Solution to Plaskett's Puzzle
In our Puzzle #16 we told the story
of the Brussels GM tournament in 1987, where British GM Jim Plaskett
showed us a remarkable problem, which nobody was able to solve,
except for Mikhail Tal, who looked at it for ten minutes, then
went for a walk in the park and came back with the solution.
Let us first look at the problem. In order to make it more difficult
to find the position in study database I had mirrored the diagram.
Here is the correct form as shown to us by Plaskett. At the time
nobody knew anything about the author (which was not Jim Plaskett).
White to play and win
We mentioned a few obvious things in the above position. White
cannot promote the pawn because of the knight fork on f7. Moving
the king allows Black to defend the queening square e8 and use
his own superior forces to settle the game.
So White hat to take more drastic measures: 1.Nf6+ Kg7!
1...Kh8 2.d8Q+ is mate in three; and 1...Kg6 2.Bh5+ Kf5 3.d8Q
wins, as there is the forking square f7 is defended by the bishop.
2.Nh5+ Kg6. 2...Kf7 would block the forking square
and allow 3.d8Q. 3.Bc2+! Forcing Black to take
the knight – a very difficult move for computers to find.
3…Kxh5 4.d8Q!! (allowing the fork) Nf7+
5.Ke6 Nxd8+ 6.Kf5.
Aha, a mate net has been cast out! White is threatening 7.Bd1+
e2 8.Bxe2 mate. 6…e2 7.Be4. Threatening
8.Bf3#. Black has only one reasonable defence – underpromotion!
7…e1N 8.Bd5!! c2 9.Bc4 (threatening 10.Be2
with mate in two) 9…c1N 10.Bb5 (threatening
11.Be8 with mate in two) 10…Nc7 11.Ba4.
Look at this situation. Black has four knight (and a bishop),
but cannot stop the lone white bishop from delivering mate in
three moves, e.g. 11…Ne2 12.Bd1 Nf3 13.Bxe2 and
14.Bxf3 mate.
A beautiful, fascinating problem, praised by many readers (see
feedback below). However we discovered a fairly serious difficulty
in this study. Actually it was the same Jim Plaskett who drew
our attention to the fact that in the meantime analysts had found
that Black can draw by playing 4…Kg4 (instead of going for
the queen with 4…Nf7+). A bit of computer analysis confirmed:
this seems to destroy the study by preventing a white win.
So we started to search for the study, using Harold van den Heijden’s
monumental Endgame
Study Database 2000, which contains over 58,000 studies.
There we found three versions of the problem. Apparently the author
had found the error in the above version and had attempted to
correct it. In one case the author had moved the white knight
from g4 to g8, which does not solve the problem. In the other
he has moved the black knight in the starting position from g5
to e5. This does not allow 4…Kg4, because after that it
is Mate in 9 (as Fritz instantly announces: 5.Qh4+ Kf3 6.Kxe5
e2 7.Qf4+ Kg2 8.Be4+ Kg1 9.Qe3+ Kf1 10.Qf3+ Ke1 11.Bd3 Kd1 12.Qxe2+
Kc1 13.Qc2#. This is the version we give in our replay solution
below.
Who composed it?
Finding an apparently sound version of this delightful problem
was great, but it also produced a second major difficulty. In
the database the author of the problem is given as G. van Breukelen,
and the place of publication as the Dutch magazine Schakend
Nederland. Most baffling was the date: 1990. But we had clear
records of Jim Plaskett showing us the position in 1987! In fact
a number of readers told us they had seen the position before
1990. For instance GM Lubomir Kavalek wrote to us saying: “I
had fun solving this problem with Boris Spassky during a Bundesliga
weekend in the early 1980s. I don’t remember when it was
exactly, and I don’t remember who show it to us.”
The situation was further complicated by stories sent to us by
a number of readers about Tal being given the position by a taxi
or lorry-driver whom he was never able to track down. These stories
contradicted our recollection of Tal seeing the position in Brussels
in April 1987, not being able to solve it and then suddenly coming
back to the press center with the solution.
What does one do in such situations? Well obviously the best
strategy is to contact the endgame study king Harold van den Heijden
himself. And of course it worked. Harold immediately replied with
the following information: “Dear Frederic, at least once
a year I get a question about the Georgian tractor driver and
his problem. There were some elaborate reports in my endgame magazine
EBUR, which I attach (unfortunately they are in Dutch).
My conclusion is that Gijs van Breukelen composed the study in
the 1970s and showed it to a couple of friends. Later, in 1990,
van Breukelen decided to publish the study in the magazine Schakend
Nederland.”
