Here’s a quick chess quiz, the ‘challenger number 10’ from the Corus Chess Tournament. Quite a nice one, took me a bit more than 6 (far too much!) minutes to solve: I am becoming rusty :-). If you solve it before Jan 25th at 16:00, you might want to email the key move and maybe win something. Plus of course it helps focusing a bit, in general 🙂I also hope the Norwegian chess wonderkid wins this year’s Corus Chess Top Tournament (only a few more rounds to go and he’s still co-leader) from Wijk aan Zee, although he made some very surprinsing blunders in the previous match he lost to Leko (see here the full report for Round 9). Otherwise, I’d bet on the current chess world champ.
I don’t think it was that difficult. Basically I wasted some time checking this Qa5, and another move, Kd3. The latter would allow an escape route for the Black king, at f5, after the check of the white in the second move and would prolongue the game beyond the two moves required. So Qa5 remains first, followed unavoidably by check mate (by queen or knight, depending on the black’s move: one
Man, I waited for them to solve it on the site as I gave up. Was sure I had to check in the first and that did not do it so I was convinced it is dead wrong. But it turned out a serious brainer!
Come on, give it some more thought. It is easy indeed, but trust me, possible. That’s the whole beauty of it.
Easy: the answer is ‘can’t happen’. Mate done in 3 moves, no less, or something is wrong in th picture.