The Chess Mind

Here's the position, again:


Wotawa 1963; White to move and draw

Were you able to solve it? White cannot allow Black to queen, so he must take the pawn. But which way? To figure that out, we must first figure out what Black is up to. After all, Black is not exactly promoting anything on the kingside, while a 4-0 queenside majority is normally enough to force a queen (and then some). We then notice that White's king is rather constrained, and a move like ...f6+ or ...h6+ puts it on the edge of the board, awaiting a cruel fate.

The problem with ...f6+ is that after Kh5, it will be impossible to mate with ...g6. That's because White will have Kh6, and Black can't put his king on g7 while his pawn remains there. So now we can work out the threat: Black will play ...h6+, scoot his king to h7, and play ...g6#. Note: even a White queen, with the move after ...Kh7, will generally be powerless against this idea. In fact, there's only one promotion square for a new queen that will allow a white queen to cope with this possibility.

If you hadn't worked it out before the hints, those will probably get you most if not all of the way there. But if not, that's okay too. You can find the solution here.

Well, it's at least relatively easy. (But not trivially easy. Black has a threat!)


Wotawa 1963; White to move and draw.

The solution will be given tomorrow.

In a couple of recent games at the Maia Chiburdanidze Cup, the talented young Slovenian IM Anna Muzychuk had a couple of textbook tactical finishes.


(Source: Wikipedia, Photo: Paweł Suwarski)

In the first, she was the victim:


Dzagnidze-Muzychuk, Maia Chiburdanidze Cup 2009, Round 6: White to move and win.

And in the second, she got to be the hero:


Muzychuk-Galojan, Maia Chiburdanidze Cup 2009, Round 8: White to move and win.

The solutions can be found here.

A couple of days ago, I presented this position



from a game between reader Tomislav Damjanovic and ChessMaster personality "Buck". It's White to move, and while there's more than one good move here, it seems to me that one continuation - the one White found and played - is significantly better than the others. Did you find the solution? The answer is here.

Here's a position pregnant with possibility:


T. Damjanovic - "Buck" (A ChessMaster "personality")

White (to move) has more than one good option, but what's best? The answer will be given in a day or two.

Here's the problem, again:


Wotawa 1937, White to move and win:

As noted in the earlier post, White has loads of extra material, but Black's passers are very dangerous. And the other relevant issue is the precarious location of Black's king. At the end of the day, that's what matters; as an old chess friend liked to say, what counts is that we get the guy with the hat on his head. (Of course, the bishop has one too, but never mind!) When you think you've got it figured out, or are tired of trying, click here.