Letter #37 - 2007

Hi,

I have been working on the Mate with King, Bishop and Knight over the last two evenings. I played a lot of Chess (about 10 years) when growing up with my father, who was an avid Chess player, but I have not played in years so this checkmate strategy was a real mind twister for me.

I have a couple of questions in regards to this strategic challenge. I was up until 1:30 AM last night after about 3 hours of deciphering, and tonight I spent about 2 hours completing the sequence of moves a second time by a different sequence of moves.

I was able to complete both checkmates as can be seen by the two print screens. It is difficult to know whether I exceeded the 50 moves as I spent quite a bit of time on many of the moves working them out on a table Chessboard before entering onto your computer board.

My questions are:

1. Does the computer program identify when one exceeds the 50 move rule?

2. Do you consider the most difficult aspect of the challenge to drive the opponent's King to either a file or rank, or to shift the position of the King along the file/rank to the point of checkmate? I, myself, think that the most difficult aspect is to drive the King to the file/rank. Your computer does a great job at frustrating this process, and the example given on your web page that demonstrates the process is in no way similar to the way your computer responds in the test window below. It always selected the best move possible, making it that much more difficult to move the black King to the file or rank.

3. Is there any system or set of recommendations of driving the King to the file/rank? Once on the file/rank one can systematically drive the King to the corner without too much difficulty since one has control of the board by that time.

I have to say that your web site is one of the best (if not the best) on the internet for Chess. Mark Lowery's exciting world of Chess is also excellent. Thanks a lot for putting together such a well thought out site. I am sure that I will be able to really speed up my learning curve and reestablish my Chess skills that I developed when younger.

Best Wishes,
E. Gordon