Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Wednesday puzzle

My photo was in the local paper last week, you'll be thrilled to know. Still, it does serve the purpose of illustrating that chess news gets more coverage in a local paper in a rural part of Spain than it does in any English metropolitan newspaper I can think of. Click on the photo for a larger image, if you really think it's worth it.

As you can see it's Black to play in a fairly placid and uncomplicated position (you'd probably guess I was playing even if you didn't know already). The question then is a simple one: reconstruct the move order that led to the featured position. The closest wins. They don't win anything though, they just win.

[To save you the trouble, the picture itself is not from the round which is the subject of the article (though this is) and the game in the photo is therefore not the one briefly described in the piece!]

[Additional note: this piece briefly appeared on Sunday, having been scheduled to self-publish at a relatively early hour, but on getting up I decided to take it off again to give more space to Saturday's obituary.]

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you do your own haircut? :-) Simon Cowell will want one like that.

The bloke next to you opponent looks like Simon Wrigley :-) Jonathan has played against him and probably others reading this.

Can't be bothered with the moves, lobviously your usual d4 Nf3 g3 Bg2....zzzzzzzzz

ejh said...

It's not as good as this one.

Jonathan B said...

It's true - I've played Simon Wrigley several times ... although he always seems to have a smile on his face and that guy looks a little grim.

FACT: last time I played Simon he improvised at the board and came up with a move - a piece sacrifice - that turned out to be a TN once played by Magnus Carlsen.

Jonathan B said...

I reckon move 1 was Nf3 and d4 came only later ... although that of course is a little racey for my taste. I prefer holding back the d-pawn until absolutely essential to move it forward two squares.