<kevin86: to add to the move-the final position is also a zugzwang.>

I think that by this time, there was already a strong meme taking hold in chess culture that it was ungentlemanly to allow your opponent to effect checkmate, whereas in, say, 1875 it was considered ungentlemanly to not allow your opponent to effect checkmate. Resigning in the face of certain checkmate would have been considered weak and rude in 1875.

So, the current meme -which is embedded deep within all serious chess players- (and is drilled down at a very young age) began to take hold around this time. Why? Its an interesting discussion as to why the change happened, what caused it, and what I think is the most serious problem: the damage it has done to prevent non-players to take chess seriously as a sport.

i spent a long time looking at checks but couldnt find a direct attack that did anything more than trade down

i suspected the solution was going to be some preparatory move and considered Rf8 and Re3 but couldnt find anything and gave up after 10 minutes

It seems you were distracted by the fact that the black queen is hanging and so you decided to protect it. Rarely do puzzles involve simply guarding a piece. Look for something strong.

45... Re2
46. b5 Rxg2
47. Rxg2 Qf1
48. Rg1 g2 #

Or

45 ...Re2
46. h3 (h4)Rxg2
47. Rxg2 Qf1
48. Rg1 Qxh3 (or Qh3)#

Everyone thinks differently. Here's a handful of ways to approach today's puzzle. We started from here:

click for larger view

Method 1: examine every forcing move. First look at every check - the most powerful non-mating move on the board. Nope. Then look at every capture. Equally, nothing doing. Then look at ways to threaten something juicy - either win of a piece or a mate. The king is safely tucked away, so the juiciest white target is the Qg2. So how can we attack the queen? 45...Re2 looks odd at first, but let's run it up the flagpole and see if it is worth saluting...

Method 2: the Silman imbalances. From our starting position we see that black has a temporary advantage because white's queen is pinned. And the normal rule for pins is to Pile on the Pressure. We don't have a bishop to sit on the long diagonal, so can we attack white queen again with our remaining piece, the rook? Aha, we can with 45...Re2.

Method 3: the <Once speciality> fantasy position method. If we turned wizard for a mo, what non-legal move or series of moves would we like to play? Well, Nf2# would be fun, except we don't have a knight. The swerve shot of Rxh2# would also do the trick, except of course rooks don't know about swerve (or english as some might know it). Hang on, is there another way to hyperspace the rook to h2 via e2?

Whichever method you use, you need to find yourself wondering if 45...Re2 is playable. A rank beginner would dismiss the move out of hand (if he got as far as spotting it), cos it just loses the black queen. But we can see that mate is near so moves like Re2 just have to be examined.

Then we enter the process I call spell-checking - working through each variation to make sure that it works. That's the perspiration to follow the previous inspiration.

If mate wasn't there Alapin's move would still have allowed a Queen trade into a pawn up Rook and pawn ending. Sure there are good chances to draw it due to the rook pawn, but still. Terrible move all around on his part makes me think he was under pressure.

White's error:-
41.g3 -2.30, better was Qa4 -0.31

Black's error:-
41...fxg3 0.00 better was Rd2 -2.30

So, since 45...Re2! is possible, we ask does White have a defense? A quick calculation of one, two and three move mates indicates the answer is a resounding no.

As far as practice, perhaps work on visualizing simple mates with Queen and Rook would be useful. One place to start is with a chess program (e.g. a free version of crafty, rybka etc.) to solve all the possible mate combinations in this puzzle.

Then work backwards from the one move mates to the two and three move mates and then back to the initial problem.