Harold also attached an article by another leading endgame expert,
John Roycroft, which appeared in the endgame magazine EG
vol. 122. In it Roycroft concludes:
“The composer of this fine study is the Dutch composer
Gijs van Breukelen, who demonstrated it as an example of his own
work at a meeting of ARVES held in 1992 in Delft. The
position with the author’s name was already in Schakend
Nederland of iii1990 as an original. The composer said at
the ARVES meeting that he had composed it in the mid-1970s
and shown it to several friends, but had neither sent it for publication
nor entered it for a tourney. Having somehow penetrated the player
circuit it circulated rapidly, acquiring journalistic colour en
route though being associated either with a (totally fictitious)
Ukrainian tractor-driver, or with a very specific (but equally
spurious) game between leading masters. The late IGM Tal was one
of the active propagators, but when asked he claimed he could
not remember who had first shown it to him.”
Is it possible that the explanation to our dilemma regarding
Mikhail Tal is that the great man had seen the position for the
first time in the press room in Brussels?
Feedback from our readers
Renato Duarte, Betim, Brazil
The study is one of the most difficult I ever seen. Congratulations
to Mr. Plaskett. After a long time I could get the idea, to mate
with the Bishop, but was unable to solve until the end. There
was many horses to bother me around the board, and I was crazy
to check the answer with some Fritz help.
Abdullah Safi, Istanbul, Turkey
I am sending you the solution, which was found by a friend, Namik
Turun, at the Istanbul Chess Club. He found it without any computer
aid and in two hours. We were few people discussing the puzzle
but the main idea was from Namik.
Vivek Nambiar, Bangalore, India
This puzzle, which must rank as one of the most beautiful ones
I have seen, brings back nostalgic memories. I was given the puzzle
many years ago by a friend who said that he got it at a training
camp conducted in India by some Russian masters. He gave it to
me with the scary clue that white had to “force black to
underpromote two pawns into knights before checkmating him.”
It took me two hours to find the solution, and since it happened
to be my birthday on that day it was the finest birthday gift
I could have received!
I think there was some kind of story attached to it saying that
it was not a study but a real position where some famous player
playing white resigned – a taxi driver got obsessed by the
position and decided to find a way for white to win and came up
with the solution many months later, by which time he had lost
all his worldly possessions. Anyways, as beautiful as the solution
is I think there is some known flaw too. After the King is forced
to a5 and White queens, Black need not give a checking fork but
can play Kb4, after which it has to be proved that White can win.
There is also a description of the position in Denker's memoirs:
“The Bobby Fischer I knew and other stories”, where
he says that the position was shown to him way back in 1953 by
Ossip Bernstein This is how it goes:
We were seated in an outdoor café on a narrow Left
bank street. A light breeze cooled us. As Ossip ordered coffee
and liqueurs, I emptied the pieces on to the board. Ossip set
up a position which had an interesting legend both behind and
in front of it. [Plaskett’s position given]. During the
1970s, a rumour circulated that the above position occurred
in a Bernstein-Capablanca game played in Moscow circa 1914,
and that Bernstein resigned at this point. But a Russian farmer,
so the story goes, became so intrigued with the final position
that it preyed on his mind day and night. Until one afternoon,
the truth dawned on him. The farmer worked out a win for White
and mailed the analysis to Tigran Petrosian, then the editor
of 64. Unfortunately the letter lay unopened until Anatoly Karpov
assumed the reins. Karpov, so the story goes, read the letter
and turned it over to Mikhail Tal, who was so impressed with
the analysis that he went looking for the farmer at his collective.
Alas, the poor fellow had passed away.
But on that cloudless blue day back in 1953, as I sat sipping
on a brilliant yellow-green chartreuse, Ossip told a different
story about the same position. “I first saw the position,”
he said, “just a few years ago while on a business trip
to Spain.” At a chess club in Madrid a Spanish lad asked
Ossip why he had resigned a won game and showed him the position
and some clever analysis. “I hated to disillusion the
kid,” Ossip told me, “but the entire story was a
hoax to publicize a very beautiful and exciting problem. Capa
and I never arrived at such a position. Still, as you Americans
are always saying, never let the facts get in the way of a good
story.”
