| Sep-30-07 | | dzechiel: Black to move. "Insane". White has a piece for a pawn, and is attacking black's queen. There are all kind of discovered checks on the white king to be aware of. Some candidate moves are:
- 15...Qxf6
- 15...Nxe4+
- 15...Rxe4+
- 15...Qh4
I have been looking at this position for about 10 minutes and I don't have a good idea of where to start. The most interesting stuff I see is off of the 15...Qh4 move, but it gets too complicated for me very quickly. Time to check and look forward to Monday. ===
I looked at the line in the game, but thought that white should play 17 Be2 Bg4 18 hxg3 Qxh1+ and white seemed to get away. Nuts. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | patzerboy: I quickly gave up. If I ever get myself into such a position I will deserve to lose anyway for trying to be cleverer than I am. So there! |
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| Sep-30-07 | | TrueBlue: first I wanted to play Nxe4+, but this loses the queen :( So what about Rxe4+? fxe4 is forced and then white has Qxe4+. I also considered Ng4+, but didn't go any further. I like puzzles like this, white sacrifices the exchange to get positional advantage. And 17. Kd2 is also worth considering, but the idea is white king is exposed whatever he does. |
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Sep-30-07
 | | An Englishman: Good Evening: I spotted the first four moves easily--but it doesn't count. If I spotted Black's 19th, saving the Black Knight, I could have claimed this one. Darn. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | mcgrath999: this one wasnt so hard. i got all crucial moves for black, i.e from the start to the 19th move. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | Dilbertarian: Crafty does not find "insane" this problem, it can find all the moves while it usually has a hard time trying to solve "insane" problems. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | question marks: <dzechiel> Just curious, why do you think 17... Bg4 in that line and not 17... Qxh1+ 18 Kd2 Qxh2 ? |
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| Sep-30-07 | | AlexandraThess: I got it instantly! Maybe because I knew this game. But still it counts. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | thegoldenband: Yeah, I don't really think this one is "insane" either. I'm not by any means a particularly strong player, but I think I could find 15...Rxe4+ in a 3 0 blitz game, let alone in a 40/2 tournament! |
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Sep-30-07
 | | playground player: Once Black plays 15...Rxe4+, the door is blown off the hinges. The impressive thing about this game is that White resisted for so long after that. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | patzer2: For today's extremely difficult Sunday solution, Watson exploits Gheorghiu's helpless King position with the exchange sacrifice 15...Rxe4!! P.S. Got the initial moves, but the moves to extract the Black Knight from its apparent trouble was beyond me today. Very instructive!! |
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| Sep-30-07 | | luzhin: Spassky described William Watson's chess as like a "drunken machine-gunner". Poor Gheorghiu gets well and truly sprayed here. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | xrt999: great puzzle. From move 15 to move 25 all of the moves are forced. Black starts by sacrificing a Rook and winds up 2 paws ahead 10 moves later. White is sunk. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | willyfly: White has a theoretical advantage of two ♙s and attacks Black's ♕ and ♘. The ♘ however is saved by the pin on the h2♙ and the pin on the e4♘ which also allows ♕xf6. But I'm guessing the next move is 15...♖xe4+ and I'm not going to guess at what comes after that cuz there are too many options and too little time and at this level I'm probably not going to get it anyway. So let's just look and see. -----
I suppose I could just say I saw it right for the next 35 moves but in honesty I'm thinking White might have had a better move than 16 exe4. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | willyfly: where IS everybody? this ain't no party... this ain't no disco... |
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Sep-30-07
