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| GM Van Wely vs GM Van der Sterren - Black to move and win! |
Two puzzles to really test your chess skills .....and an announcement about our Quick Tournament.
First off we had 12 players this week, and we welcomed a new member - Marcus W.
Good to see you here!
Lots of casual chess was played.
This was all in preparation for our Quick Tournament (15 min per player, with 5 second delay allowed), that starts Oct. 24.
Due to scheduling issues we had to change the date a couple times, but this time all systems are go!
We will play two rounds on Monday October 24 and the final two rounds November 7. We always try and skip a week to give players a break if they want it, but with Halloween being the Monday in between, it is even a better reason to separate the tournament by a week.
Look, you cannot beat two games of tournament chess fun in one night! Come join us. We open at 6pm and will try to get the tournament started by 6:45pm at the latest.
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| GM Van der Sterren vs GM Karpov - Black to move and win! |
And now another puzzle.
GM Van der Sterren was the winner in one puzzle and the victim in the other.
Enjoy and we will see you next Monday at LCCC!
The first puzzle is fairly easy, black plays 2 fairly obvious moves, then has a somewhat tricky 3rd move that traps the white king for checkmate (make sure to notice the bishop on b6).
ReplyDeleteThe second puzzle is extremely difficult because some of the lines are unclear and eventually I needed to get help from Fritz.
The best line of play according to Fritz goes 1...Rxb7 2.Qxb7 Bc6 3.Rac1 Bxb7 4.Rxc5 bxc5 and black ends up a bishop ahead with a fairly easy victory.
But what if white refuses to trade queens and instead chooses to fight on?
so 1...Rxb7 2.Qxb7 Bc6 3.Qa6 Qd5 (Black threatens mate with Qg2) 4.Kf1 Qg2+ 5.Ke2 Re8+ 6.Kc1 Qd5 (Qxf2 seems obvious, winning the pawn and threatening to take the e1 rook, but Fritz says Qd5 is better by 3.5 pawns) 8.Qe2 (anything else gives white a forced mate in 15 moves or less) And Fritz shows white being down by 16 pawns even though white is ahead in material having traded a bishop for a rook. So in this line black ends up down in material but with a crushing positional advantage that will win the game for any player strong enough to play it right without blundering. So while this is a win for a world championship strength grandmaster playing black, I think the position is much less clear for average club players.