Vincent Okoye - The Best Chess Puzzles: The Grand Masters Techniques

The Best Chess Puzzle s The Grand Master Techniques

Intelisense Media Copyright 2022 Intelisense Media All rights reserved The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. ISBN Cover design by: Intelisense Media Introduction Puzzles I Chess puzzle books are a well-established genre. This has certain advantages; the reader is on familiar territory and knows more or less what to expect, so the author should not have to embark on a detailed explanation as to the purpose of the book, the layout, and so on. Yet, curiously, I find myself doing almost exactly that.

While researching this book, I examined many other puzzle books; some were already familiar to me as I had used them myself for training purposes, while others were new to me. By this point I had realized that puzzle books could be given a number of dif ferent slants, and I had to choose which approach to adopt for my own book. In the end I decided to combine the aims of entertainment, self-assessment and in struction, but with the emphasis on the last of these. It is quite easy to go through a puzzle book and end up wondering if you have learnt anything, but I hope that will not be the case with this book. Wherever possible, I have pointed out useful general principles embodied in the puzzles - it is surprising how certain types of mistake occur time and time again. Moreover, the puzzles have quite detailed so lutions; if you have seriously tried to solve them yourself, then comparing your analysis with the solution cannot help but reveal what you are missing (if any thing!).

The average difficulty of these puzzles is relatively high. I have rated them on a scale of I to 5, with I as the easiest (usually just a single short forced line) to 5 as the toughest. There are even a few '5+' mega-puzzles. Only those with lower difficulty ratings (1 or 2) are suitable to solve on the train; the rest should be set up on a board and tackled as if you were playing a game. Many of the worthwhile things in life involve some effort - improving your chess by going through this book is one example! However, it is not all hard work; almost all the puzzles have some spectacular element in the solution, and a few have been included simply because the winning move is so amazing. I have not divided the puzzles up according to the type of combination or at tack involved.

If you are told that there is a mate in three or that the combination involves a knight fork, then the puzzle very often ceases to be a real challenge. When you are playing a game, you do not know whether there is a combination and what it might involve. In this book I cannot disguise the fact that there is 'something' in the position, but I do not see why the challenge should be made even more artificial by giving away further information. However, if you get stuck, each position (except for the test papers at the end) has a hint on a different page. These hints normally reveal in general terms what to look for, but do not INTRODUCTION aive the whole game away. I hope that you will at least make an attempt to solve e each position before looking at the hint.

While I was reading other puzzle books, I found that my enjoyment was much diminished when I had seen many of the puzzles before. Indeed, in some quarters a recipe for a puzzle book seems to be to take a few from one puzzle book, a handful from another, a pinch from a third and whisk them all together. Perhaps few readers will have read so many puzzle books, but even if only 10% are famil iar it still reduces the value of the book. I hope to have avoided this fate by a num ber of methods. First of all, a high proportion of the games are relatively recent; secondly, many are based on hitherto unpublished analysis, often involving the refutation of previously published annotations. I admit to repeating a few all time favourites, but I would be surprised if any readers had seen more than a handful of the positions before.

Another perennial irritation with puzzle books, particularly with those in the 'rate yourself' category, is that of alternative solutions. You find a solution, gain zero points because something else was intended, and when you check it with Fritz you find that your solution is just as valid as the one given in the book. That's Elo 2000 for you, Nunn! I have carefully computer-checked all the posi tions in this book for precisely this type of problem. I am not guaranteeing that there are no analytical errors - some of the positions are really tough and unsuit able for computer analysis (long-term positional sacrifices and some endings, for example)- but the level of accuracy should be high. As we are dealing with real life positions and not composed studies, there will often be alternative wins at some point, but if they are significant then they are mentioned in the solutions. Many puzzles from my original shortlist for this book had to be thrown out due to the existence of 'busts' and alternative solutions.

See the solution to Puzzle 172 for more on this topic. Having described my general approach, on to the detailed contents. There is much less to say here. 'Puzzles l ', 'Puzzles 2', and 'Puzzles 3' form the bulk of the book and are general collections of puzzles with no linking theme. In order to break up the book and provide a diversion, there are two thematic chapters. 'Find the Wrong Move' invites you to find the blunder which instantly terminated the game.

These are not just pieces being put en prise, but chillingly plausible moves with fatal consequences. Originally, I intended a chapter with a selection of his torical puzzles from a famous event of the past. However, the results of my initial investigations were so surprising that this has expanded to become a general dis cussion on methods of comparing players and games of the past with those of to day. When I described what I was doing to two people, they both said that the subject deserved a whole book. One day, perhaps, but for now the chapter 'The Test of Time' should prove thought-provoking and perhaps even a little contro versial (there are some puzzles in this chapter, too!). Finally, there are the 'Rate Yourself' tests.

There are eight tests of six puzzles each; you are invited to mark your solutions and fill in the score table on page Of course, such a test can in no way offer a genuine perspective on a particu lar player's talents (amongst other weaknesses, it only tests one facet of chess - tactical ability). Nevertheless, everyone has a sneaking suspicion that they would be stronger if only ... (fill in your own excuse here). These tests give you the chance to verify your suspicions. Introduction to the Expanded Edition The above text is an abridged and slightly modified form of the introduction to the original Vincent Okoye's Chess Puzzle Book, which was published in 1999. It was my first and so far only venture into the field of chess puzzle books.

After several years in print, I decided that it was time to give the book a facelift. There have been three main changes. The first involves the correction of errors. Many readers kindly contacted me pointing out errors and improvements in the analysis contained in the original book. Some of these corrections were incorporated when the book was reprinted, and I have taken the opportunity to make further corrections in this new edition. In some cases this involved changing the analysis, while in others the whole posi tion has been replaced.

One such substitution resulted when a player involved in one of the quoted examples told me that my puzzle position, in which I claimed he overlooked a brilliant win, hadn't actually occurred in the game (the incorrect score of the game had appeared in MegaBase and several chess magazines). The second main change is the addition of new puzzles, increasing the puz zle count by 20%; all the new puzzles are taken from games played after the pub lication of the original book. The difficulty level of the new positions is slightly up on the earlier selection - or maybe it is just that with advancing years I find the positions harder than I used to! The third change involves the layout of the solutions. The original book used a condensed layout for the solutions, which was rather unfriendly for readers, es pecially as there were no diagrams in the solutions. I have now reproduced the puzzle position in a small diagram at the start of each solution, so that you can see the position while reading the solution. Moreover, I have added additional dia grams at critical points of the longer solutions.

Next page