This Chess Problem Will Amaze You

Check Out The Position Yourself:
2N5/p7/q1p2p2/kp6/3P4/PP2K3/5P2/2B5 w - - 0 1
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[@olgaustuzhanina6395]

This problem was composed by Mark Liburkin and published in Shakhmaty v USSR (1939). It's unfortunate that you didn't mention the actual author of this problem in your video. He has composed numerous fascinating studies, I highly recommend everybody interested to check them out.

[@thiccnoodles6767]

Oh man, seeing a trapped queen that's not attacked brings me back to an alpha-stockfish match where sf was 2 pawns up but queen was on h8, king on g8, rook on f8.

[@dilakhum2152]

isn't that the zugzwang game??

[@jagapata6073]

Who do you think is better stockfhis 15 or alpha Alpha male slams in my opinion

[@williamd2999]

What game is this?

[@MrJsintic]

@@dilakhum2152 immortal zugzwang game, I remember it too

[@dilakhum2152]

@@MrJsintic prolly my fav of all time, wouldve made it even better if it wasn't played by engines💀😭😭

[@caioreis279]

There is one additional trick at the end that you didn’t point out. After you trap the Queen, it will try to sacrifice itself on a4. You’ll be tempted to capture it right away with the pawn, but if you do, the king will capture your knight and it will lead to a drawn end game. You should first move your knight away with check, and just then capture the Queen. It totally didn’t happen to me when I tried to play this solution against Stockfish…

[@Dragon.gaming_]

Stoockfish: oh no my queen, anyway.

[@jonwill]

Nice observation.

[@Hennimania]

Very interesting last trick by black. Thanks for letting us know 👍

[@flightyavian4580]

that does not make any sense... it's not a dead draw if you take the queen, you literally have a pawn that is three squares away from promotion... letting the knight die is the preferred option- it otherwise takes too long to promote a pawn versus a pawn rushing to the end immediately.

[@caioreis279]

As soon as you grab the Queen (if you didn’t first move away the knight), Stockfish finds the draw. You can try it against the engine if you like. The point is that black also has a passed pawn in that end game, and white is not in time, as the king has to first take the pawn, then move out of the way for it’s pawn to start advancing.

[@gabby_5820]

When I realize the queen is literally forced to give themselves up, I wheezed in laughter.

[@austinnar4494]

I love how this looks like a position you could actually see in a real game. So many puzzles with ideas this interesting start from such contrived positions that it takes away from the wonder of it.

[@iladshyanchess]

I never thought queen could be trapped with 3 pieces only such a fascinating puzzle. Especially with the king moves that was crazy.

[@caioreis279]

5 pieces. The pawns down at a3 and b3 are also playing their role.

[@grimreaper7854]

@@caioreis279 Isn’t it all 6?

[@fakedoctor528]

@@grimreaper7854 You're right, 6th pawn is blocking black's pawn

[@christopherheckman7957]

@@fakedoctor528 And don't forget about Black's pawn at a7 and king at b5 !

[@QuantenMagier]

It's interesting that many chess programs (including Stockfish 14-15 and GnuChess) get this wrong; at first I thought this was due to principal variations (PV) in iterative deepening search, but increasing the PV value to 9 still got it wrong so this node must have a very high cutoff. Somehow my own chess program also got this wrong and that tries all possible moves unless there is a Zobrist hash collision or this node is cutoff during alpha-beta pruning. Maybe alpha-beta pruning does not work correctly in Zugzwang situations, that would explain why most chess programs get this wrong. I'll have a deeper look at that when I have more time. ^^

[@suryakiranharidas5756]

I like ur funny words magic man

[@suryakiranharidas5756]

I somehow managed to find the solution tho

[@QuantenMagier]

@@suryakiranharidas5756 Really you found it? What's your solution then?

[@DavidGuild]

I wouldn't be surprised if AI has trouble seeing zugzwang traps. They're designed to prune lines that aren't interesting, and the whole point of zugzwang is that every line is important (and bad). The AI probably sees the bishop sac, sees that black has plenty of moves without losing anything, and concludes that it's a terrible play for white. It would have to explore the _entire_ tree to see how the queen is doomed, and it's not going to do that for a _potential_ move when it has so many others to check.

[@A4B4x]

Really amazing puzzle, thoroughly enjoyed this one

[@nickcellino1503]

I really enjoyed that one! The winning idea of maneuvering the King to a square where it guards 3 escape squares so the Queen would be captured if it moves to any one of the squares is incredibly clever and surprising. If I reached this position as White, I would be tempted to resign in what was a totally winning position. This puzzle is also another wonderful example of solutions we humans can easily understand after we see them played out to the end but incredibly powerful chess engines like Stockfish can't decipher correctly, at least at the beginning. Recently I submitted another example of puzzles that baffle Stockfish but not us. I would enjoy watching more videos with the same theme.

