12/27/2013 – It's been a great year, with more chess than ever
before – and more visitors than ever before flocking to our news site.
We thank them for the wonderfully positive feedback we routinely
receive, which makes our whole endeavour eminently worthwhile. As always
we end the year with our traditional Christmas puzzles, and once again
we have entrusted multiple world champion solver John Nunn with their
selection. Now with three puzzles.
A Merry Christmas to all our readers
Or a Happy Christmas if you are British or Irish, or Season's Greetings if you want to get in trouble with Fox News or Sarah Palin. Adhering to tradition we start the day with an ICQ Santa card, which you can click on to obtain different regional backdrops. The card will open in a separate window...
ChessBase Christmas Puzzles 2013
By John Nunn
This year’s Christmas puzzles contain the usual varied collection ranging from a mate in three to a seriesselfmate in nine. Apart from one tricky puzzle, the selection is perhaps somewhat easier than my usual Christmas offering. You may judge for yourself which puzzle I felt to be the tricky one.
 December 28 |
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 December 29 |
 December 30 |
 December 31 |
 January 1 |
Puzzle 1 – December 25, 2013
White to play and mate in three
Black’s king is stalemated so White’s first move must release the
king. Please don’t use your engine to solve this. It will do so in an
instant, but you will deprive yourself of the fun of finding the
solution yourself. Come on, it’s only four pieces!Puzzle 2 – December 26, 2013
White to play and selfmate in five.
a) Diagram position – b) Remove the pawn on f6
In a selfmate, White is trying to force Black to deliver mate, while
Black is doing his best to avoid this. The above problem has two parts;
in the second, just remove the pawn on f6 and again selfmate in five.a) Diagram position – b) Remove the pawn on f6
If it were Black to move he would be forced to give mate at once by ...fxe4#, but White has no waiting move. The idea here is to find a way to return to something like the initial position, but having wasted a tempo. There is a connection between the solutions to the two parts of the problem.
Puzzle 3 – December 27, 2013
White to play and win
The material balance is roughly equal, so White must pursue an
attack. It’s important to know that two bishops always win against a
knight except if there is an immediate draw for the knight. In endgame
studies there is no 50-move rule, so you need not be concerned that a 2B
vs N win might require more than 50 moves.
Please do not send in any solutions until January 1st. New problems will appear every day
until then on this page, which we will keep near the top of our news site, so it is easy for you to find.
until then on this page, which we will keep near the top of our news site, so it is easy for you to find.
Dr John Nunn
(born April 25, 1955) is one of the world’s best-known chess players
and authors. He showed early promise by winning the British Under-14
Championship at the age of twelve. In 1970 he entered Oxford University
at the unusually early age of 15 and in 1978 he achieved a double
success by gaining both the GM title and a doctorate (with a thesis in
algebraic topology).In 1981 John abandoned academic life for a career as a professional chess player. In 1984 he gained three individual gold medals at the Thessaloniki Olympiad, two for his 10/11 performance on board two for England and one for winning the problem-solving event held on a free day.
John's best period for over-the-board play was 1988-91. In 1989 he was ranked in the world top ten, and in the same year he finished sixth in the GMA World Cup series, which included virtually all the world’s top players. He also won the famous tournament at Wijk aan Zee outright in 1990 and 1991, to add to a previous tie for first place in 1982.
John became a successful chess author in the late 1980s and 1990s, and has three times won the prestigious British Chess Federation Book of the Year prize. In 1997 he (together with Murray Chandler and Graham Burgess) founded Gambit Publications, which now has more than 200 chess books in print. When he effectively retired from over-the-board play in 2003, he revisited an early interest in chess problems and in 2004 won the World Chess Problem Solving Championship, at the same time adding a GM solving title to his earlier over-the-board title. In 2007 he again won the World Chess Problem Solving Championship, and in 2010 had his best year to date, winning both the European and World Chess Problem Solving Championships.
In 1995 he married the German chess player Petra Fink. They have one son, Michael, currently aged fifteen, who also plays chess.
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