When I was young, we had a popular song with the title “I was young then”— where the main character was 13 years old at the start of the song. Like in the song, when I was young, we had to use a book to learn from them. Still, from time to time, I like to put my eyes on old books and papers.
One of the nice findings is, for example, the studies of renominated grandmaster Paul Keres. By digging into the study databases, it is possible to find 67 studies created by Keres. But, in the old manual of the middlegames, which was Lisitsin Strategy and Tactics in Chess 3-Books serial, it is possible to find the next study, which was created by Paul Keres as an author:
White to play and checkmate in four moves. Can you find the solution?
Moving on from the solution of the study, and before we will look at solutions, there is something important to pay attention to: a pattern in chess. There are many different patterns in chess, and here we are going to speak about ones called checkmate patterns or checkmate pictures.
In simple words, to be able to quickly solve position – we have to have an idea of what we are looking for. And to find the study solution, we have to start from the start:
White to play, checkmate in one move. Can you find solution?
After 1.Bg7# – we can see a simple diagonal checkmate, where the opponent King is squeezed by the pawn of the same colour, and a King from the side which is checkmating taken other available squares.
Now, when we look at the checkmate on the diagram, we can think – how to replicate the same idea in the study? How to copy and apply the same checkmate mechanism, as shown in the diagram up, and we go with the solution:
1.Bg5 – Because we could make checkmate by 1.Bg7+ because 1…Rxg7 – the Black Rook is controlling 7th rank, and the White Bishop is left there unprotected.
The threat here is 2. Bf6 check and checkmate. White is still using the same idea—diagonal checkmate—just looking for a different available square on the diagonal. 1…Rf7 The Black Rook is going to take control of the f6 square, and now 2.Bf6+ will be a mistake because of 2…Rxf6. What is next?
2.Bf4 – threating checkmate by 3.Be5. Now, the Black Rook is not able anymore to protect the checkmate square and this is why the Black has to respond with 2…Nc6 As squares g7, f6, e5 and d4 is protected by Black pieces, we are going to only left:
3.Bd2 Aiming for the c3 square, and using that the last Black move was 2…Nc6 – plus of the move is taking e5 and d4 squares under control, but minus of the move is that c-file is temporarily blocked – that is why only now the right move was 3.Bd2. Whatever Black will play, they are not able to prevent 4.Bc3#
