5 Chess Problems I Promise Will Blow Your Mind 🤯

We are back with five more incredible positions , including the one that you see on the screen right now .

I don't like to waste time .

So let's go ahead and jump right in .

All right .

So what's going on in this position ?

First of all , we need to make sure we understand the pawns are going this way and Black's pawn is going this way .

Now , it looks pretty hopeless for White because if you think about it , if we just try a sort of a simple move like moving our bishops so that we can try to get a queen .

The problem is that black is gonna play h one queen check .

We got to take it and then after we take it , we're again in check .

And so when we move , well , now black just comes down , stops our pawn and the king is just simply gonna take these pawns and , and we have nothing .

Our king is way too far , right ?

So that's kind of the problem that we have .

And so going all the way back , I invite you if you'd like to pause and think through what do you think White's plan can be in this position .

Well , if you had a chance to do that , the move that white needs to play is the amazing bishop to h one .

See , the threat of Black getting a queen was so strong that we just had to stop it .

And so even though we're giving up our bishop , at least we're kind of delaying , you know , Black from getting the queen .

So of course , Black uh has to take , otherwise we just get a queen next move .

So they take it , we get the queen .

And you might say , well , that seems pretty easy .

Now , aren't we just gonna win ?

We have an extra queen .

We have a pawn .

I mean , it looks pretty good for us , right ?

It looks good until you see black's next move rook to D one .

And the point behind this move is black is basically saying , OK , now you can't put me in check .

See , we , we would like to be able to put the king in check and do something , you know , useful with our queen , but black's taking away those two squares .

So if we can't put black in check , where else can we move the queen to ?

Because the problem that we have now is blacks again threatening to get the queen .

So for example , we make a queen move , guess what ?

Black gets the queen forces the trade .

And again , we have the same problem the rook can come back or , or even the king could have just taken the pond , right ?

It doesn't matter .

Black wins .

So again , I invite you to pause .

What do we play here ?

What to play ?

Well , if you had a chance to look at that , the amazing move again for the second time is queen to H one .

I , I mean , it's like this , I don't know , you can't just make this stuff .

Actually , you can make this up .

Somebody did make this up , but it just blows my mind every time I see these kind of crazy positions .

So here we go again , black is gonna take our queen .

And why did we do that ?

Why did we give up our bishop and now give up our queen ?

Well , because now we're gonna play a seven and guess what ?

We are threatening to get a queen and this time it's going to be check because the pawn , there's no , there's no pawn blocking it .

Right ?

And so what's black gonna do ?

Nothing .

They can try to go here to get a queen , but we simply get the queen check .

Forces the king to go to one of these squares .

It doesn't matter where and then we go check again and notice how we're forking the king in the pond , right ?

And so we're gonna take this , this is going to be a win for white .

It is difficult .

It's not an easy end game to win , but it is uh a win .

And so that's , that's it .

That's the idea and the funny thing about this position going back to right here when we play a seven , if black didn't have this rook on the board , like if it was just gone , they would simply be able to push the pawn and get a queen and win because then we're , you know , it's check , they can stop us and , and black wins .

But because the rook is stuck there on age one and has nowhere good to move to .

That's why white is able to win , right ?

So sacrifice the bishop , then you sacrifice the queen on the exact same square in the exact same way .

And then you win with the little pawn .

Push to a seven .

Amazing .

All right , here's the next position .

And let's talk about what's going on here .

So , uh first of all , Rook and bishop brook and bishop , OK ?

And then black has the queen against our two pawns .

So black's definitely ahead , but it's white to play .

And we do have the capture on the rook as well as this nice discovered attack on the queen .

So the discovered attack just means that once we move this bishop out of the way , like maybe bishop H seven , you know , we will , we have the rook lined up on the queen .

So what do you think we should play if we're white in this position ?

And the , the first move in this one is maybe one of the easier ones .

Uh But go ahead and pause if you'd like .

What do you think ?

Why should play here ?

Well , he had a chance to look at that .

The move is bishop to H seven check .

Now , first of all , if we simply take this , black's just gonna take us back and now we don't have our discovered uh Well , we have a discovered attack , but we don't have a good one because there's no check and we're just losing because black has the queen , right ?

So that's why we don't want to take that right away .

So the move is bishop to H seven check .

Uh But you might notice something and it's that if black takes it and we take and get a queen .

Well , black is gonna be able to take here and this is most likely a draw .

