Chess Puzzle/Problem Thread

[Kojèveanon]

Post chess puzzles for people to solve. These can be actual puzzles (in that they are composed problems or are from grandmaster games) or, even more fun, they can be actual positions from your own games. Typically a post would probably consist of a screenshot of a position, with "X to play and win/mate/draw/what is the best move in this position." I expect solvers to NOT use an engine as that takes away all the fun in doing this (though it is just fine for the solvers to post a link to engine analysis in their response if they could not figure it out on their own. I recommend https://lichess.org/editor for setting up the position and then analyzing it. Obviously the poster themselves will have to use an engine at some point in order to verify people's solutions, especially for puzzles that aren't from their own games. Even for your own games you often may have to, because people may come up with a second or third best move that is still a good answer).


I'll go first, starting with an easy one. Black would be equal if they had taken with the knight after white sac'd his bishop, but alas, they took back with the pawn. White to move and mate in 4 (from one of my games, I managed to find it).
[Image: https://i.ibb.co/sqR4Bff/FL2-YCnd-Vk-Ac-Msj1.png]

[Trep]

Image isn't showing up for me

[Kojèveanon]

Image isn't showing up for me

I changed the image from https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FL2YCndVkAcM...name=small to https://ibb.co/QMQV5gg. Does this make it pop up now? I was able to see it the whole time myself.

[Trep]

Yeah I see it now. Had to play around with the position in that editor and I think it's queen to h5+ king e7, queen f7+ king d6, less forward knight to c4+ king d5, then queen f3 mate

[Kojèveanon]

Yeah I see it now. Had to play around with the position in that editor and I think it's queen to h5+ king e7, queen f7+ king d6, less forward knight to c4+ king d5, then queen f3 mate

That would be correct! For future reference though, first try to visualize the variations/position on the screenshotted board itself before resorting to playing around with it on the editor, it will make you a stronger player to do it in your head.

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Next puzzle. This one was such a fun game, unfortunately I fucked it up a bit at the end (although I was still completely winning). It should be noted that almost all the games I'm posting are blitz games so generally speaking I was playing on a 6 minute or less time control, with varying increment. White has played a pretty orthodox Sicilian Najdorf game, and has a huge attack against the black king. Technically, according to the engine, this position is white to play and mate in 4, but I'm not going to ask for that (although you can try to find it if you want). Rather, I'll ask this, what is white's best move to continue the attack in this position? I did find this move in-game.

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/vmn86Qt/2022-02-18-3.png]

[carmichael]

There is no mate in 4.

[Kojèveanon]

There is no mate in 4.

All I can say is that there really is one. What you have to remember is that a lot of the time these "mates in X" can be kinda retarded because the computer will play whatever move possible to delay the mate. While a human might resign 3 moves before the mate happens if they can see that it is impossible to stop, the computer will play useless checks or queen sacs, whatever it has to, in order to delay the mate one more move. This can make the move order confusing because you'd assume someone wouldn't play a dumb variation like that, they'd just resign.