 | | fm avari viraf: A very complicated position where Black has to be precise in discarding the tempting moves like 15...Nxh1+ or ...Nxe4+ in both the cases Black will lose his Queen & 15...Qxf6 then 16.hxg3. Therefore, the only move that keeps the attack going is 15...Rxe4+ 16.fxe4 Qxe4+ 17.Kf2 [ both Kd2 or Be2 looks bad ] ...Bg4 avoiding the Bank Rank mate 18.Qd3 Nxh1+ 19.Kg1 Nf2! 20.Kxf2 Qf4+ & picks up the Bishop on f6 but I didn't see an immediate win for Black & after I saw the game, it was a ding dong battle till fifty moves! |
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| Sep-30-07 | | Maz: this puzzle is kinda dumb because there is nothing worth playing at all except rxe4. you have to keep attacking or you're going to be down material for nothing. and it's pretty clear from a glance that rxe4 is probably safe because so many of white's pieces are hanging. if this were my game, i would play rxe4 quickly and calculate later. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | avidfan: I agree with <fm avari viraf>. I don't see why 20.Kxf2 was not played but after his 21.Qxf6 Black has advantage of 2 kingside pawns against an exposed king. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | dzechiel: <question marks: <dzechiel> Just curious, why do you think 17... Bg4 in that line and not 17... Qxh1+ 18 Kd2 Qxh2?> In my mind's eye, I didn't see that 18 Kd2 would stop the queen from delivering mate on d8. After sac'ing the rook on the first move of the combination, I was acutely aware that I was leaving myself open for back rank mates. This is the reason I wanted to move the bishop (so the a-rook could defend). Just a case of amaurosis scacchistica. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | zahbaz: 15... Rxe4+ seemed pretty obvious, with 16... Qxe4+ as the follow-up. I knew Nxh1 was held in hand for later, yet the position confused me. I thought there was a mate I had to look out for. Looking at the game, 17...Bg4 is a great move. It delivers a minor piece into the fray of the attack, threatens the queen, frees black's remaining rook, and threatens a series of checks, leading to black's activation of his rook. |
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| Sep-30-07 | | Amulet: I wish I could say I got it it one minute. |
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| Oct-01-07 | | ellhares: < dzechiel I looked at the line in the game, but thought that white should play 17 Be2 Bg4 18 hxg3 Qxh1+ and white seemed to get away. Nuts.>
17.Be2?? ist a horible blunder loss immediatly a peice Q×h1 18. Kd2 Ne4+ 19.Kf3 Q×D1 R×d1 N×f6 and the game is early over |
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| Oct-01-07 | | MostlyAverageJoe: <ellhares: 17.Be2?? ist a horible blunder loss immediatly a peice Q×h1 18. Kd2 Ne4+ 19.Kf3 Q×D1 R×d1 N×f6 and the game is early over> Quite a bit better than 18... Ne4+ in the line above is 18...Qxh2, threatening Bg4. The bishop on e2 isn't going anywhere, and black can bring in the reinforcements while the white Q and R are confined to the first rank. If the white moves to 19.Kc2, then Bg4 puts the white bishop in double pin (and removes the back-rank mate threat), if white K moves to c1 or c3, then NxB+ wins a piece right away, if it moves to e-file, then Bf5 (or Bg4, depending) allows black to bring up the rook with Re8. Plenty of possibilities. |
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| Oct-01-07 | | MostlyAverageJoe: <Dilbertarian: Crafty does not find "insane" this problem, it can find all the moves while it usually has a hard time trying to solve "insane" problems> This puzzle is interesting in that the first three moves are very easy to find - they are on Monday difficulty level. I run Hiarcs derated to 1400 ELO, 10 second per move and asked it to find best moves for the black (while playing the best response for the white) and it found the correct first move and responses to the next two. Only after 18. Qd3 did it run into a snag, and had its ELO bumped to 2100 to find Nxh1 (with shallower analysis, it wanted to play Qf4+). This still is only a Wed. level. The observation of this behavior gives me another idea for puzzle evaluation algorithm - have a computer-computer match, with the losing side playing at highest rating, and see what needs to be the rating for the other side to secure a win. Looks like I'll have some serious programming to do... |
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| Oct-01-07 | | kevin86: I really loved the play of black's trusty steed! The Horsemen of the Apocolypse have nothing on this knight on this night. |
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Kibitzing
sac: 11...Nxe4