Philosophical Question

[Sasha Pachev]

James:

After King goes to back h1 and knight goes to g3 with a check it is not a mate because the pawn on h2 takes the knight and that alone gets him out of check (careful reading of the last clause will reveal a clue for the solution). Check with the knight of f2 was correct, though, and the idea of a discovered check by moving the knight after that  was correct as well, but you need to find a better square for the knight.

Kevin - hold your horses. I believe that we will have a much better discussion when we engage our minds thoroughly and vigorously in the process of constructing an argument - something the young generation is somewhat loathe to do nowadays. We will move beyond chess once this problem has been properly understood. As evidenced by what we have seen, it has more depth than James initially observed, and he is the only one who tried so far.

[James Moore]

Ok, I think I got it this time.

Knight goes to the vacated H1.
Then Q goes to F2.

If we were really playing I definitely would have messed that up.

Is your point that moving the white pawn was a bad move? So sometimes the smallest, seemingly insignificant mistakes can be catastrophic?

[Sasha Pachev]

James - that does not work either. King takes the knight on h1 to get out of check - he can since black does not have a strike on that square at that point. Remember - the king is a strong attacking piece. His restriction is just that he cannot be in check, which make him weaker when there are a lot pieces around, but if the queens are gone or if he finds an enclave of relative safety he is full of trouble.

You have not demonstrated it yet, but pushing the d4 pawn is nevertheless a bad move. We are not at the end of this problem yet, but by this point you should have gotten my point at about 20% already seeing how difficult it has been to prove that this move is bad indeed.  However, I want to continue the discussion after you've gotten my point at 100%.

[Sasha Pachev]

Hint - look for a double-check in the next move. Double-check is very powerful because you cannot resolve it by capturing a checking piece. Since you cannot take two pieces at once taking one still leaves you in check from the other. So the only way out of a double-check is to move the king.

[Sasha Pachev]

I showed this to Jenny and Julia. They are both Utah scholastic tournament rated at around 800, but Jenny is sharper tactically - her tactical skills are at around 1200 level. Julia saw the first two moves correctly, but then without moving the pieces could not see the continuation (she is 10 years old). Jenny being older (12) could see better and without moving the pieces gave me the full solution taking about 5-10 seconds to think about each move. Joseph - 8 years old - scholastic rating around 350 - saw the first move correctly, but then did not know what to do after that without moving the pieces. I did not test Julia or Joseph in a setup where pieces could be moved.