Black is gonna continue to put us in check and we can't really do anything about that , right ?

And then the other option is instead of taking this , what if we capture the queen ?

But then black can just simply slide the rook over this pond is falling .

Blacks got us blockaded and , and this is gonna be a draw .

So in this position , after black takes our bishop , what do we do ?

How do we win the game again ?

I invite you to pause and try to think through what's the winning move here for White ?

Well , if you had a chance to do that , the move is capturing but not getting a queen , getting an A knight .

So we under promote to the night to create the fork .

And then after black move somewhere , we just take it and we've got the extra work .

We've got the extra pawn .

This is going to be a win .

Now , probably not an easy win but still a win .

OK .

So that's pretty amazing .

We under promote to the night , but black doesn't have to take our bishop , right ?

And here's where it really starts to get interesting .

What if they play the move king to G7 ?

Now , now , before I say anything again , I'd like to invite you to pause .

What's the best move for white in this position ?

And it's not that obvious , right ?

Well , if you had a chance to look at that before I tell you what the best move is , I want to just point out what the problem is if you take and get a queen .

So it looks pretty obvious like why don't you just get a queen because it's with check and then you can take this next move , right ?

So , you know , you take and you're probably expecting Black to take and then you can take the queen .

It makes sense .

Here's what , what black does Black takes our bishop and you might say , OK , I'll take the queen .

Thank you very much .

And now this is a stalemate .

It's a stalemate .

This is the most amazing stalemate I've ever seen .

Look at this the bishop's pin .

So that's why the bishop can't move .

And then the queen and the pawn , this random pawn over here are , are creating the stalemate , but I can't move amazing little trick , right ?

So what do we have to do if we can't take it ?

What , what do we have to do ?

The answer is we take it and we get a bishop , we promote to a bishop because now guess what ?

We can take it because this isn't a stalemate because the queen's not controlling the square and the king can just move and we win .

So just to recap , we saw an under promotion to a night and now an under promotion to a bishop .

And we're actually not done yet because black can also go to H eight and guess what if we take this again ?

We got the same problem , right ?

We take this , it's a stalemate .

And by the way , I should mention , you know , we don't have to take the queen .

We can do something else .

But if we make any other move , like I don't know , move our rook somewhere and move our king somewhere , then black has time to put us in check and keeps putting us in check .

So we , we can't really do that .

So again , what do we do after black plays king to age eight ?

Well , the , the winning move in this position is capturing , but again , wait for it , promote to a rook just to recap .

Uh Well , I'll just show you same , same thing , right ?

It's not a stalemate anymore .

You can move .

Uh But just to recap , the only way that you win this position was by going here and then depending on where black goes , you either promote to a knight , a bishop or a rook , but not a queen .

Promote if you promote to a queen in any of those cases , you can't win .

I mean , how incredible is that ?

Like , I , I don't even know what to say .

I , I , they don't even have anything to say .

That's just amazing .

Uh By the way , I should mention most of these positions , not all of them , but a lot of them have been coming out of this book .

Secrets Of Spectacular Chess .

I'll try to hold it up in front of the camera .

There you go .

Uh I'll put a link down in the description to Amazon .

If you want to check it out , there's like a newer version now .

Uh you know , you can show some support to the authors because I think they did a fantastic job .

Like these positions are absolutely amazing .

So , secrets of spectacular chess .

Anyway , uh Let's go ahead and jump to the next one .

All right .

So this position it's white to play and win .

And if you want to pause and maybe think through what , what could be the idea here before I explain too much about it , I will point out that these palms are going this way and black is about to get a queen .

So keep that in mind , but go ahead and pause if you'd like white to play and win .

So the one thing that we have going for us here as white is that the black king is limited in where it can move to .

So if you check right now at this moment , the king actually can't move right because the king is covering these squares .

The knights covering here and here the pond is covering these two .

This night is covering here , the king can't move .

Ok ?

So if we had a way to put it in check , we would just win the game , but we don't .

Right .

None of our pieces can put the king in check .

But what we can do is play night two E eight .

OK ?

This is the , the winning move .

And the point is that we are giving up this square when we move our night away , but we're threatening to control it again and deliver the checkmate , right ?

Remember before everything was covered and once we get our night here , that's gonna be checkmate .

So yes , black can get a queen .

Doesn't matter .

Game's over .

Yes , they can get a queen over here doesn't matter .

Game's over .

