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Chess Puzzle
A chess puzzle assumes familiarity with the pieces and the rules of chess. Chess puzzles and composed problems are as old as the game itself. Solving tactical chess puzzles is a very common chess teaching technique. A chess puzzle usually takes the form of checkmate in N moves type of problems. Orthodox chess puzzles could be derived from actual game play. But chess puzzles are not always similar to positions in actual game play. Heterodox chess puzzles have conditions that are impossible in actual game play. Fantasy chess puzzles have pieces that are not used in the regular game.
A popular type of chess puzzle involves deducing the location of invisible pieces based on information about how many times certain squares are attacked. When chess puzzles are composed from the regular game positions, they can be used to train learners. These may include positions from any phase of the game – opening, middle or endgame.
Chess Game Puzzle
Classic chess puzzles are the Eight Queens Problem and the Knight’s Tour. In the Eight Queens Problem, the object is to place eight queens on a regular chessboard in such a way that they cannot capture each other moving according to chess rules. The color of the piece is ignored and any piece can attack any other. In simple terms, no two queens can share the same row, column or diagonal.
The Knight’s Tour is a chess-based mathematical problem. A knight is placed on an empty chessboard. The problem is that the knight has to visit every square on the board once, moving according to chess rules. There are over a billion different solutions to this problem and many of them involve the knight finishing at the square that it started on.
Chess Problem
A chess problem is a puzzle set by a composer using chess pieces on a chessboard, presenting the solver with a particular task to be achieved. For instance, a position might be given with the instruction that white is to move first, and checkmate black in two moves against any possible defense. There is a good deal of specialized jargon used in chess problems. There are different types of chess problems:
- Directmates
- Helpmates
- Selfmates
- Reflexmates
- Series-movers
- Series-mate
- Series-helpmate
- Series-selfmate
- Series-reflexmate
Chess Elements
There are two kinds of elements in chess – tactical and strategic. The chess opening moves are the strategic elements. Moves like the fork and pin are considered tactical elements.
The fork is a move that uses one piece to attack two of the opponent’s pieces at the same time. This tactical move is used in the hope of achieving an advantage because the opponent can counter only one move at a time. The most used piece for this move is the knight. The knight jumps to a position from where it can attack two pieces at the same time. The pawn can also be used to fork enemy pieces. For example, by moving the pawn forward, it can
attack two pieces, diagonally right and left. A queen’s move can also attack two pieces at the same time. But this would be useful only if the two pieces are undefended. If the king and the queen are forked, it is said to be a ‘royal’ fork.
The pin is another tactical chess element, where a move forces one of the opponent’s pieces to stay, because moving it would expose a more valuable piece behind it or it could create such a situation. Unpinning means breaking a pin. Unpinning can be done in many ways:
- The piece effecting the pin can be captured
- A piece can be inserted between the pinning unit and the pinned unit
- The unit to which a piece is pinned can be moved.
Hypermodernism
This is a strategy of play that controls the center of the board with distant pieces rather than with pawns, thus tempting the opponent to occupy the center with pawns that can then become objects of attack. Aaron Nimzowitsch was a proponent of hypermodernism and his book Mein System was the foundation for hypermodernism.
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