[@robertakerman3570]

Perfectly sweet- even Q-c8 is a fork.

[@Gosuminer]

Fascinating, Stockfish 15 did not find the winning move even on depth 62. I think for some reason it cuts Bd2 from the decision tree early on and never revisits this possibility.

[@QuantenMagier]

I think the node is cutoff during alpha-beta pruning because alpha-beta search does probably not work correctly in Zugzwang situations. ;)

[@lilakouparouko1832]

Actually for me it did : it took 40 seconds and depth 57 to show a score of +2 for white

[@lilakouparouko1832]

Home stockfish took 40 seconds to find the solution which shows how much this puzzle is amazing !

[@user-mu7zw7kj9l]

Wow! Great and beautiful idea! Thanks!

[@rahulchaudhary5257]

Amazing puzzle Thanks for sharing!! 👍

[@joeyteano2652]

Good job Nelson. I'm truly amazed by this puzzle👍

[@onlyapawn4371]

Wow that's amazing. Love these crazy puzzles!! 🤪

[@rogergeyer9851]

That's SO beautiful. I got the first two key moves and saw the joke including that the queen was trapped. But I missed the idea of covering A6, and actually winning the queen with zugzwang (trying to solve it without setting up a board and moving the pieces around). I do feel a little better that a strong engine didn't see it either, given that moving the pieces around (virtually) is what it DOES. Problems aren't usually my "thing", but I love the endgame, and these problems you tend to bring up re the endgame bring up relevant principles. Fantastic, and thank you for sharing ideas like this.

[@williamd2999]

This is probably the best puzzle I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a lot of cool puzzles. I can’t stop watching this video lol.

[@Cyclone1335]

Great puzzle! Thank you!

[@cliffordgate7344]

The best thing I saw. Thank you so much for this incredible stuff

[@tubebrocoli]

this might have been the best puzzle so far!

[@rosiefay7283]

That's a great zugzwang problem! Who composed it, and where was it first published? did your correspondent not tell you? One last trap Black can try: 8 f3 Qa4 9 Nd6+! (bxa4+? Kxc4! 10 Kxf4 Kxd4 drawing) Ka5 10 bxa4 Kxa4 11 Nc4 winning.

[@ceejay0137]

That's an amazing puzzle. I spotted some of the early moves but I thought the plan was to get the white king to c3 and then play a4+ forcing the queen to capture. The actual solution is astounding. Thanks for your clear analysis.

[@supertron6039]

Chad White king coming together with his fellow Knight and pawns to coordinate the best Queen trap ever.

[@Umranvuire]

I usually think that Nelson oversells certain puzzles... But this one... is legit art.

[@TheAngelOfDeath01]

Just brilliant!

[@kamnasharma6143]

Great puzzle! Takes a lot to create puzzles like these!

[@cerebralcomics]

Dude. Your channel is the best. Yours and Coffee Chess are always interesting to watch.

[@matthewviramontes3131]

At 5:05 he glossed over the move Qa4 saying "you can't go here", but you can, and if White plays bxa4 it's a draw. White instead has to first play the intermezzo move Nd6+! and then it's winning.

[@emersonarriety]

I'm getting better at noticing the ideas in these puzzles. Seeing the way the Knight and Queen were positioned I was like, that looks like the queen can be forced to move into a fork. Didn't manage to solve the puzzle however. But your videos have been great, thank you for posting them so often, I always look forward to when you post.

[@sunnychow2518]

mind-blown! Amazing!

[@n8style]

crazy position! loved it!

[@ChasseAuxHiboux]

Puzzles about domination are always beautiful!

[@lyonsakamoto9346]

Amazing work here on KZbin. Your videos reached me on Brazil

[@sayguan555]

I think at 6:07, aside from the reason you mentioned as why not to take the pawn, the alternate reason is that if you do take the pawn, Qc8+ also frees the queen as you no longer have the time to perform the fork of Nd6

[@pinoes31416]

Totally blew my mind Nelson.

[@user-fm3no5gm9t]

That's AMAZING!!!

[@marcojacobs5443]

Nice fascinating puzzle :)

[@dentonyoung4314]

Very nice! Reminds me of a position in The Fireside Book of Chess where Black has a queen in a corner that ends up being "zugzwanged" and having to move, and thus give up its life.

[@shacuras8201]

You probably don't care, but: since "Zugzwang" comes from the german word "zwingen" meaning to force, the correct form would be "zuggezwungen"

[@dentonyoung4314]

@@shacuras8201 I learned something today!

[@diptodeepmajumder9746]

​@@shacuras8201 thanks for this interesting info!

[@arikgershon]

Cool puzzle! It’s also important to note that wherever the queen moves, it will not be stalemate because the king can move to a6.

