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| Jul-31-09 | | DarthStapler: Wow, ouch |
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| Apr-23-12 | | Balmo: This is a brilliant game from Ward, and should be better known! It's bizarre that halfway through the game (i.e. nine moves in) white has only moved some pawns and his knight! I guess at around moves 12-13, Ward saw the possibility of the back rank tactic, and gave up everything to make it work! Great game. |
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Apr-23-12
 | | Phony Benoni: Interesting. Compare the position after <6.Nb1>:
click for larger view
With this position in the Fischer Defense to King's Gambit, after <1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d6 4.d4 g5 5.h4 g4 6.Ng1> 
click for larger viewEerily similar! Of course, there are tactical differences in having a shredded kingside instead of a shredded queenside. |
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| May-11-12 | | Balmo: Can anyone tell me what happens after 10...g6? Maybe I'm being stupid but I can't see a White move afterwards... |
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| May-11-12 | | GreenLantern: <Balmo> After <10...g6>, White simply plays <11.Qh3> because Black's h-pawn is still pinned. Fwiw, you're not 'being stupid' because g6 is the top move of all engines I tried. |
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| May-11-12 | | Balmo: Thanks GreenLantern, yeah you're right, of course the pawn's still pinned. Cheers for engine checking as well, it seems like the most logical move in the position... |
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| Jul-12-12 | | The Last Straw: Mr. John Emms left 18.? as a puzzle in his book "The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book". |
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| Jul-12-12 | | The Last Straw: "back rank mate" |
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| Aug-06-12 | | LoveThatJoker: <18. Qxf8+ Kxf8 19. Rd8#> LTJ |
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| Aug-06-12 | | QueenMe: This one is almost instinctive: ♕xf8+ forces Black to capture the White Queen, leaving the King with his pants down in the middle of the back rank. Bringing the Rook downtown finishes him off. |
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| Aug-06-12 | | mohannagappan: queen sac |
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| Aug-06-12 | | Patriot: 18.Qxf8+ Kxf8 19.Rd8# |
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| Aug-06-12 | | The Last Straw: Shoot cant give mysef a score but I got this immediately when I read John Emms' book so I'll take full credit. |
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| Aug-06-12 | | Abdel Irada: <A (back-) rank amateur?> Black meets a well-merited early exit after 18. ♕xf8†, ♔xf8 ▢; 19. ♖d8#. So, apparently failing to develop in a sharp and tactical opening *isn't* a good plan? ;-) |
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| Aug-06-12 | | sevenseaman: 18. Qxf8+ Kxf8 19. Rd8#
If this problem were not to be given on a Monday, it might have generated some thinking. |
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| Aug-06-12 | | Nullifidian: 18. ♕xf8+ ♔xf8 19. ♖d8# |
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| Aug-06-12 | | david p: it would be nice if chessgames made the Monday puzzle a little more difficult eg medium. As I commute by train to work, it passes the time nicely. Thank you. |
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| Aug-06-12 | | M.Hassan: "Very Easy"
White to play 18.?
White has a Rook for a Knight and 3 pawns.
18.Qxf8+ Kxf8
19.Rd8#
Under-development/Late development has a price to pay
Black occupied space with pawns but did not develop his two pieces resulting loss. |
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| Aug-06-12 | | Abdel Irada: <david p>: I understand your feelings, but I also think I understand CG.com's reasoning: The site is frequented by players of all levels of experience/strength, and if all the puzzles were sufficiently difficult to challenge stronger players, many of the weaker ones would leave in frustration. It is, of course, perfectly possible for a site to make itself a destination for the relative elite, but to do so would ill serve this site's mission, which is in part to popularize the game. An idea that might be considered, however, is to make a dual-track puzzle cycle: one for experienced solvers who want a challenge that takes a bit of time and work to solve (even on Mondays), and another for relative novices whose confidence is bolstered by puzzles that aren't too difficult for them to solve. But this entails a number of practical problems, so I wouldn't expect it to be implemented soon, if at all. |
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| Aug-06-12 | | xthred: <david p> There's this thing called the Internet. |
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| Aug-06-12 | | alphee: An easy one, nice as I was running for breakfast. |
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| Aug-06-12 | | Once: <david p> A lot depends on how you view the POTDs. If you see them just as a problem to be solved, then sure Mondays are over a little too quickly. There are usually few if any side variations. No tricky defences to consider. If a Monday POTD was a meal it would be ... a nouvelle cuisine starter. A tiny morsel of meat sitting on a single lettuce leaf. An amuse bouche. A tapas. A horse's doobery. A prawn in a puddle. A waffer-thin mint. But ... there's another way of looking at it. A POTD is nothing more than a move from a game. CG presents us with a snapshot in time and says "talk about this". And whilst we can just talk about the last move, there is nothing to stop us looking at the rest of the game. Was this a brilliant attack by Ward as <Balmo> said, or a disastrous mistake by black? Or, one of my favourites, at which point did the loser go wrong? Fritz reckons that the losing move was 16...Bxc4. This allows white to force the e file open and play his back rank trick. Instead 16....c5 would have held the e file and black is doing fine. If POTD was a metaphor for life, it gives us a glass half-empty/ glass half-full sort of choice. A monday morning could be the beginning of just another dreary week of work. Or it could be the start of an adventure. A chance to do something fabulous. And a POTD could be just a mate in two (yawn) ... or a chance to delve more deeply into the rest of the game, life, chess, lurve and prawns in puddles. |
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Aug-06-12
 | | FSR: Ye olde back-rank mate: 18.Qxf8+! Kxf8 19.Rd8#. |
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| Aug-06-12 | | I play the Fred: <david p>, you might consider the following suggestion I made sometime back: <Mondays & Tuesdays too easy for you? Take the given position and try to <lose> it using <Loser's Chess> rules! It's fun and challenging.> |
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| Aug-06-12 | | morfishine: <18.Qxf8 Kxf8 19.Rd8#> An unusual and refreshing way to exploit the back-rank Even more unusual is both players have been rated 2500+ |
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