White to play and win (#8)

I originally wrote a review about your construction as an endgame study (which I now deleted) because I was confused by your instruction for "white to play and win" which is commonly reserved for endgame studies only. I thought the #8 was a sequence number for your own administration or something. Rereading I came to the conclusion you wanted it to be a "mate-in-8" problem and as such it appears correct to me until the last 2 moves. On move 7 white has the alternative Rd6+ while the bishop/queen promotion choice is a minus. And Rd6# is a checkmate move as well. The whole solution is very gamelike without much excitement though the moves ..Qd4 and Rd2 are noteworthy subtleties!

This feedback is super helpful Arisktotle, thanks for taking the time! I'll try to tune this into a single solution puzzle. I thought it was an interesting position where white only has one winning move, Rb8, though I can see how it is more of an endgame study then a puzzle.

I'll play around with it and post back if I find an interesting, updated version.

It seems to me that in the initial position the rook would look better on b7 than on b5. In this case, the rook is not under attack from the queen and the first move is somewhat more difficult to find.

The composer's choice between "endgame study" and "directmate" is often a practical one. What matters is to differentiate the instructions, "white to win" for the one and "#8" for the other. Note that studies often have several variations of different lengths and some leading to checkmate and others leading to "winning endgames like K+R cs K". Directmate solutions are very precise. No variations can take more than the specified number of moves and the shorter mates (after weaker defensive moves) have no value.

Example: A mate in 255 moves in an endgame study is just as good as a mate in 9. If you want the latter to be your solution and cannot get rid of the former then you should attempt to convert your study into a directmate problem with a fixed finish line.

I agree. These things are the core of the art of composing and composers spend eons to tune those detail after they already have a working construction. It always looks a bit silly when you enter your final product in a composition tournament and the next day a peer composer finds a major improvement. You can't do that to a painting or a statue but you can do it to to a chess composition! I have played the role of "peer composer" in this story as I have designed several extensions to existing studies. Sufficiently significant to satisfy the requirements for republication.

Promotion dual on the last move of a directmate is "forgivable" but on the forelast move, I don't know. The remainder is OK. It demonstrates the difference between an endgame study and a directmate in the removal of the black knight. It does not matter in how many ways white can win now - as long as there is just one mate in eight!

Btw, here is an excellent Blog by Rocky64 with rules for compositions though it does not claim to be complete:

https://www.chess.com/blog/Rocky64/an-introduction-to-composed-chess-problems 

Thanks, Arisktotle! For those new to constructing problems like the OP, I would also recommend this blog that explains the main differences between tactics puzzles, fastest-mate problems (= directmates), and endgame studies.

Understanding soundness and motivations in chess puzzles, problems, and studies