Each week I go to great lengths to try to find you a new position, hopefully something a little bit different, so I hope that you haven’t seen this position before. (See Diagram). It looks vaguely familiar to me.
I used this position in one of my classes today. The students’ task was to find a way for Black to mate in 6 moves by promoting a pawn to a R. One rotter managed to do it in 5 moves so I had to come up with something a little harder. I went back to an old 19th century game where White had lost in 7 moves with the checkmating move being a pawn promoting to a N. Could they replicate this mate? Fortunately this one was too hard for them, but, perhaps dear reader, not for you? Have a go and see.
