Jim Plaskett's Chess Puzzle

A long, long time ago – we are talking April 1987 – there was a super-GM tournament in Brussels. It was won by the the great Jugoslav GM Ljubo Ljubojevic, who today lives in Linares, Spain. World Champion Garry Kasparov was equal first with the same number of points. The two were one and a half points ahead of Anatoly Karpov and the rest of the field, which included Tal, Larsen, Kortschnoj, Timman and a very young and off-form Nigel Short.

The most memorable game for me at this tournament took place in round three, on the day I arrived in the Belgian capital. Here is how it went:

Winants,L (2415) - Kasparov,G (2735) [D59]
Brussels Brussels (3), 12.04.1987

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3 Be7 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bh4 0-0 7.e3 b6 8.cxd5 Nxd5 9.Bxe7 Qxe7 10.Nxd5 exd5 11.Rc1 Be6 12.Qa4 c5 13.Qa3 Rc8 14.Be2 Kf8 15.dxc5 bxc5 16.0-0 a5 17.Rc3 Nd7 18.Rfc1 Rcb8 19.Rb3 c4 20.Rxb8+ Rxb8 21.Qxa5 Rxb2 22.Nd4 Kg8 23.Ra1 Nc5 24.Qa8+ Kh7 25.Qa3 Rb6 26.Bd1 g6 27.Bc2 Bd7 28.h3 Qd6 29.Qa5 Ba4 30.Bxa4 Ra6 31.Qb5 Rxa4 32.a3 c3 33.Nc2 Qc7 34.Rb1 Ra7 35.Qe8 Rb7 36.Rb4 Kg7 37.g3 Ne6 38.Qa4 Ng5 39.h4 Ne4 40.Kg2 Ra7 41.Qb5 Qe5 42.Qb6 Qf5 43.f3.

Kasparov probably saw the point of the final combination in this position. 43...Ng5! 44.hxg5 Qxc2+ 45.Kg1 Qd1+ 46.Kg2 Qe2+ 47.Kh3.

Our first warm-up question: How did Garry Kasparov, with black to play in the above position, finish off his opponent?

Belgian GM Luk Winant at the start of his game against Kasparov

Karpov and Kasparov analysing, with Mikhail Tal (standing with cigarette)

The tournament was memorable for another reason. The very first version of ChessBase had been released in January 1987 and we were showing the database program to the players at the tournament. Kasparov and Short knew it already, but with the others it was like taking kids through a candy store. Mikhail Tal was the greatest fun: he would always come to the press room immediately after his games to enter them into my Atari ST (1 MByte RAM, 720 KB disk drive, ask gramps about this legendary machine).

Tony Miles checking out the revolutionary new database program

The other memorable thing, which is the subject of today's column, was an encounter with a very intense young British grandmaster. By a remarkable coincidence (insider joke) Jim Plaskett was visiting the tournament, and I spent a lot of time arguing about right-wing English politics with him. As a parting gift Jim showed me the following interesting study:

"White to play and win", said Jim with a intense little smirk. And we spent the rest of the day shuffling the pieces around on the board. Occasionally one of the super-GMs would come in after his game, and occasionally they would join in the analysis. But nobody got it that day. Except Misha Tal, who worked on it unsuccessfully for ten minutes, left the press room and then suddenly popped in again an hour later. Apparently he had worked out the main idea during a walk in the park.

Mikhail Tal in 1987 at the super-GM tournament in Brussels

A few things are obvious in the above position. White cannot promote the pawn because of the knight fork on c7. Moving the king allows Black to defend the queening square e8 and use his own superior forces to settle the game. Moves like Nxd3 or Bf2+ don't remove the basic dilemma of White actually wanting to win this position, which after a while seems completely preposterous.

Anyway, shortly after the tournament I published the position in the German computer chess magazine Computerschach & Spiele, driving the readers to the verge of distraction in the two months between issues. Using the most powerful board computers available at the time, assisted by a fair amount of human ingenuity, exactly six readers managed to send in a correct solution. One of them received a Novag V.I.P. computer (again: ask grandpa about this one) a prize for his efforts.

This week I was browsing through the latest issue of Computerschach & Spiele – yes, the magazine is still going strong twenty years after the first issue was produced – and there, in the letters section, was the position from Brussels. A reader had written in to say that he had been testing computers since 1987 with this problem, and even today, when Fritz and friends are challenging world champions in over-the-board play, none of them are able to cope with Plaskett's little puzzle.

Well, whip out your chess boards and fire up your chess engines. They will probably not be able to show you the solution – at least not in the few seconds they normally take for famous chess studies. We will publish the solution here in a week, together with the source. In the meantime you can send us your solution or comments you may have, using our feedback form.

Have a good first week of October!

Here is the solution

Frederic Friedel