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"There is an essential distinction between a chess problem and a composed endgame. In an endgame the solver has to demonstrate a win or draw for white against a superior, or at least an equal force [. …

Recently a game was played where two GMs swapped kingside and queenside knights and then agreed a draw (and got their just dessert): How often can the starting position be repeated in a game without a …

Found this construction problem from '83 and liked it. I don't know the best solution (yet), and maybe you can top it anyway. Consider the (help) "game" 1.e4 a6 2.Bc4 a5 3.Qh5 a4. Now White can mate i …

In the newest SCHWALBE, positions are given where any piece on the board can give a check (any being surprisingly high). A quick dabbling seems to prove that it is not possible that any piece can mate …

Play the longest game from the starting position such that each move resets the 50 move rule (i.e. is a pawn move or a capture). As I see it, each pawn quartet on adjacent lines has maximally 4+6+6+6 …

Longest orthodox chess problem One for the specialists. In the newest SCHWALBE I saw some titanic lengths (one problem had 2^59+2^57+3 ~ 10^18 moves!) As you see, this scales with O(2^(n^2)), where n …

In the picture, you see the longest roundtrip of a rook such that there are no "shortcuts" - imagine the target squares are given, then at each square you have exactly two other given squares accessi …

[FEN ""] 1. d4 d5 2. Bf4 Nf6 3. e3 c5 4. dxc5 e6 5. b4 a5 6. c3 axb4 7. cxb4 b6 8. Bxb8 Rxb8 9. Qa4+ Ke7 10. c6 b5 11. Qa7+ Ke8 12. c7 Bxb4+ 13. Kd1 1-0 Let's not analyze this horror too much...If I …

I have a lot of questions about ratings, which are sort of connected, but I think I better split them. This is pair 1. I Googled a bit: By definition, ELO>100, and someone said (chess.com) he knows s …

A model mate, to recall, is a mate where a) any flight (including the standing place) of the enemy king is attacked exactly once; b) no friendly piece (except king and pawns) idles around. c) (Compli …

Clearly a spawnoff of the preceding question, but far easier to analyze, and maybe helping a bit to solve that one too. Take the starting position, remove all black pieces to simplify and now make onl …

It is well known that (concerning GMs only) Lilienthal set a record - he died 3 days after his 99th birthday. Yuri Averbakh has since surpassed him and may well be the first 100 year old GM. What abou …

Give a legal position which is "dead" but would take (assuming the §5.2.2 about dead positions wouldn't exist) maximally long to play out until an automatic draw by fivefold, 75 moves or statemate res …

Records for PNBRK with m=0 are known and neigh beatable. This record for this question is completely unknown.) …

I expect that Zagler, who even made a systematic for one-mover records, also did the duplex version (any move for both sides selfstalemates), but could not dig it up on the existing databases. …