Chess Introduction

Welcome to the BHC Chess Corner

Each week (except for the occasional break) a game position will be shown with an indication of whether it is White or Black to move. In every case this player has a win by checkmate in a few moves, never more than 6.

You are invited to find the win and to submit it together with your name and the number of the position, to chess@bournejewish.org.

All the positions are from real games played by some major names and are of varying degrees of difficulty.

Please note that in some of the positions shown the actual game ended in resignation. In these cases our solution will show what would have happened had the game been played to the bitter end.

In the occasional case where there is more than equally valid solution we will give all such variations. Solvers should do likewise.

We aim to publish the names of the successful solvers together with the solution, in the following week’s feature. We will also reveal who the actual protagonists were, together with the year and venue. Each position will be numbered from 1 onwards, so you’ll know exactly where you are.
 
In chess as in sermons, brevity is a virtue. Therefore a submitted solution requiring more moves than ours will be numptied (a technical term meaning rejected) on the grounds of aesthetic turpitude. Or something.

All positions will be shown in Algebraic Notation, which should also be used for submitted solutions. If you’re not entirely familiar with Algebraic Notation, you can learn all about it at http://www.logicalchess.com/info/reference/notation/.

Please note, however, that in this competition ‘+’ indicates ‘check’ and ‘++’ indicates ‘checkmate’. We don’t use a special symbol for ‘double-check’.

By the way: if you think that Fianchetto is an opera or that Zugzwang is a German car, (a) find out what they really are, and (b) enjoy the problems even if you can’t always solve them. If you’re setting up a position on a real board, be careful not to make a fingerfehler (another one to research) in your quest for the coup juste.

Finally, if you’re a relative novice, please make sure you understand the rules of castling and the en passant capture.

Good luck.