This forum has very few positional puzzles, so I've decided to post one; the position is taken from a corr. game of mine.


white to move, how does white improve the position?



If your a bit stuck, heres a Hint:

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BIGGER HINT (its a hard puzzle afterall):

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Okay, so if you have read the hints you should have lots of positional ideas by now...(if you didn't read the hints you should have some positional ideas anyway)


so comeon guys whats the first move? ...then whats the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th?


I haven't posted the awnser (yet) because I wanted to see other peoples opinions
on the position....I also want to see if any players fall into the trap thats lurking in the darkness (if I say anymore, I'll give it away)

thats not the solution I have....

But I urge you to check your line with a computer... it may also work.

Initially, I was thinking about Wildman's solution, but now I'm looking for something else....

Actually, I can't come up with anything too strong other than the idea Wildman proposed. Maybe white could try:

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In the game I played ********, when I checked with the computer it turned out to be best so I didn't bother to look at what else I could have played.


so what i am trying to say is, both of your suggestions might work, but they (imo, and the opinion of crafty) not the strongest.


prepare to kick yourself.

Positional puzzles = good. That being said, I'm still not sure what white's best plan is here.

But...

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another "wrong" guess.


remember I wrote "I haven't posted the awnser (yet) because I wanted to see other peoples opinions
on the position....I also want to see if any players fall into the trap thats lurking in the darkness (if I say anymore, I'll give it away)"


well, allow me to anounce the trap that snared you.

this isn't a positional puzzle, I only told you that to see how you would respond.

the solution is completly 100% tactical, not only that it is completly crushing (+4 according to crafty)


It would seem that people act in the way that is expected of them, and not according to their own judgement.

If I now tell you the first move is

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isn't the solution completly obvoius?

Wow, I actually considered that but rejected it. Not sure if it was due to bad calculation or thinking I was looking for something "positional."

Actually, I think my mistake was looking for something here:

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Of course I missed the line below, which became much more obvious after you posted the first move

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correct! white creates threats all over the place which are simply unstoppable...


out of interest is turns out that White really didn't have a "bad move" in the position

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funny this is, it doesn't "look" that strong.

FWIW, I launched Fritz 8 last night at 300 seconds -- it may still be running, I forgot to check this morning before going to work. Its first choice when I went to bed (after it ran for a couple of hours) was 1. Bxg4 with 1. Bxc4 as it's second choice. It's nice that Crafty thinks my 1. Nxf5 wasn't too bad and that aparently I'm not a total idiot...

L8erz...
=wild=

Interesting... what was eval for both?

Like I said, it was still running when I last looked. I'll try and remember to post it when I get home tonight if I have time. I do rememeber them being fairly close: something like 2.96 for one and 2.83 for the other -- take the numbers with a grain of salt since my memory has more holes than a block of Swiss cheese.

L8erz...
=wild=

Unfortunately, my wife had to reboot the computer today so I no longer have the data. I reran Fritz 8 with 20 seconds per move (instead of 300) and it came back with:

1. Bxc4 +5.25
2. Bxg4 +4.68

Looks like the order got flipped and the magnitudes are very different from what I remember.

L8erz...
=wild=