Gracias por decirmelo, ChessReina! ¡Siempre he disfrutado de resolver sus estudios de ajedrez y espero verlos regresar en el futuro! ¡Te deseo lo mejor!
Puzzle for sameez1
Sort:
@ Arisktotle I don't know how i missed this,I was just now looking through the more puzzles and see this.I think this would have surely made me catch the clue with the en-passant move showing the king taking the final pawn. I will see if I can find the puzzle that gave me the clue. Did hajafar get the answer from you? I have to go.....Later
This is the puzzle I looked at 10 min then looked at solution
Retrograde analysis involves looking into a chess game’s past, rather than its future. Here’s an example from Henry Ernest Dudeney (1917):
https://www.futilitycloset.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/2007-03-15-chess-detective-work-150x150.png 150w, https://www.futilitycloset.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/2007-03-15-chess-detective-work-298x300.png 298w" alt="Dudeney retrograde analysis" width="375" height="377" />
“Strolling into one of the rooms of a London club, I noticed a position left by two players who had gone. This position is shown in the diagram. It is evident that White has checkmated Black. But how did he do it? That is the puzzle.”
The solution is unique. Can you find it
I don't know why it came out so big except I am on v3 When i was looking at the solution I was thinking Arisktotle would say this is weak because he could capture en-passant with the pawn on g5 also then looking I realized its not dual the king would just take it, that is when I knew the answer to the missing king.
sameez1 wrote:
I don't know why it came out so big except I am on v3 When i was looking at the solution I was thinking Arisktotle would say this is weak because he could capture en-passant with the pawn on g5 also then looking I realized its not dual the king would just take it, that is when I knew the answer to the missing king.
The great thing is that your mind made the connection to Smullyans problem by thinking of the move Kxf6 - even though it happens to be an illegal move while there is still a pawn on e5 
. Those types of associations will help you greatly in collecting ideas for new problems if you decide to become a composer! Whenever I solve a problem or observe a chess game I look for bits and pieces I could use in my own compositions or to improve the current one. Those thoughts set you apart from pure chess players.
To give an example of "permanent association", this is what I was associating when I saw your problem. It's just an idea - not a real composition - but I store it in my mind for later.
@ Arisktotle Yes past conversations about puzzles being flawed because of being dual (although the actual positions being vague in my mind at the time)have me looking at puzzles post solution now,which occasionally (seems more often as I do more)reminds me of past sticking points in a puzzle.And LOL ( 2. exf6+??the most stupid move ever played in a composed endgame) not letting those lock you out of a solution to a puzzle helps too....These thoughts coming up before I have solved the puzzle though seem to have slowed my puzzle solving down in the harder subtle 1st move puzzles.Retrograde has to be the most intense study of chess there is. I am a long way off I think.
@sameez1: After some practice, retrograde gets easier because you'll learn to play backward as fluently as you now play forward. And then for a while you may have trouble playing forward. You will try to place your own king in check in a game instead of your opponents king! Fortunately, the computer won't let you do that. In the end, you can mix both without effort.
Btw, retrograde is not everybody's hobby. There are many interesting sorts of problems for problemists. Most composers and solvers pick a few types they like and ignore the rest.
As a casual fan of retrograde analysis, I'd love to try keeping a thread going which is devoted solely to problems of that type. The only obstacles would be:
- I'm not willing to start another forum topic of my own (unless chess.com makes it possible for me to delete some of my previous content), as I've already created far too many. So I would first need to find a thread which is already related to retro-analytical puzzles in some way.
- There does not appear to be much interest in the subject on this site... with the obvious exception of Arisktotle, whose quality standards are too impossibly high to be sustainable (for anyone outside the ranks of top-tier professionals, that is
). - Since I've given up composing (forever), I would have to resort to my personal archive of past compositions. Unfortunately, this archive dates back ~6 years or so (in the earlier days when I had no experience at all, everything I composed was weak). As a result, most of the problems it contains do not even meet my own quality standards anymore... never mind those of certain other individuals.
).If I can somehow manage to hurdle the 1st obstacle, swallow the 2nd, and ignore the 3rd, then you just might see an ongoing retro-analysis mini-forum materialize somewhere on chess.com in the coming days! 
I have seen a number of people start a thread of some kind with the purpose of keeping it alive forever. And then, after a few weeks there is a slump, the thread sinks down the order and everyone stops contributing.
I don't think there is a point to having one everlasting topic for one type of puzzle, primarily because such a topic has insufficient structure and becomes hard to keep track off. What you really want is a "forum within a forum" but such a thing cannot be manufactured here.
But it can be "simulated" by using structured topic titles like "RETROGRADE PUZZLES: an interesting proof game" where the first part constitutes the "subforumname" and the second part its "subtopic". Similar subfora could be created for "directmates", "game puzzles", "quirky" and would be equally useful. All this requires disciplne by the puzzle owners. They must uphold the subfora formats!
Note for instance "ebillgo's" game puzzles. Fixed format titles and always combinations from tournaments around the world. Unfortunately also quite often errors but even that has become predictable when you see his title pattern .
Arisktotle wrote:
I have seen a number of people start a thread of some kind with the purpose of keeping it alive forever. And then, after a few weeks there is a slump, the thread sinks down the order and everyone stops contributing.
I don't think there is a point to having one everlasting topic for one type of puzzle, primarily because such a topic has insufficient structure and becomes hard to keep track off. What you really want is a "forum within a forum" but such a thing cannot be manufactured here.
I thought about this yesterday. One thing I remembered was that, in fact, I already started a similarly themed mini-forum here that could easily have been continued indefinitely if I'd been willing to stick around. The momentum gradually faded after I abandoned the site, however, and so the topic is now officially dead (since 2012 or thereabouts). The relevant link is provided below.
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/more-puzzles/shortest-proof-game-challenge
On the other hand, more recent experience indicates the "climate" may have changed on chess.com since the last time I was active in these forums. It's possible that the SPG thread was only sustainable due to a past level of enthusiasm for the subject which simply doesn't exist anymore.
But it can be "simulated" by using structured topic titles like "RETROGRADE PUZZLES: an interesting proof game" where the first part constitutes the "subforumname" and the second part its "subtopic". Similar subfora could be created for "directmates", "game puzzles", "quirky" and would be equally useful. All this requires disciplne by the puzzle owners. They must uphold the subfora formats!
Your idea runs directly into the first obstacle I mentioned in post #10 above. I would need the ability to jettison content I've submitted which I no longer consider to be anything more than useless clutter.
I've decided to try extending sameez1's thread entitled "Unbelievable to me". The problems there tended to be easy, so it's an appropriate location for most of my archived compositions.
@ cobra91I've decided to try extending sameez1's thread entitled "Unbelievable to me". The problems there tended to be easy, so it's an appropriate location for most of my archived compositions.
You are welcome to use my thread as a marker for bashing your own compositions.
@sameez1: White draws. It's OK when you can't solve it, just play the solution and think about it!