Saw this 'April's fool chess joke' post on the Chessgame.com newsletter. And I thought it's quite well... engineered.Here's a neat little joke you can play on your friends. You're guaranteed to share a good laugh.
The next time you are at a chess club or tournament, set up a chessboard to the diagram at the right. It won't be long until a passerby stops and asks you what on earth this is.
Explain, "It's a chess problem. White to play. I'm trying to figure out how White can survive all of those pawns."
Anybody with the tiniest amount of chess knowledge should conclude that White is lost. A typical response might be "You are wasting your time--obviously White is doomed! Two knights can stop a few pawns from marching down the board, but not all eight!"
That's when you say "March down the board? You misunderstand, these pawns aren't on their second rank, they are all on the seventh. They are one step away from becoming queens!" (At this point, you might rotate the board 180 degrees to emphasize your point.) Your victim will surely conclude that in that case, White's demise is all the quicker, because Black will soon have multiple queens!
That's when you show them the punchline to this little chess-joke. Offer to let them have the black pieces, while you take white. Do you see the continuation? It's White to play and mate in two moves: 1. Ne3! seals the fate of the Black king. If Black now promotes the a, b, c, or d pawn you play Nf3#, and if they promote the f, g, or h pawn you play Nd3#.
No comments:
Post a Comment