So they can't actually get a queen .

So what do they have to do king to E four ?

Ok .

So now what do we do ?

Bring the knight in and deliver the check .

And again , if you look carefully , the pawn is protecting this bishop .

So these squares are covered , the knight is controlling these squares .

And the knights here , the only place for the king to go is right here .

All right .

So black moves there .

And now if you'd like to pause , try to think through what are we gonna play here as white ?

Well , he had a chance to look at that .

The move is knight to H five .

OK ?

And again , let's look carefully .

Our king is controlling these squares , the knights controlling these , the bishops controlling these .

And by the way , I should mention this is a , this puzzle is a very good example of how knights and bishops can work together .

If you put the knights on the same color as the bishop , they control so many squares , right ?

So it's , it's really cool how that works .

But anyway , the point that I'm making here is that the only place the king can go is here .

And again , if black just gets a queen , we , we're just coming in for the checkmate .

OK .

Same thing over here .

Queen checkmate .

Now , some of you might be thinking , well , hold on a second .

What if black gets a night ?

Because now they stop us from getting the delivering the checkmate , right ?

They do .

But now we have this move F three .

And what we're doing now is using the pond to control the last couple of squares and now we're just threatening to come over here , check mate with our night and guess what ?

Black has no way to stop it this night .

Can't do anything about that .

This pond can't do anything .

Yeah , I could get a queen .

Doesn't matter .

And then this night is too far .

Right .

So , night moves doesn't matter .

We go check me .

So , uh , good idea .

But it doesn't work .

So , what does Black need to do ?

Well , they have to keep running .

So they just keep going here .

Now , you might be able to figure out the move here night to G three check .

OK .

So just to recap what's happened so far our night started here and we went from here to here to here to here .

OK .

Keep that in mind .

And after this , we now can simply take this pawn .

All right .

So we did this little dance boom , boom , boom , boom .

And we take the pawn on too .

And again , even if black tries to get a queen , we have another checkmate threat , right ?

Same deal .

The king is , is trapped .

All right .

So black can't do that .

What do they do ?

King to E four ?

All right .

What do we do ?

Nine to see three check .

What do they do ?

Only move king to F five ?

Notice how the black king has been stuck just going back and forth between the same couple squares and they can't get out right now .

We play night to B five .

What's the point ?

We're threatening to come in here and again , deliver the checkmate is check this out .

Bishops controlling these knights , controlling these king is controlling this king can't escape , right ?

So this is our , our threat checkmate .

So again , black can't do this or it's game over .

So what , what do they have to do back here ?

And now we go 90 86 .

So just to recap , we went from here to here to , here to here , captured the pond , to , here to , here to here .

I mean , this is like so cool .

Like this is why chess is so much fun for me .

We just made a loop with our , with our night around the world with our night and all to capture the pawn .

I mean , look , look at this , I'll show you the first position .

Uh This is the very starting position and then boom , here's the position .

Well , minus the king of here's the position that we're at now .

It's exact same position except we took the OK .

So uh what do we do now ?

We got rid of the one pawn , which is important , which we'll see in just a second .

But here's a good moment if you'd like to pause .

And now is where the cha the strategy changes a little bit .

What do you think we should play to win ?

Well , if you had a chance to look at that , the move is night to D three and this time , we're gonna come over here and deliver the checkmate with this night .

And you might say , well , why couldn't we do that from the start ?

Well , if you imagine this pawn that was here that we captured , it would have gotten a queen and stopped our night , right ?

So that's why it was important that we did that whole around the world thing with our night to get rid of that pawn .

And now we come here to threaten the checkmate .

So again , if black wants to survive , they have to move and now we can play D five check .

King has two options .

King C seven or taking .

And so let's look at king C seven first .

What do we play here to finish off the game ?

It's actually checkmate in two if you'd like to pause and see if you can find it .

Well , if you had a chance to do that , the important thing to notice here is that the king is almost trapped .

All of these squares are covered , right ?

Except for these two .

So what do we need to do with our remaining night ?

Well , we need to move it right here because we want to go right here to deliver the mate .

So , uh 94 and black can't stop it .

They can move their night , doesn't do anything .

So we still checkmate or they can get a queen or whatever they want .

Doesn't matter .

It's checkmate with the night .

Amazing .

Right .

So let's go back .

Therefore , black can't do that .

They have to take the pawn .

And now again , it's checkmate in two moves .

And this one is also pretty cool .

So if you'd like to pause and if you had a chance to do that , the move is nine to B four check .

And again , if you check carefully because of the way that the knight and bishop are set up , the only place the king can move is right here .

E five is the only available square and then we deliver the pawn checkmate .

So uh just to recap the night , did a loop around like this .

Captured , the pawn went back to where it came from and then the king is just stuck .

So mate in 12 , it was mate in 12 from the starting position .

Amazing .

Right .

Amazing .

All right , let's go .

Look at the next one .

All right .

So before I say anything , again , it is white to play and win .

If you'd like to pause , uh feel free to do that .

All right , if you had a chance to look at that .

So what's going on here ?

Well , first of all , obviously , black has the extra queen .

But if we're white , we , we do have this poem which is about to become a queen of our own .

OK .

So that's the one thing that we have going for us .

But you might notice that if we get the queen right away , black is gonna simply take here with check .

We have to move back somewhere and then blacks gonna basically have perpetual check .

We , we can't ever get out of the checks from the queen , right ?

And eventually it's a draw .

So that's kind of the problem that we have .

We , you just can't get the queen right away .

So what do we need to play instead ?

The move is night to eat four .

And basically we're just defending our pawn and now we're threatening to get the queen .

All right , cool .

So black has to play queen of three .

That's the only way for them to stop the pawn .

And now is the really mind boggling move if you'd like to pause and try to find it .

What does white play in this position ?

Well , if you had a chance to look at that , the move is fa queen and you might be saying , wait a second , Nelson .

Nothing is defending the queen and you would be right .

Nothing is defending the queen .

So , bye bye .

Queen .

Queen takes F eight .

What's the point ?

Why did white sacrifice the queen for seemingly nothing ?

Any ideas ?

Well , I'll go ahead and tell you the reason is we wanted to move our night back to F six .

What , what are we doing ?

Right .

So , uh it's pretty incredible .

But the point here's the point , the point is that we're trying to checkmate Black's king , we would like to play F four and C three checkmate .

So for example , if black takes our night , we're gonna play F four king is trapped next week , we're playing C three .

And it doesn't matter what black does .

If they take it C three checkmate , if they move something with their queen C three checkmate doesn't matter .

Ok .

So that's the point we had to lure the queen away , blockade it with our night from getting back in and then use our pawns to checkmate the king .

I mean , of course .

Right .

It's obvious .

So nine of six Blacks not done yet .

They can also take here because that's undefended .

The problem with that is we have this nice little fork to clean up the king and the queen .

So that's not gonna work .

And they have one more little trick queen over here trying to come down and check us , which also stops C three because then the queen would , would be able to take it .

So again , if you'd like to pause and think through what's the move that we play here ?

Well , we actually take advantage of this forking pattern yet again , by playing C three , we forced the king to move to take our pawn even though it's not checkmate .

And again , we can fork the king and the queen .

And so after this , it's gonna be a win .

The night is eventually going to be able to uh help us take Blacks pawns and , and it's a win for white .

So just to recap what happened here ?

We sacrifice our queen for free so that we can sacrifice our night just so that we can check , made the king with our pawns because we blocked the , the black queen out .

Wow .

Wow .

All right .

Let's go to the next one .

All right .

So this last position is probably one of the most difficult to understand what's going on .

So I'll do my best to explain it and if you can follow along great , if not , I think you'll still be able to appreciate it .

At least I'm gonna , like I said , do the best I can to expand .

So before I start talking about it , if you'd like to pause and try to think through it a little bit .

Although I , like I said , this one is probably the most difficult one that we've looked at , but it's white to play and win , right ?

If you had a chance to look at that , you may have noticed that our pawn is only two spaces from becoming a queen .

And you might have said , wait a second , what if we just push the pawn and get a queen and check me black ?

Right ?

I mean , like , isn't it that simple ?

So good idea .

And that's actually the first move of the puzzle A seven .

And now we can see what black's idea is .

Rook to G three check .

And of course , if we don't take it , black is gonna just keep throwing us in check with the rook .

So we , we have to take it and then Blacks gonna play the move H four check .

And there is a crazy idea going on here that I haven't showed you yet , but you're going to see it just a second .

So what's the point of this ?

The point is that first of all , let's just say , we don't take the pot .

Let's just say we move here because we don't wanna , you know , line our king up with the rope .

We just move and we say , what's black gonna do ?

We're gonna get a queen next move and win right ?

Here's black's idea .

They're gonna castle .

You didn't know that was an illegal move , did you ?

Yeah , they're gonna castle now , the rook stops it .

And if we try to go here so that we can block off the rook , they're gonna come down with check .

They're gonna come over and now they're gonna be able to sacrifice the rook for the pawn .

And it's , it's gonna be a draw that the king of knight against the king and rook .

And so that's kind of what's going on .

Ok .

That's Black's idea .

So knowing that we're gonna take the pawn and you might say , well , can't black just do the exact same thing , right ?

Castle .

And then , you know , if we go here , they're gonna come check and come over here and take our pawn .

The reason it's different now is because we have king G five and we're taking their night .

Ok .

So yes , they can get the rook over there .

But now we're taking the night , which is completely different and this is a win , right ?

So having said that now is where it starts to get pretty confusing because what black does instead of castling right away , they throw in this night check and now we have to make a tough decision and the decision is where do we move our king to G four or G five ?

If you want to pause and think through that , feel free to .

But I'm gonna be completely honest with you .

I had no idea when I was looking at this myself .

And so I would be surprised if anyone is able to figure out which move is correct .

But if you would like to pause , go ahead , uh have a shot at it , which move should we play ?

And why ?

All right , if you had a chance to look at that , you know , generally speaking in a situation like this , I would say the best move is going to be king to G five because I don't wanna go somewhere that the knight can check me .

Right ?

And if I go to G four , then I'm gonna be able to be put in check and that seems like it's gonna help the night get closer over here , right ?

So I wouldn't want to go here .

But , um , that's actually the correct move in this position .

OK .

And the reason is because if we go to G five , which is the more logical looking move , it sets us up for a little trick and here's the trick .

Black's gonna castle , right .

We're gonna try to go over here to get the block off the rook .

And now black plays this move knight to D four .

And the point is that when we come down here and by the way , when I say come down here , the , the , the plan is that we're blocking off the rook .

So the next move we get a queen .

That's what we would like to do .

Right ?

Here's what black has knight to E six check .

Remember our king's on G five because we made the wrong choice check .

We have to move somewhere night here , stops our queen .

See if we get the queen .

Now they just take it and we actually can't do anything in this position .

We can move our king over .

But uh black can actually just think the night in the corner and they're fine .

Ok .

So hopefully that makes sense .

But all that to say we didn't want our king to be on G five because of that weird little night dance for check .

And then it comes over here and stops the pa .

Ok .

So because of that , the best move is king to G four .

So uh black castles , we try to go for our little trick again .

And now there's this sort of dance between the king and the night .

And I'm not gonna get into all the , the details because it's , it gets pretty crazy .

But basically the night goes check , we move to H five because we're trying to stay out of things .

Night goes to D five .

There's another little check here that we have to watch out for .

So for example , if we just try to go here , black has actually no , they don't have a check .

They just play 97 .

Sorry , see , I I'm , I'm even confusing myself in this position .

They just have 97 is the , the , the easy way here .

Um So what do we have to do ?

We have to play king G five and it's kind of like a where black has to move , but they don't want to move right because right now they're , they're in a pretty good setup like I just showed you if we push well , then the night comes in , they stop the pawn and they're good , but they don't want to do that .

And so what do they , what do they do ?

Well , that's why we play king G five to put them in this position .

And so for example , if they play something like rookie eight , now we can go here and it's a different position because the , the rook is not defended by the king .

OK ?

And so we simply take it and the king can't capture it to night has two and then we get the queen .

All right .

So I feel like I'm not explaining this one .

Super great .

It is very confusing but basically there's this whole dance between the the king in the night .

There's one more try .

Black plays night at four king G 4 95 king G three is kind of the exclamation mark move .

Finally , the king gets out of the the potential checks and then after 97 simply played Rook to B eight and White wins .

So yeah , that last one , I mean , it's pretty crazy , but just going back , basically what it comes down to is you have to get out of these , these night checks .

So if you leave black , this option to have this idea of getting the night there , they stop the pawn , but you have to do it in the right way so that it's so that they , they don't have any moves if that makes sense .

Anyway , white wins .

That's how feel free to put this position um in uh in Stockfish if you would like , now , I'm gonna show you over here five single bishop checkmate positions .

So what that means is it's where a single bishop delivers the mate , not something that you see every day .

So I'll see you over there real soon .

Take care .