Jean-Marie Robiolle, Lablachère, France
The puzzle proposed by Mr. Plaskett is the mirror position of
the study found in the book of Anatoly Kuznetsov “Brillant
Chess Studies”, p. 309. The author was not known to me,
but the study is really fantastic!!! It was published in Schacken
Nederland in 1990 by G. van Breukelen. But what is ultimately
“puzzling” is that the puzzle of Mr. Plaskett is the
mirror position of the study of G. van Breukelen except the fact
that the white knight find itself on b4 instead of b8 (in van
Breukelen’s study it is on g8 not on g4). But that don’t
change matters as the first move is Nc6+ for Plaskett’s
position and Nf6+ for van Breukelen. I would be very happy if
you can give me an explanation of the “symmetrical”
differences of the two positions. Maybe it is a trick of yours
in order to complicate matters?
James Plaskett, Spain
There is an obscure mythology about the puzzle’s provenance.
I think Graham Hillyard was the first person to show it to me,
in 1986, or earlier. As he demonstrated it to me he pointed out
that there is a hidden draw for black, but it would require some
imagination to find it. The study appears in Gufeld’s last
book, The Search for Mona Lisa. His story is that it pops up circa
1990. There are stories of Tal having received an anonymous letter,
pre 1986, of a lorry driver having composed it. Gufeld says that
since nobody has yet claimed to be the inventor of the study,
he proposes that it dropped in from outer space. I am sure I read
somewhere that sombody ending in -shvili did it. He says that
during the 1992 Olympiad the Malaysian the player MokTze Meng
received an anonymous phone call saying that here was a gift for
Gufeld – and the voice then dictated the position. Gufeld
says that at the 1992 Olympiad both Karpov and Kasparov were amazed
by the study. But I must tell you that there is a draw for black,
which Hillyard pointed out to me as it was first shown to me.
Noel Grima, Malta
This study can’t simply be called tough, it is verging into
impossibility. None of my Fritz-compatible engines managed to
solve it, reporting scores between -2 and -6. My own instinct
is 1.e8N, which has the knight fork removed. I doubt it could
be the right solution, as Black can easily queen.
Sean Ong, Perth, Australia
It was an enjoyable problem and fun solving with Fritz. After
quite a few unsuccessful tries (many of them involved toying with
an underpromotion to a N), I finally saw the idea of the mating
net. I was pretty happy when Fritz found a mate after that since
it would have taken some time to work out the mate. If I couldn't
find a mate I might even have discarded the whole idea!
Asmus Andres, Seattle, USA
Horsey checks on c6 and a5, then bishop on f2 sacking the knight.
Push pawn to queen, black knight forks while I am walking the
king over left to create a mate capsule. After that there is a
series of attempts to mate with the bishop, while black has to
underpromote the pawns to knights in order to stay alive. In the
end Whitey is still able to find a crack through which he delivers
the death stab.
I first saw the puzzle in a Washington DC park called Dupont
Circle. A guy was showing it to other chessplayers. He said he
saw some strong master showing it to other masters in a tournament
in Philidelphia. Only one guy solved it. He was 2400 and it took
him three hours. The puzzle itself was a bit different (Black’s
king was on h-file and rest of the position was mirrored).
Alain Villeneuve, France
If I am not wrong, the study is correct with the knight in d5
instead of b5. As it is, the position after 4...Kb4 seems unclear
to me.
Antonio Torrecillas, Barcelona
I knew this problem. It was showed to me with a nice story a lot
of years ago: a truck driver sent it to a some Russian magazine
(maybe 64?), but it was put in the storage files for a long while.
Years ago Mikhail Tal, as a director of that magazine, saw it
and enjoyed it very much. But when Tal tried to find the composer
of that fantastic endgame he couldn’t, because the driver
was dead. The only problem of that story is that it is false,
but it’s very nice anyway!
Dubravko Mazur, Burlington, Canada
I set “Deep Position Analysis” in Fritz 7 and asked
for depth 25. After generating and evaluating some 97 billion
positions and at depth 21 Fritz finally gave a positive evaluation:
(–1.50) Depth: 21/51 01:55:15 6733975kN
1.Nc6+ Kb7 2.Na5+ Kb6 3.Bf2+ Kxa5 4.e8Q Kb4 5.Kf6 Bh3 6.Qe1+ Kxb3
7.Qd1+ Kc4 8.Qa4+
(+2.03) Depth: 21/55 26:41:56 97706622kN
1.Nc6+ Kb7 2.Na5+ Kb6 3.Bf2+ Kxa5 4.e8Q Kb4 5.Kf6 Bh3 6.Qe1+ Kxb3
7.Qd1+ Kc4 8.Qa4+
Addendum
Shortly after this page had been published we received a message
from Roberto Balzan, a software developer and
freelance Information technology consultant living in Rome. Roberto,
who is 41, learned chess at the age of 16, became a national master
in 1994 and currently has a FIDE rating of 2175. This is what
he wrote:
