Original draft 1
Original draft 2
My Chess Problems
I have composed a few unusual chess problems.
In
Ein Kleines Schach, the game is played on
a Klein bottle (click
here
for the solutions).
The remaining problems take place on a standard board,
but for the next two problems,
you need to know what “free-capture chess” is.
In free-capture chess, you may capture not only your opponent’s units,
but your own units as well (except that your own units do not check or capture
your own king).
The problem below was first published as problem F159 in
Problemesis
33. White to move and mate in 2 (free-capture chess).
The next problem, whose composition was a collaborative effort
with Philip Lin, was first published in 2003, as F0149 in
issue SG23 of
StrateGems magazine.
It has two parts. Part (a) is a helpmate in 2 (i.e., Black and
White cooperate to checkmate Black after each player makes two moves,
with Black moving first); standard rules of chess apply.
Part (b) is also a helpmate in 2, with exactly the same position,
but with the free-capture rule in force.
For the
1996
MIT Mystery Hunt, I composed the following problem.
Find the shortest legal chess game that results in the position below.
For the
2013
MIT Mystery Hunt, I composed the two positions below.
In each case, determine if the position could arise in a legally played chess game,
and if so, whose turn it is to play.
(These problems were also reprinted in the
Puzzle Corner
of MIT Technology Review, in the
May/June 2018
and
July/August 2019
issues respectively.)
In 1987, John Beasley introduced a fairy condition called
fuddled men: a piece (or pawn) cannot move two times in succession;
having moved, he must remain stationary
for a move before being able to move again
(and, while immobilized, he can neither check nor pin).
The two positions below illustrate the fuddled men concept.
On the left, it is White to move and mate in 2;
I composed it myself before discovering that it had been almost
anticipated by Ronald Turnbull (see position 4 in
this
article), but my version has some new features.
The position on the right is a PG9.5, meaning that White has
just made his 10th move of the game, and you must reconstruct how the game went.
It is a joint composition with Noam Elkies (who cooked and corrected
my first attempt), and was published in Volume 29, Number 9 (May 2024)
of
The Problemist.
For more information about chess problems, see the
chess problem glossary from
Problemesis:
[
Basic]
[
Stipulations]
[
Themes]
[
Types of
pieces]
[
Fairy pieces]
[
Common
conditions]
[
Constraints]
[
Other
conditions]
Backgammon
Chow’s Checkerplay Challenge #1
Chow’s Checkerplay Challenge #2
Chow’s Checkerplay Challenge #3
One-page summary of backgammon opening replies
Rollouts of positions from
Robertie’s 501 Essential Backgammon Problems
Rollouts of positions from
Wiggins’s Boards, Blots, and Double Shots
Are there undefined equities in backgammon?
Equities for
Murat’s
Hypestgammon:
[
C source code]
[
Backgammon value = 1]
[
Backgammon value = 2]
Test
your ability to estimate EPC
Clever
backgammon puzzles by Bill Davis and Ed Collins
Notes by Stick:
[
EPC Part 1]
[
EPC Part 2]
[
EPC Quiz]
[
Racing Cubes]
Peever backgame quiz (Memorial Day 2013)
Nigel Merrigan’s Dual E-Pip/Metric Formula for
gauging races
“Naccel” pip-counting (cached from BGOnline; internal links may not work):
FAQ
1
2
3
3x
4
4x
5
5x
6
6x
7
8
8x
9
10
11
12
12x
Backgammon stoplight charts
Tough
backgammon quizzes by “Othello” Itikawa and others
Motif Backgammon
Stick’s Backgammon Forum
(use
this page to make
diagrams for posting on Stick’s forum)
Some of my favorite posts:
- Interesting positions
- Stick’s DMP Quiz
- Slot or break the midpoint?
- XG version 1 does not double
(Click here for XG2 rollout)
- World passes Denmark’s redouble to 4
(and analysis of recube vig)
- “Firing squad” quiz
- GNU sides with me against Stick, neilkaz, and Nack
(Click here for XG2 4-ply rollout)
- rew’s difficult technical checkerplay
- The original “Bagai position”
(more examples:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7 (Number 2),
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16)
- Difficult Pottle-vs-2pt position posted by Mochy
- Mochy’s life is too short to understand BG perfectly
- Seven of my favorite positions from 2011
- Michael Depreli’s shocking 33
- Carlo Melzi’s super QF problem
- Three plays from Peever vs. Kenji
- Do you have the guts to hit? (and some similar problems)
- XG 3-ply plays a double whopper against a blotty board
- Chris Bray’s favorite position from 2014
- A Four Score position from Nack Ballard
- Michael Depreli 32 to play (and variant)
- Theory
- Miscellaneous
Puzzles
MIT IAP Mystery Hunt
(perhaps the world’s best team competition)
Rec.puzzles archive
(lots of classic chestnuts)
Puzzle
World (mechanical puzzles)
Puzzle Solver
(mechanical puzzle solutions)
The Grey Labyrinth
(new puzzles all the time!)
Mathpuzzle.com
(puzzles with strong mathematical content)
Non-chess
retrograde analysis
(a small selection of highly original puzzles)
Gathering for Gardner
Where I Got My Gifs
When I downloaded free GIFs from these sites, I agreed to link to them
from my own page. However, their URLs seem to keep changing.
I try to keep up with this constant flux, but sometimes it’s impossible.
In one case the site seems to have been absorbed into a larger entity,
so I have dropped it from this list.
[Image-O-Rama]
[Anthony’s WWW
Images]
[The Graphic Station]
Fun Stuff
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