[@alvossozaandronito6]

it’s cool because the pawn on a7 is not only blocking it’s own queen, but also preventing a stalemate. the second the black queen moves to wherever it wants to get captured, the a6 square becomes available for the black pawn to move, thus avoiding a stalemate

[@saydsahal2974]

amazing !!!

[@TomeTraveler]

My first thought was actually that the queen should be trappable but I couldn't figure out how to do it. Very nice!

[@ertugkaya919]

Thank you for the video. That's one of the best puzzles I've seen and with your amazing comments. Well done. BTW, stockfish do not fail if you set depth to 99 at the beginning. It just needs a depth of 50.

[@SinisterMJ]

Why does it need that depth? This was like 10 moves or so (didn't really count, but it was nowhere near 25)

[@ertugkaya919]

​@@SinisterMJ Not an expert but as far as I know SF discards moves it deems unnecessary to save computation time. Increased depth reduces false eliminations.

[@shambhav9534]

@@ertugkaya919 True, but this is a case too extreme. It might just be a bug, so why not report it just in case?

[@mariamsabbaghian3839]

amazing! I just tought about traping the queen and had no idea the king contoroling h6 would do it! wow thanks for the video so much! I'm Surena from Iran and I'm 9 years old

[@benoist13]

At first, i thought that the idea was : Kd3, Kc3 to get b3 controlled in order to checkmate with a4, but it doesn't work because of c5 and Qg6 clearing the a6 square for the King ... Moving the King toward h6 g6 anfd f6 is absolutely amazing ! Thank you for sharing !

[@GNU_Linux_for_good]

*This is a gem*

[@vinesthemonkey]

Again PLEASE CREDIT THE COMPOSER. Liburkin 1939 apparently.

[@wardaddy3466]

Veey nice puzzle..i made it almost and i stopped because i though Kd3 was force mate.. but i forgot the queen can freed up its square by playing f5 and c5.

[@Amoeby]

Damn, I saw the Ba5+ idea from the start but couldn't find the follow up so gave up. But after I watched till the Kf4 move I understood the idea and solved the rest. Amazing puzzle!

[@advancedPawn]

This king is smart in the coordination of everything. Awesome puzzle. 🍿

[@advancedPawn]

And shame on stock fish for not seeing this. (Kidding)🤣

[@francoislechampi2002]

Hi Nelson, I subscribed to your channel a few weeks ago and I want to thank you for the entertaining content. May I suggest to give the author and date of each problem ?

[@wojtekZ329]

Hello, can you make video about analyzing high level chess games? For example some game from world championship.

[@faready]

great puzzle

[@trollar8810]

I GOT IT! Im getting better at these, thanks for the fascinating puzzle btw

[@sophisticat7673]

AMAZING, BRILLIANT! No human would ever work this out, and apparently not even a very strong engine

[@ThePathForward.]

Taking the pain also means that there is a queen check on c8 so it is not trapped because he is unable to fork then

[@edg531]

Pawn. (Not to be picky. I just didn’t understand what “taking the pain” meant!)

[@krushnachandrarath3652]

Amazing.

[@abcdefghij9777]

Hi Nelson, thank you for posting this quite natural looking puzzle. I enjoyed your video very much. I did see 4.Ba5+, but I didn't realize the zugzwang theme. My Stockfish 14.1 NNUE finds the solution of this puzzle somewhere between the 45th and 55th ply. I used 1 principal variation, 16 GB hash, and the complete 3 to 6 men Syzygy TB. After the 103rd ply Stockfish gives 1. Bd2+ b4 2. Bxb4+ Kb5 3. Nd6+ Kb6 4. Ba5+ Kxa5 5. Nc4+ Kb5 6. Kf4 f5 7. Kg5 f4 8. f3 Qb6 9. Nxb6 axb6 10. Kxf4 as the optimal continuation from the starting position. You're the best chess teacher on KZbin.

[@dr.bluesfield3629]

we can all "see moves", but if you don't understand the entire continuation until the very end at that moment you've in fact seen nothing.

[@Joseph-ty1xq]

i've seen this video in the recommendation and haven't watched until now because the title looks like a click bait. and since this puzzle really amazes me as the title says, I have subscribed.

[@AbouTaim-Lille]

After pushing the king to G6 I expected it was intended to trap the Queen and close the last escaping positions after the black pawn to C5 afterwhich the d5 move was pretty obvious .

[@vjlenin]

Wow. just Wow.

[@user-vc5oc5yi4q]

In the second puzzle there is another reason to go to h5 and not to g5, if the white king goes to g5 the black queen goes to c8 + then the white knight cannot fork.

[@frankg.39]

Amazing puzzle! I knew Stockfish was rubbish....just kidding! Lol

[@twilightsilver6230]

8:43 is the zugzwang

[@-_Nuke_-]

That could be an endgame between 5000 elo super computers of the future! That are so good, they have to come up with a crazy plan like this in order to win, it's amazing!

