07 April, 2021

Crazy ? Illogical ?

 I spent 3 minutes or so looking at this ChessTempo problem.

At least the question to ask is obvious in this problem : can  the Rook on b6 be captured or not, since there is no direct mate, or mate threat to consider.

Simply put, the answer must be "Yes, I can capture " since there are very few other constructive moves available, but then you are stuck with how to meet the obvious Qa7 reply from White.

What do you do ? as now the knight is pinned to the undefended Queen and the attacked Rook can only be defended by a knight move to d5, where it will be captured by a pawn ?

Remarkably there have been 19 incorrect first moves played, with Ncd5 , Nce8 and even Nxb5 as the top failures.... there are also 29 failed moves on the second move ( after Rxb6 ).


Black to play

The solution is neither crazy nor illogical, its just that you have to see, or imagine it, and do a bit of thinking, and, if this was an OTB game , you have to play it as well !