puzzle
-
Author of a few other excellent books as well: (the other) Simple Chess and The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book. ↩︎
-
Also taking first place in the same tournament, Ruslan Ponomariov, future FIDE World Chess Champion. ↩︎
Reshevsky-Bisguier, 1957
This is where—JUST in the nick of time—former wunderkind Samuel Reshevsky puts the hurt on Art Bisguier in game 3 of their 1957 match (Reshevsky ultimately won 6-4). Famous, not too difficult, and rather pretty. What do you do?
'Tis a Good Move
Perhaps because I am an ancient (unwise) elder, I feel the little thrill of serendipity more often in the chess world than any other community I am knowingly, intentionally part of.
A few days ago I was thinking about the burgeoning chess and chesspunks communities on Bluesky, and Jonathan Tisdall was one of the first on my list, despite not being quite as active there now that he is happily retired.
Less than two hours later, while leafing through The Most Amazing Moves of all Time by John Emms1. I came across the position shown here. I recognized it—and the astonishing move white found—immediately. What I didn’t remember, probably because I learned about the game before Twitter was a thing, was that the move was the work of none other than gmjtis!
But it doesn’t stop there. The next morning, before I’d had a chance to share the position, the latest Sjakksnakk podcast popped up in my feed and by this point you know who the guest had to be: Jonathan Tisdall.
And one more amusing coincidence: they talk briefly about The Good Knight chess pub, which I’d posted about a few days before.
You can view the complete game (“Tis Not Dull”) on chessgames.com. I’ve also shared the game with some annotations regarding a few discrepancies in accounts of the game.
Strangely, Tisdall’s amazing game doesn’t appear to be in Mega Database! But I did find two other games that reached the same position years later: Jevtic-Prokopisin, 1995 and Sipos-Torma, 2000.
Taimanov-Golombek, 1952
Seeing Douglas Griffin had updated his fabulous Mark Taimanov page led me on a little walkabout and…synchronicity!
In this position from Taimanov-Golombek, 1952 (see my recent post about Golombek’s Capablanca’s Best Games), Taimanov found a dagger of a move. What is it?
Morozevich v Kokarev
Alexander “Moro” Morozevich, facing Dmitry Kokarev in the 2019 Russian Team Blitz Championship, found a sweet move to here to effectively end the game. What was it?
Szablewski v Radjabov, 1996
Playing with the black pieces on his way to winning the U10 group in the 1996 European Youth Chess Championships1, a 9-year old Teimour Radjabov finds the best continuation against Mikolaj Szablewski. Can you do the same?
Marin-v-Ljubojević, 1987
![Chess board showing position after move 32.Nxg6 in Marin v Ljuojevic, 1987. FEN: [2r3k1/3b1p2/p2q2N1/1p1p2P1/3b3Q/3B1P2/PP6/1K2R3 b - - 0 32]](https://chrisl64.me/uploads/2024/marin-ljubojevic-1987.jpg "marin-ljubojevic-1987.jpg")
Yesterday I shared a puzzle I learned about via one of John Nunn’s books.
Today, Douglas Griffin—translator extraordinaire, man of a million photos, and apparent possessor of a photographic memory—shared a cool photo of Ljubomir “Ljubo” Ljubojević in action against Mikhail Tal in the 1979 Interzonal tournament in Riga.
The picture prompted me to look through my sprawl of notes and I found the interesting position depicted above, which I’d stumbled across in Chess Tempo many years (practically a lifetime) ago. The puzzle position comes from a game featuring Ljubo who, walking on a knife’s edge, finding a brilliant sequence that definitively nailed down the win against Mihail Marin in the 1987 Interzonal tournament in Szirak, Hungary. Can you spot what Ljubo did1? And did you (ahem) discover the hidden point of that first, completely non-intuitive (to this patzer), move2?
Here’s the funny thing: the top three in this tournament would advance—along with six more from two other Interzonals—to matches which would ultimately decide who would face the winner of the 1987 Kasparov-Karpov World Chess Championship3. Ljubo placed a respectable 7th (out of eighteen), but a playoff was required to determine the third coveted spot. A playoff between Lajos Portisch and none other than…John Nunn! Sadly for residents of the Nunn Nation of Nunnistan4, Portisch won two straight games to send Nunn home.
I love these kinds of unexpected, serendipitous connections.
Lautier-Bologan, 1999
Speaking of Joel Lautier the other day, here’s a position where he found a nice tactic against GM Viktor Bologan in 1999. Not a difficult puzzle, but the full zillion points if you calculate all three significant lines!
Gasiorowski-Gawronski, 1994
![Chess position after 22...a5 in Gasiorowski-Gawronski, Darmstadt, 1994 [FEN: r4r2/2qb1p1k/2n2b1p/p1p1pP1P/1p4Q1/2PB2R1/PP2NPP1/R5K1 w - - 0 23]](https://chrisl64.me/uploads/2024/f41aa094b2.jpg "gasiorowski-gawronski.jpg")
White found an amazing resource to save this game. Can you find it?
This is one of the many excellent positions found in John Nunn’s book Learn Chess Tactics. Here’s how he describes the puzzle:
“White is a piece down for one pawn, and his threats on the kingside appear to have come to nothing. Indeed, if Black were now given a free tempo to play …Rg8 then White would be facing inevitable defeat. All this means that if White is going to try something, then he must do so straight away.”
McShane-Mirumian, 1999
A young Luke McShane has just made what seems like a reasonable move with 22.Rd3 … but Vigen Mirumian has a cruel surprise in store. Full imaginary points only if you account for the three significant lines, not just the first move!
