|
White-mates-in three
or The evolution of a chess
composition
By
David
Surratt
What do these two compositions have in common?
| Sam Loyd, 1859 |
David Surratt, 2010 |
| |
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|
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| White mates-in-two |
White mates-in-three |
Well, there is a story here, and with your indulgence, I'd like to tell it.
If you'd rather just see the solutions, and skip the back-story,
click here.
You see, one day I received an email from a fellow name of
Stephen Dann. He writes a weekly column about chess at
www.telegram.com.
So I went and took a look at his [then]
most recent column, and that's where
I was introduced to this particular Sam Loyd composition, shown above.
Chessville & I are certainly no strangers to Sam Loyd, one
of the greatest - and most prolific - chess problem composers of all time.
Our
Chessprint column contains a number of his efforts, including
those for
2008.04.13,
2007.05.27, and
2006.02.26, at the
very least.
You'll also find many of his works on our
eBooks page (look for: The Chess
Monthly, an American Chess Serial, Edited by Paul Morphy & Daniel Fiske,
Problem Department by Sam Loyd). Even
FIDE Master of Chess Composition
Peter Wong (Peter's
Problem World) showcases one of Loyd's compositions.
There's also an issue of
Nuestro Círculo
(#143) dedicated to Loyd.
 According to the inestimable
Wikipedia:
Loyd is widely acknowledged one of America's great
puzzle-writers and popularizers, often mentioned as the greatest – Martin
Gardner calls him "America's greatest puzzler", and The Strand in 1898
dubbed him "the prince of puzzlers".
Samuel Loyd (January 30, 1841–April 10, 1911), born in
Philadelphia and raised in New York, was an American chess player, chess
composer, puzzle author, and recreational mathematician.
As a chess composer, he authored a number of chess problems,
often with witty themes. At his peak, Loyd was one of the best chess players
in the U.S., and was ranked 15th in the world, according to chessmetrics.com.
His playing style was flawed, as he tried to create fantastic combinations
over the board, rather than simplifying and going for the win.
Following his death, his book Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles
was published (1914) by his son. His son, named after his father,
dropped the 'Jr' from his name and started publishing reprints of his
father's puzzles. Loyd was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.
So anyway, here I am staring at this position:
White mates-in-two
My mind is quickly drawn to the idea of the underpromotion
resulting in doublecheck: 1.f8=N+.
Unfortunately, this doesn't lead to mate, at least not
directly: 1.f8N+ Kxg5 2.Qh5+ Kf6
Aha! I said to myself, another underpromotion is possible!
3.e8=N+ Ke7
Now not only is there no mate, White can't even win this
position. Major bummer. I really liked the double-underpromotion
idea.
It turns out the solution to Loyd's problem is mush more
prosaic: 1.Qh8.
A simple, if pretty, waiting move, and now nothing Black
does avoids the mate-in-one to follow. Don't believe me? Go
ahead and try to bust the position then. I can recommend a good
headache remedy when you give up.
That's not the end of the story, however. I was still
intrigued by my double-underpromotion idea, so with Loyd's composition as a
starting point, I tried to find a way to make my idea work.
Before proceeding, allow me to disclaim any experience or
expertise as a chess problem composer. Oh, I've done a few during my
lifetime, but nothing that ever went anywhere, and nothing certainly to brag
about.
Still, the urge to compose a chess problem always seemed to
be lurking there, in the dark corners of my mind, just waiting, and maybe
hoping, for a chance to come out into the light.
So, back to Loyd's composition...
The problem with Sam's original position was that the black
king could escape to e7, so all I really had to do was find a way to cover
that square, right?
So I put a bishop on d5, simultaneously eliminating e5 as an
escape square:
The problem with this idea was 1.Qh8 Rxf7 2.Qh6#.
Drat! Even Sam's move still worked: 1.Qh8 Rxf7 2.Qh6#.
Double-drat!!
Worse, my idea was cooked anyway, twice over:
Ok, back to the drawing board. First thing was I had
to keep that pesky queen off the h-file, or at least make it meaningless for
her to occupy h8. So I slapped a pawn down on h7. Brilliant!
Well that didn't work either.
1.f8=Q+ Kxg5 2.Qxg7# [or 2.Qh5#] spoiled the fun. At
least there was another underpromotion that worked: 1.f8=R+ Kxg5 (or 1...Rf7
2.Rg8#) 2.Qh5#
Sigh, too many cooks. And I was working alone!
Just kidding.
So to protect the rook, I added a bishop on h6:
That stopped the 1.f8=Q+ Kxg5 2.Qxg7 line, but left open the
other nasty: 1.f8=Q+ Kxg5 2.Qh5#. Not to mention those cooks: 1.f8=R+
Rf7 2.Qxf7+ Kxg5 3.Qh5# and 1.f8=N+ Kxg5 2.Qh5+ Kf6 3.Nd7#.
Back to the kitchen table, to try again. This time I
thought I had all the bases covered.
I moved the black queen over to f4, eliminating the mates
along the f-file. I plugged in a rook at a7 to stop the Nd7 version of
the mate. This is what I had:
It works! Mate-in-three with a double-underpromotion
to knights. I was ecstatic!
Somewhere along the line though I remembered hearing that
the beauty of a problem was enhanced if extraneous pieces were removed.
In other words, every piece had to actually do something, otherwise
they spoiled the aesthetic value of the composition.
So I set to work to strip away those extraneous
pieces. The knight on g2; the pawn on h4. What I was left with
was the position at the top of the page.
| David Surratt, 2010 |
| |
|
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| White mates-in-three |
Well there you have it, my masterpiece. Ok, so it's a
little too obvious, and probably uses too many pieces. Ok, so it's
based on a starting position from one of the world's greatest problem
composers. It's still mine, and I can sleep well at night knowing that
I did something - I took an idea and brought it to fruition on the
chessboard.
For a primer on problem composition I can heartily recommend
Peter's Problem World; you might want to
start off with
What is a Chess Problem?
- an overview of composition in
chess. Peter writes that the:
"...composer’s
aesthetic intent is revealed in the play of the solution. So chess problems
– also known as chess compositions – are enjoyed on two levels. On a basic
level, they work as challenging puzzles. You are given a position and an
accompanying task, such as “White to play and mate in two moves,” that must
be fulfilled. On a higher level, problems are aesthetic works designed to
show an interesting theme – the composition’s main idea..."
For more about chess composition, visit our
Chess Composition
page.
Solutions
<back to the top>
For more about chess composition, visit our
Chess Composition
page.
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