Two Chess Problems - Futility Closet

In a chess game, White plays 1. f3 2. Kf2 3. Kg3 4. Kh4. Black’s fourth move checkmates White. What is the game?

1. f3 e5 2. Kf2 Qf6 3. Kg3 Qxf3+! 4. Kh4 Be7#

suicide chess problem

White’s play is so suicidal that the task sounds easy, but “this problem is almost impossibly difficult because Qxf3+ is such a horrible move by normal chess standards,” writes former U.S. champion Stuart Rachels. “It is hard for a competent player to consciously consider it.”

Here’s another problem by Sam Loyd:

loyd mate in 2

White to mate in two moves. In 1907 J.H. Blackburne chose this as one of his all-time favorite problems. “It was first published in this country about fifty years ago, and greatly puzzled the solvers of that day, the idea then being entirely new.”

It’s a perfectly fair two-mover — there’s no trickery.

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“It is what may be termed a pure waiting-move problem,” Blackburne writes, “i.e., after White’s first move no mate is possible until Black replies.” The solution is 1. Qc8, “the most unlikely square on the board,” and now after each of Black’s 24 legal moves White can mate with a knight. Loyd once wrote, “My theory of a key move is always to make it just the reverse of what a player in 999 cases out of 1,000 would look for.”

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