So... about 15 years ago I found this book of 1001 chess puzzles by British international grandmaster John Emms in a Dublin bookstore. The positions in this book are all from actual play, and some of them turn out to be tricky positions from Emms' own games. The puzzles are quite difficult, and I only manage to solve about 2/3 of them myself (as opposed to a 95%+ success rate for the mate in two puzzles). The first 200 puzzles or so are too easy for me, so I usually start around the 200 mark and go on from there. I've taken this book on many, many holiday trips. Sun avoidance. It took me about 10 years to work through the 800 puzzles, and then I just start over. If you haven't looked at a puzzle for a few years, you're hardly going to remember it.
Some of the puzzles are White to move first, and some are Black. For the early puzzles in the book, Mr. Emms might give you some background about the puzzle and hint at what the objective is. But the one I'm going to foist on us this evening is from the middle of the book, where he stopped giving any clues. Now... I meticulously document the puzzles in that I give one exclamation mark if I thought the puzzle was good, and two exclamation marks if I thought it was exceptional. If I solved it, I put a plus mark next to it. So this particular one was marked:
413!!
Which means it was exceptionally tricky and I didn't solve it (no plus mark). But I have no idea what the solution was. My notes only say that I last tried to solve it sometime in 2021. So I'm going to be working the puzzle along with you. And here's the kicker: we don't know what the objective of the puzzle is, just that the side that's to move has to try to obtain the best possible outcome. It could lead to a forced checkmate, but the objective could be to just win some material (even winning a key Pawn is important in expert play). In fact, the objective could be to salvage a draw from an otherwise unwinnable position. But I have the feeling that this one will prove to be a lot more interesting than that 😃. You not only have to find the correct first move for these puzzles, but to get 'full points', you have to document all variations until there is an outcome.
Finally, I'd like to say that I'm just trying this new style of puzzle out for the lolz. If the consensus is that people like it, I might do one of these a month. We'll see. Even though it's not a White to move and mate in two puzzle, I kept the series number intact. Remember, it's Black to move first. Have fun, and we'll compare notes later.
