1/05/2006

What's the difference

Between this position I solved easily..


And this problem I was unable to solve in 2:30minutes


Both are mate in two, white to move. Both involve sacrificing a peice in such a manner as to clog up an escape square for the king. This is just one example of the kind of thing I was talking about in an earlier post. How you can solve some and not others.



... note: these positions are similar to positions found in Personal Chess Trainer. I remember the core part of the position but not the full position. One of the problems I've found with PCT is you can't pull up a specific position whenever you want.

3 comments:

King of the Spill said...

I have a good guess. The second one is both a clearance sacrifice (which is rare) AND a decoy sacrifice for King interference i.e. hemming in the King. A key is that the Black King is immobilized already.

I have thought alot about the different sacrifice themes in mate in two and probably will post something eventually.

ed g. said...

For me, the second one was harder (took about 3x as long) because it's not as obvious that the King is trapped--musch easier to see that with the pieces occupying his flught squares.

Jeff said...

Of course after finding the solution (Bb7+) neither problem is very difficult.

To a computer there is little difference in the problems which are both solved instantly. So is it just speed of calculation or is there a difference in move spotting (i.e. the order that we process candidate moves)?