswt puzzles i have ever seen

 


Avatar of Evilotus

I got the first move but 2-6 were hard. After 6 it was a cat-and-mouse sorta thing. I really enojyed this one.


Avatar of Timeyo_R_Nkosi
Wow this is very impressive. Too bad 4 black, great puzzle!
Avatar of Fotoman

Fantastic puzzle - bravo!

Tal was the brightest of them all but I am a little surprised Kasparov didn't solve it also.


Avatar of pachewise
Puzzles like this remind you of why you love chess so much. XD