Need some help, mate? December 29, 2002
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Chess is all about mate. You must admit that the ultimate goal of the game should receive its share of attention. Only problem is that mates never actually occur. Virtually never. Sometimes at an open or in a blitz game a grandmaster will actually deliver mate; and many have done so in their early pre-teen tournaments. But even when they mate it is usually a very mundane affair, with a protected queen slamming itself onto a square next to the enemy king, or one of those perennial backrank affairs. This is natural, because each side is trying to prevent the other from executing a brilliant checkmate.

All this is a real shame, because the game of chess contains a vast treasure-trove of extraordinarily beautiful mating motifs. There are thousands and thousands of checkmate positions which we normal human beings playing in regular chess tournaments will never see.

One reaction to this unfortunate situation was the chess problem, which appeared almost together with the advent of chess. Here an artificial situation is constructed where one side can deliver a very difficult (actually hard-to-see) mate in a specific number of moves. "Mate" problems have been around almost since the invention of chess. They can probably show us an additional few percent of the checkmates that exist with the 32 pieces of a chess set.

In 1860 one of the greatest composers of chess problems, Samuel Loyd, had an idea. He describes it in the book shown at the left. This is another of my great problem chess treasures, a Dover book from 1962, originally published by Whitehead and Miller in 1913. It was given to me by the generous Finn Mika Korhonen in 1987, when he saw how attached I had grown to it during a stay in his appartment in Helsinki.

Problem number 25 in the introduces the concept of a "help-mate". In his annotation Loyd is quoted as saying: "The most suggestive field for a new school of problems that has ever occurred to me, and one which would open up a new line of wonderfully intricate combinations, is shown in number 25, where the query is is merely: How could it possibly happen that White effected a mate in three moves? This it will be observed necessiates an active participation on the part of the Black forces, for both parties enter into a friendly alliance to effect the mate."

It was the first full-fledged genuine helpmate ever published, and it introduced a new era into chess problem composition which has resulted in tens of thousands of exceptionally beautiful and fascinating problems. After the direct mate the helpmate is the second most popular type of chess problem.

Samuel Loyd, Chess Monthly, November 1860

Black to play, and White to mate
(with Black's assistance) in three moves.

The solution to this problem is given below, but before you peek you may want to take a look at the position and try to find it yourself. For newbies: Black plays the first move, both sides work together and cooperate to construct a position in which the black king is mated. They have three moves (by each side) to do this.

The above problem was originally published with a black bishop on h2. This is superfluous and was the remnant of earlier attempts some months before to construct the problem with a different checkmate position. In fact the earliest version had two black bishops on g2 and h2, and Loyd had written a story around the problem entitled "The Sin of the Nuns" (i.e. the two black bishops). But after discovering a much nicer solution the "cook" became the main problem.

So let us solve this historical first helpmate ever composed. It would seem quite impossible to find a way in which the rook and bishop can mate, even with the cooperation of Black. Remember all the moves must be legal. The main problem is the black queen, which is such a powerful defensive piece. In fact the solution requires a double-check in which the queen cannot cover both lines of attack: 1.Kf6 (in helpmates the black move is written first, like white moves in normal chess) 2.Ra8! Kg7 3.Bb8! (allowing the black king access to the corner square) Kh8 4.Be5#.

You will find other (direct mate) problems by Sam Loyd here, here, here and here.

To get you warmed up and hopefully interested here is a problem I found in another wonderful problem book (which I shall introduce tomorrow). It is a five-part problem of charming simplicity. We hope you will enjoy cracking these five little nuts to the strains of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Christmas ballet.

H. Forsberg, Revista Romana de Sah, 1936

Helpmate in two moves (quintuplet)

Remember Black makes the first move, both sides cooperate and after two moves the black king is mated. All the laws of chess apply, so that for instance neither king may ignore a check.

The five parts of the problem are obtained by putting five different pieces on the square a6:

1. Black queen on a6, helpmate in two (diagram)
2. Black rook on a6, helpmate in two
3. Black bishop on a6, helpmate in two
4. Black knight on a6, helpmate in two
5. Black pawn on a6, helpmate in two

It is truly amazing that all five versions not only have a solution but a unique one at that. This is the reason why the problem easily won the first prize in a problem composing tourney.

Solutions

Frederic Friedel