3 Chess Puzzles Sent By My Viewers

What's up guys today ?

We're looking at three more puzzles that you guys sent in .

Actually , there was quite a few more than three , but I decided to narrow it down to my three favorites , which I'm gonna show you right now .

It's right to play and win if you'd like to pause and think through the solution and then we'll talk about how to do it .

All right .

OK .

So this position was from Remington .

Thank you Remington for sending this in .

It's an interesting position in that black is about to be stalemated .

So currently , none of black's pawns can move , the king cannot move .

And so if you play like a sort of logical move of trying to just bring your king up , it's a stalemate , right ?

And it's , the game is over .

So we have to play either F three or F four .

And actually this move doesn't really matter because regardless of what we play , black is going to capture us on pass , it is gonna be like this , right ?

So first move , OK , we get captured and again , we have kind of the same problem if we play kings F two , it's a stalemate black has no moves .

So what do we need to do ?

Instead , we actually have to play king to F one .

And this is kind of the start of an idea that we're gonna keep repeating throughout this puzzle .

And that point is that we sacrifice upon , we slide our king over to give black a move and then we sacrifice the next pond once we can safely capture this pawn .

And so you can see now we can take it .

Black's gonna push , put us in check , only move .

And again , we don't take it .

We do the same kind of maneuver .

Go back and give the pawn some room , right ?

Because we're trying to avoid the stalemate .

Black's gonna push it again .

We push black is gonna have to capture .

Now we can take the pawn and after D four , we can do that little maneuver one more time .

King did D two , black has to push .

Now we can sacrifice this pawn .

And ultimately , we end up with this winning king and pawn end game .

Now , there's sort of one last little trick that black might try .

You could say , and that's if they don't push the pawn .

So if they push the pawn , we can just simply come here , take it .

Black has to move back and forth and we just win .

The only trick that black could try would be to go here .

We come up , they go back .

And if we come up and they go here , we have to figure out how to make progress , right ?

Uh Because like , for example , if we come over here and black goes back and we take the pawn , that's a stalemate .

So we do have to be careful .

But the easiest way to win is to just simply get a queen force the king to capture .

And when we capture the , the tempo actually works out in our favor to where after black goes here , we're able to push forward .

There's no stalemate and we get the queen and we win .

So basically , the idea that you had to see was this , you know , sacrificing the pawn moving the king , not up in front but over .

And that's what ultimately leads uh to the win .

So nice , nice puzzle there .

Uh Cool little idea .

Thank you Remington for sending that one in and let's go ahead and jump over to the next one .

All right .

So here's the next one again , it's white to play and win .

Uh White's going forward , black is going this way before I say anything .

If you'd like to pause and think through , how do we win here as white ?

Go ahead and do that .

All right .

Well , if you had a chance to look at that .

So first of all , again , we have to be careful for a stalemate .

So if you were to say some move like this , trying to just kind of come over here and maybe start taking the pawns as soon as you play that move , the game is over because black has nowhere to move , right .

The pawns can't move , the king is trapped .

So you can't play a rook move like that .

You also can't just start taking these with your king because again , because of where our rook's positioned , actually our king as well in the pond .

Uh Black can't move right , the king is still trapped .

So you have to be careful in how you approach this .

And I've actually seen this idea before .

And so I kind of knew what the idea was , but the point is that we are going to try to check me black with our pawn eventually .

So before I tell you the move , now that you have that kind of big hint , if you'd like to pause and try to figure it out again .

If you didn't already solve it , go ahead and do it now .

All right .

And if you had a chance to do that , the move is rook to G five .

And the point is again because black can't move the king , they have to take it , which does put us in check , but we can simply take the pawn again .

The king is trapped .

Black has to push forward and now we can go king to F four which keeps black trapped , forces them to push their pawn and we deliver the checkmate with the pawn .

So nice little idea here , it's pretty rare that you see this kind of thing .

But when you do get these sort of , uh you know , positions , it's , it's nice to finish it off with the pawn .

So , thank you .

I believe this position was sent from Avatar of Wrath .

Thank you for that one .

And now let's jump to the last position .

All right , last position is from Alkin list and it's white to play .

White's going forward , black is going this way before I say anything .

If you'd like to pause , what do you think the winning move is for white ?

Go ahead and do that .

All right , if you had a chance to look at that , the first thing you have to kind of realize is that all of these pawns are basically stuck , which means what this puzzle comes down to is how do we win over here with these three pawns against blacks , two pieces and pawn ?

And actually the best move is the simple and kind of obvious move to just take the night .

It's undefended and we may as well take it , get it out of the way and start to threaten to do something with our pawns .

And now black plays B take C six and it starts to get a little tricky .

Now , of course , if they don't take that , what else can they do ?

The king is stuck , they can play bishop here .

But then we simply capture with the pawn checkmate .

And the same thing would happen if they play bishop C seven checkmate .

So the only way black can keep this game going is by capturing our pawn .

And now at first glance , it's like , OK , we can still play the check .

But once we do that , the king is gonna escape .

Our pawns are blockaded and it's actually black who's gonna be winning now because this pawn is coming and they're gonna eventually get a queen .

We can't really do anything .

So the move that you needed to see here was a six .

And the point again , if the bishop moves , we have the same idea of B seven checkmate , right ?

So black doesn't want to do that .

But if they push the pawn , we're gonna play the move A seven .

Now , when I was first analyzing this , I thought to myself , OK , we play a seven .

Black's gonna take and we're gonna play B seven checkmate .

What I failed to realize was that after we play a seven , black actually has the move bishop C seven .

And so we have to find one more move here .

It's not very difficult , but the kind of follow up is capturing this with the king , allowing this pawn to either capture or go forward doesn't really matter .

And then we simply play B seven and get the queen .

So um that's it .

That's the checkmate .

Of course , it was nice when we were able to checkmate with the pawn .

But if black plays correctly , we have to go this route .

Uh Either way , nice puzzle and I hope you guys enjoyed those .

Thank you for sending those in .

I had fun going through them and um yeah , I appreciate that .

I've got some more lined up which will be coming real soon and so make sure you stay tuned for those as always .

Thanks for watching , stay sharp , play smart , take care .