Puzzles just for fun!

Perfect BigDogg! I was thinking some may be confused and think white can win due to triangulation! But perfect answer!

Since I don't want to repost these tactics in this thread, I'll simply provide the link to three middlegame tactics/checkmates.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/awesome-tactics-from-a-game-of-mine

Well, and you did bait the readers a bit by saying it was a 'really cool position', implying something exceptional might happen. (And also 'tougher than it looks', which it wasn't.) :)

Whose move is it?

white

I'm partial to 1.Nce5 Qh5 2.g4!? with the idea ...fxg3 3.hxg3 opening the file for white's R, or ...Nxg4+ 3.Nxg4 Qxg4 4.Rg1 and black's King is the one in danger. Or ...Qh6 3.h4 etc.

Well in that pawn endgame black doesn't even have to care about the opposition, he can just wait for white to take the pawn and then take the opposition.

But why procrastinate?

#65 :

1.Nce5 Qh5 (forced) 2.Nxg5 looks tempting, with the sequence 2...Qxg5 (otherwise the game is just lost) 3.Nxf7 Rxf7 (can't find better) 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Qb3+ and Qxb4, which looks winning : White has two rooks for three minors, a superior development, and Black's pawn structure is a ruin. But of course it's not won yet, so...

For the future : could you please post diagrams using the chess.com editor, or at least post the FEN so that we can easily reuse them without having to place the pieces one by one ? Thanks.

Irontiger,

I have no clue what the particular FEN is. All these positions...except the one by richard reti...I made up myself, and placed the pieces myself.

I know, I'm just showing how amazingly hopelessly drawn it is.

The second one is very easy:

1... g5 2. f7 Kg7 3. f8=Q#

1... g5 2. f7 Kxh5 3. Rxh7#

1... g5 2. f7 g4 3. f8=Q+ Kxh5 4. Rxh7#

The worst would be 1... g5 2.Kg4 stalemate.

Tasmanian Tiger

First 1:

1. Ra1! Kxa1 2. Kc2!! (not Kc1? when black promotes with check) 2.. g5 3. hxg5 h4 4. g6 h3 5. g7 h2 6. g8=Q h8=Q 7. Qg7# doesn't look bad

Second: 1. hxg6 e.p. next move is Rxh7#

The hard part in the second is to find the strongest continuation, without getting the knowledge that g7-g5 was the last move. Since it was the only moves black could have made, we are able to find out. It would be shown as: White to move and mate in 2

Calculate 1. Rxf7

Easy. White gets the opposition, and wins.

Yeah Kd5 after the captures.

1. ... c3

Here's a very interesting position. It's from my own game at age group National Championship.