One of our favorite books for the average player who wants a decent coverage of chess in most of its aspects is Graham Burgess’s The Mammoth Book of Chess, later called simply Chess. I was browsing his book this week and decided to share some of the puzzles he includes in the book. The first one is from Karic-Justin, Yugoslavia, 1987. Black doesn’t mate in a few, but he wins a good deal of material and ends up with an overwhelming position.

Solution:

1...Rxg2 2.Bxg2 Qc6!! [This move is why I picked this as one of the positions. What a joy it must have been to actually slide the queen to c6!] 3.Nf4 [3.Bxc6 Bxc6#] 3...exf4 4.Qd2 f3 5.Bf2 [5.Bf1 f2+ 6.Re4 Qxe4+ 7.Bg2 Qxg2#] 5...fxg2+ 6.Kg1 Ne4 7.Qxd4 Ndc5 8.Qe3 Nxb3 9.cxb3 Nxf2 10.Qxf2 Bc5 and a really big hurt on yet another diagonal.

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