¶ Introduction and Puzzle Setup
Hello, hello, hello everyone. Welcome to Blindfold Chess. This is your host Sujit Patacharya and I am back with a new puzzle. And sorry for this late upload because I was busy for my exam work. So uh let us begin with this puzzle. This puzzle is actually posted on chess.com website which says that underpromotion at its best. This is the best puzzle I have ever seen using underpromotions.
It means we are going to promote our pawns not to queens but something else. Okay. So the position is like this: white has king on a1, bishop on g1. Night on Fix. And pons on A2, A3, F2, E6, E7, and B six. Black has king on C three and Bishop on b eight and pawn on c two. Okay? Let me say the position again. White has king on a1, bishop on g1, knight on f6. pawns on a two, a three, f two, e6, e7 and b six. Okay. Black has king on c three, bishop on b eight and pawn on c two.
¶ Initial Moves and Black's Threat
It is white to play and win. See white has a huge material advantage, but black has a beautiful tactical advantage which is spawn to c1 equal to queen which is a checkmate. So white to play and win and white must stop black's idea of playing and C one equal to queen checkmate. so the first move comes like this knight e4 check the only square for the king is king d3 Then night C five check. King c3 and knight b3 stopping the idea of c1 equal to queen. We are guarding the square c1. Okay.
Now Black launches his another idea which is bishop e5. His idea is to play King d3 checkmate. See how the b1 square is guarded by the pawn? So f4, what a brilliant move. f4 stops the checkmating idea because if king d3, then f takes e5 and we won the bishop. So bishop g7. And now what should White play here? If white plays e eight equal to queen Then this is actually a blunder because c1 equal to queen check, knight takes c1, king c2 check, bishop d4, and bishop takes d4 is a checkmate. Okay.
¶ Underpromotion Variations and Victory
So here white plays e8 equal to knight, another brilliant move. So bishop goes back to h eight, bishop h eight and f five. Because if the same plan occurs then we can stop it by playing f six and if bishop takes f six then knight takes f six just winning. Okay. So now black place bishop e5. If you are wondering why c1 equal to queen is not working, because c one equal to queen Knight takes c1, king c2 check, f6, bishop takes f6, knight takes f6 as planned earlier.
Okay, so black plays the move bishop e5 still threatening in the checkmate. Bishop h2. Bishop takes h2, sacrificing the bishop. b7 B8 equal to Bishop, another brilliant move. We could have also promoted to a queen, but this makes the puzzle immortal. Bishop takes b8. Knight c seven, another brilliant move sacrificing the knight. Bishop takes c seven. E seven bishop e5. Now e8 equal to queen is a blunder because after king c4 check.
Queen takes e5, c1 equal to queen check, knight takes c1 is actually a stalemate. Okay. So here White place E eight equal to rook. Bishop F six. Bishop G seven and f six stopping all possible ideas of black and this is how white survives the black's mating net. The result is one zero. I hope you like this puzzle and I hope to see you in the next episode.