[@dndabke]

Queen's all nine moves in danger. Great!

[@pauln7869]

A lot of these sorts of puzzles rely on the fact that Black has only a limited number of moves and so it is possible to predict how things will play out far in advance. This is why people can see the asnswer, while machines get bogged down with lots of possibilities. Would it be possible for a chess engine to have a "puzzle-solving" mode, where it only considers moves for white where black cannot play things out in more than one substantially different way? Then it could reject lots of plausible moves in favour of those that are actually the solution to the puzzle.

[@Developer_Max]

0:39 let me turn on stockfis- ME: Bishop d2 Checkmate!

[@Astralox]

Thanks sir which program are you using and how do you turn stock fish on and off?

[@clintongryke6887]

Well, I was skeptical at first, but yes, that is a beautiful and elegant problem.

[@mauijttewaal]

Wow, moreover answeres my question in the othe video;)

[@michaeljubara9397]

Wow, just wow

[@RuudJH]

A year on, Stockfish 16 finds the solution in a minute. But it's still a good one for a test-set.

[@stephenwitherington879]

I saw it all!!!!!!!!! Fantastic. Eat your heart out Stockfish LOL 😆.

[@PhO3NiX96]

Really good puzzle, I got it until the bishop sacrifice but I didn't get the trap queen end with the king moves. Also I think your label "White to play and win" is misleading because we're looking for mates not for a favorable end game. I don't see how you could edit these kinds of labels without spoiling anything tho

[@kamikazexd1125]

6:06 if king takes pawn queen c8 check

[@Laezar1]

I figured out the bishop sacrifice but had no clue what was the idea beyond that, it was the only move that made sense to me, so I guess if I teamed up with stockfish and was like "what about that move?" it could roll it's eyes take a deep breath to explain me why it's wrong and then go "oh... actually uh... you're right? oO"

[@diffdimgamerseven9986]

indeed, a fascinating puzzle (i got the first few moves right tho)

[@SS-sc4qj]

After K f4, black queen takes on a3, N recatures on c4, black king forks on b4, white looses 2 pawns for a queen, and black has time to promote

[@mikeoakman6708]

indeed i was amazed by this, an accurate title

[@the8thark]

What if the queen moved back diagonally to C8? Get away from that line of death? Alas no sadly. Then the knight just moves to D6 for the fork with queen and king. Great puzzle. I defo learned something from it.

[@valeriykotlov2763]

You didn’t mention Qc8+ in some variations and Queen escapes.

[@drziggyabdelmalak1439]

Wow!!!

[@muratcanmentes6956]

So I seen it after bishop move and i was “wait is it… oh no ohhh no so cool”

[@mathmeal188]

4:45 but you can just play Pawn to a4? no possible move for black unless they take with queen then you are winning and you have an extra knight

[@sivatheja6244]

That king is a giga chad

[@planktonfun1]

I just keep checking and somehow kept winning

[@pinkigamer3534]

Me as a beginner watches chess vibes videos: I so smart at these puzzles lol

[@ivyyan]

I found this in chess talk

[@williamp9117]

Have you played dark/hidden chess?

[@jasonhe5578]

Managed to spot Kf4 after seeing a comment about queen being trapped, I think that black is completely out of moves and you can just walk the king and take pawns? I didn't watch the solution yet

[@anilbista7445]

if this ever happens in real life game Magnus will be playing with white

[@randombrawlstarsvideos8543]

Of i honestly tell you I saw the bishop c2 checkmate instantly

[@Him-9050]

Had the first half right

[@thealmighty3011]

I found Ba5! So pround

[@stephenwitherington879]

Wow! It took me quite a few minutes until I saw the correct square for the Bishop. The remainder is undoubtedly as I have envisaged it (still to look at this). So, I am better than Stockfish! Did Nelson find this sequence? Incredible. I continue to amaze myself. Morphy would have found it, & a handful of others.

[@wilsonfineart]

The queen is trapped, but the end game does not totally favor white. If the queen goes to C8 after being trapped and forces capture with the knight (after the fork), you have the white knight on the back rank. Some lines allow white to play for a draw, because the black king can hunt down the white pawn on D5.

[@fos1451]

Black is too slow The pawns on a3, b3, and d4 creates a wall around the black king that if black king wants to capture any of the pawn it will be forced to go around its black pawn by going backwards. At this point white will already have enough time to capture the f pawn and push its own pawn forward

[@seppotomperi2282]

That is incorrect. Stockfish finds mate in 19 moves after queen to C8.

[@izzysanchez4242]

Amazing…that’s Grand Master lever

[@chandlergloyd4230]

stockfish devs are gonna sweat seeing this

[@monikaojha294]

How can I send you puzzles

[@jimchen1317]

When the videos time is on 6 minute I saw the Queen can go to b7