| Dec-24-04 |
| shortsight: this is another easy one. guess chessbase.com is giving away the puzzles as holiday christmas. Merry Christmas, everyone!! |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| erikcu: I think the theme this week is that some gifts are not all that great. In chess it doesn't matter if you have the reciept; no returns! |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| KKW: Should Black play 38. ...Kg8 White would play 39. Qxh6 gxf5 40. Rg3# |
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Dec-24-04
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| Sneaky: <the followup to Kf8?> 30.Qxh6# |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| Milo: Yep. I put in the position without the e-rooks, for some reason. |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| Skylark: Black seemed to just allow white to dominate in this game... he didn't even try to obstruct in the center at some point with ... e6 as in most Benoni setups... good puzzle though. |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| be3292: <Sneaky>, don't you have your numbers skewed? And if you mean 39. Qxh6 (after Kf8), that doesn't mate. |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| Novice713: I still don't understand. How does White mate in a case other than 38...gxf5. |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| be3292: <Novice713> What don't you understand? |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| be3292: <Novice 713> See KKW above. Merry Christmas. |
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Dec-24-04
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| Gregor Samsa Mendel: <Novice713> In addition to what KKW said-- On 38...Kh7, Kh8 or Kf8, white wins after 39.Qxh6+ and 40.Qg7#. On 38...Kf6 39.Qh4+ g5(...Kxf5 40.Rf3#) 40.Qxh6+ Kxf5 41.Rf3#. I still had to look up the answer to today's problem, though. |
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Dec-24-04
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| cu8sfan: <shortsight> This is chessGAMES.com. You can find chessBASE.com's christmas puzzle here: http://www.chessbase.com/puzzle/chr... (-; |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| shortsight: cu8sfan, i guess u can certainly spot harder puzzles seeing that u noticed my mistakes. thx for correcting. merry christmas! |
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Dec-24-04
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| patzer2: The 38. Nf5+! solution to today's puzzle is a basic deflection mate. The key is visualizing that after 38. Nf5+! gxf5 39. Rg3+!, Black has no safe place to hide the King.
I haven't seen it classified as such, but one could argue that the mate involves a "demolition of pawn structure on f5," but that goes beyond the classification given by Chess Informant and starts to stretch this theme a bit too far. Still practice at solving those kinds of combinations made today's problem a little easier for me to get a yes answer to key two questions: (1) Can White sacrifice a piece to mess up (i.e. "demolish") the pawn structure around the Black King? Yes! (38. Nf5+!) (2) If so, does that give White a winning combination? Yes! (after 38...gxf5 39. Rg3+! Black is lost) |
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Dec-24-04
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| EXIDE: Did not see the knight sacrifice. Instead I played 38. Rf3 which gives white good chances of a win. As played is very good. Good puzzle. |
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Dec-24-04
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| chessgames.com: I think 38.Rf3 might be good enough for a win. We'll stick crafty on it. |
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Dec-24-04
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| crafty: 38.  f3  xd5 39.  xd5 xe1+ 40.  h2 f8 41. d4+  (eval 7.49; depth 13 ply; 250M nodes) |
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Dec-24-04
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| chessgames.com: I think that 38.Rf3 also wins, but only because 38...f5 loses to 39.Nxf5+!! , and 38...Rf8 loses to 39.Nf5+!! So I would say, take full credit for 38.Rf3, but only if you saw the continuation of the knight going to f5 which seems to be critical to all of these variations. |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| jedlen: As a matter of fact, I did see the 39.Nxf5+ response to 38. Rf3 f5, but saw 39.Qf6+ (followed by 40.Nxg6 or even 40.Qxf7+) in response to 38...Rf8. I'm less concerned with getting credit than I am with the fact that I missed how appropriate Nf5 is. I guess I got too caught up in calculating variations than in examining how the moves interacted with the position. |
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| Dec-24-04 |
| dac1990: Great puzzle; easy
yet hard, although it seems that
I have gotten it.
Merry Christmas! |
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Dec-24-04
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| midknightblue: Thanks patzer2. I missed the puzzle, but hopefully will get more in the future with your nice explanation |
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Dec-24-04
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| kevin86: Black has four flight squares-three of which fall victim to Qh6#,the other,h7 leads to mate in three. |
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