ChessBase Christmas Puzzles December 25, 2008
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A Merry Christmas to all our readers

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Dr John Nunn (born April 25, 1955) is one of the world’s best-known chess players and authors. He showed early promise in winning the British Under-14 Championship at the age of twelve and captured several other junior titles before winning the European Junior Championship in 1974-5. At the same time he was studying mathematics at Oxford, after entering the university at the unusually early age of 15. In 1978 he achieved a double success by gaining both his doctorate, with a thesis in algebraic topology, and the GM title by winning a tournament in Budapest. In 1981 he 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 Nunn was also active as a chess author in the late 1980s and 1990s, twice winning the prestigious British Chess Federation Book of the Year prize. When his playing career started to wind down in the 1990s, he devoted more energy to chess publishing and in 1997, dissatisfied with the existing chess publishers, he (together with Murray Chandler and Graham Burgess) founded Gambit Publications, which now has more than 200 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 2005 and 2006 he was part of the British team which won the team World Problem Solving Championship. In 2007 he repeated his earlier success by winning the World Chess Problem Solving Championship for a second time.

In 1995 he married the German woman player Petra Fink. They have one son, Michael, currently aged ten.

John Nunn's 2008 Christmas puzzles

In order to keep readers’ minds alert during the festive season, this year’s Christmas puzzles offer a variety of challenges, with no two being of exactly the same type. Some are relatively easy, some are harder and one is really tricky – but this is only a personal assessment. Since most of the puzzles require a flash of insight rather than deep analysis, if you spot the idea quickly then you won’t be detained too long. There are no ‘trick’ puzzles and all can be solved by the application of logic, although a burst of inspiration might offer a useful short-cut.

The problem with stalemate

White to play and mate in eight

First up this year is a straightforward mate in eight. White has an enormous material advantage and Black can’t move his king, so any check will be mate. But that’s actually the problem, as Black is currently stalemated. You have to find the right way to lift the stalemate without letting the king escape completely.

Please do not send in any solutions yet. We will ask for them at the end of the puzzle sessions. And of course do not use a chess engine to solve the problem. Only a spineless wimp would resort to that (if you will excuse the rather harsh expression "resort to").