Saturday, December 26, 2009

On the second day of Christmas, I had to return the present

Yesterday's ChessBase puzzle was not just solved, but "cooked" (that's composer-speak for "refuted") by two Ph.D.'s in mathematics.  Most of you know of GM John Nunn from his many great books; Noam Elkies is no slouch.

Here's an easier problem with a similar idea.  See ChessBase for discussion and hints.


W.E. Rudolph
La Stratégie 1912
White to play and draw

This might be the perfect example of a position that humans (even near-beginners) can understand easily, but today's computers are not yet able to understand.

3 comments:

Bill Brock said...

This one I solved in a few seconds....

jo said...

Hiya,

As far as I can see the 2009 puzzle nr.1 was perfectly solveable in its original version.
I found it rather quickly and was therefore a little suspicious, but when I fed it into Junior, it soon showed a universal draw with my line.
Take look here and let me know what you think.

Bill Brock said...

Wow! I don't see it either.

I'd looked at 1.Nd7+ but I'd incorrectly assumed that opening the g-file would be decisive for Black. But I don't see a way to sac the black queen on g2: White will always play Rg1 at the right time.