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    Chess Mazes 2
    Chess Mazes 2
    Chess Mazes 2
    Ebook767 pages1 hour

    Chess Mazes 2

    By Bruce Alberston

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    About this ebook

    The Chess Puzzle for Everyone! A completely new kind of chess puzzle helps you develop the necessary visualization skills to take your game to the next level When the first volume of Chess Mazes was released, it was an immediate hit with both chess instructors and students. It was a completely new kind of chess puzzle to help develop your chessplaying visualization skills. In Chess Mazes 2, author Bruce Alberston has created another 216 fascinating chess mazes. This book is geared for intermediate and advanced beginners. Designed to keep pace with a student’s increasing development, the chapters appear in progressive order of difficulty, and form kind of a chess course in itself. As German International Grandmaster Karsten Maller observed in his Introduction to the first volume, solving Chess Maze puzzles is “...excellent training to avoid one-move blunders!-
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRussell Enterprises, Inc.
    Release dateMar 4, 2015
    ISBN9781936490103
    Chess Mazes 2

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      Book preview

      Chess Mazes 2 - Bruce Alberston

      blunder

      Introduction

      Chess Mazes is chess. The pieces move and capture just the same as in the normal game. The big difference is that the alternation of moves rule has been suspended. That means only White gets to move and the only piece he can move is his maze piece. Poor Black never moves; he has to sit back and watch, a helpless spectator.

      As a chess teacher I’ve tried various techniques to get my beginner students familiar with how the pieces move and capture. An exercise where there is only one moving piece on the board seemed to fill the bill. Initially my main concern was moving the piece in the correct manner while staying off squares where the moving piece could be taken by the enemy.

      Later, as the youngsters developed their skills, I found I could extract some bonuses from the visualization and planning techniques already built into the mazes concept. The ideal planning situation is where one side gets to make a plan and carry it through without interference from the opponent. If we don’t let the other side move it becomes possible to do this.

      The presentation of Chess Mazes, of necessity, has to be in the form of an exercise or puzzle. There’s no point in randomly moving pieces around the board. There has to be a goal. And the goal of the maze is to check the enemy king. That at least conforms to normal chess; you want to get the king. So Chess Mazes also operates as a chess problem.

      To do Chess Mazes it is assumed you know how the pieces move and the difference between check and checkmate. As for chess notation, you can figure out how it works from the early examples given in the book. So, without further ado let’s get to the rules for Chess Mazes. There are five in all. We’ll take Bishop Mazes as the example.

      Rules for Bishop, Rook, and Knight Mazes

      Rule Number One

      You are White and your maze piece is the bishop. You can move the bishop around the board at will, or almost at will. The major restriction is Rule Number Four. Only the white bishop is allowed to move.

      Rule Number Two

      Black gets a king and some pieces, the number of which will vary from position to position. However, none of the black pieces, king included, is allowed to move. This makes Black a passive partner, observing the bishop as it moves around the board. The one exception, where we allow Black to move, is Rule Number Four.

      Rule Number Three

      The maze is solved when the bishop puts the black king in check. Just put the king in danger and you’ve got it. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

      Rule Number Four

      White may not put his bishop (maze piece) on a square where it can be captured by an enemy unit. It’s called putting a piece en prise. If he does that, places his bishop on a capturable square, we suddenly let Black move, and he can take your bishop. White’s maze piece is gone from the board and he loses. You have to start over.

      Rule Number Five

      Go for the shortest solution. If a maze can be solved in x number of moves and you solved it in say x plus one, well, you sort of solved it but not in the most efficient way. You won’t find your solution given in the back of the book.

      Bishop Mazes in Action

      Now that we’ve covered the rules for mazes, lets see how it works in practice. We start with an example of a simple Bishop Maze:

      The white bishop to check the king in the shortest number of moves. It can be done in one move.

      1.Ba7-b6+ But this doesn’t count since it is violates Rule Four. Black simply takes the bishop, 1...Ka5xb6. Losing your bishop doesn’t solve the maze.

      It turns out that check can be given in two moves and in four different ways.

      (a) 1.Ba7-b8 and 2.Bb8-c7+

      (b) 1.Ba7-d4 and 2.Bd4-c3+

      (c) 1.Ba7-e3 and 2.Be3-d2+

      (d) 1.Ba7-f2 and 2.Bf2-e1+

      Of course the check can also be given in three moves (or more) but we’re only concerned with the solution that delivers check in the fastest way, Rule Five. Still, we don’t want a maze with four correct solutions; it’s too easy. So we’ll toughen it up so there’s only one solution.

      Adding the black knight creates a series of mined squares, which limit the bishop’s movement. Thus c7 is ruled out, since the knight can capture; so too are c3 and e3. That leaves only one correct solution 1.Ba7-f2 and 2.Bf2-e1+.

      If you took three moves to solve the maze, 1.Bf2 2.Bh4 3.Bd8+ you’re on your own. In the back of the book we give only the solutions in the fewest number of moves. So get into the habit of solving in the shortest possible way.

      If enemy pieces stand in your way you can capture them, provided you don’t lose your bishop in the process. Our next example, showing a capture, is somewhat longer than those we’ve seen.

      A quick examination of the position shows that the only available check is at a2. How does the bishop get there? Via b1 after removing the rook at b7. Here’s how it goes: 1.Be2 2.Bd1 3.Ba4 4.Bd7 5.Bc8 6.Bxb7 7.Be4 8.Bb1 9.Ba2+

      I hope you figured it out.

      Solving Bishop Mazes

      There are two ways of solving bishop mazes, working forward and working backward. In the forward approach the bishop lurches ahead one move at a time till something clicks. It works best when the bishop has only one new, safe square each move along the way. Then, just by stumbling forward, you finally land the check that solves the maze. For some the backward approach seems to work best. Here the emphasis is on the planning aspect of the maze. The final checking square is established and the route backward to the starting square is

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