This week’s puzzle is the opening round of a national contest where Guardian readers traditionally perform strongly and in considerable numbers.
You have to work out how White, playing as usual up the board, can force checkmate in two moves, however Black defends.
The puzzle is the first stage of the annual Winton British Solving Championship, organised by the British Chess Problem Society. The competition is open only to British residents, and entry is free. Its prize fund is expected to be around £2,500, including awards to juniors.
To take part, simply send White’s first move to Nigel Dennis, Boundary House, 230 Greys Road, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 1QY. The email route is winton@theproblemist.org. Please be sure to include your name, home address and postcode, and mark your entry “Guardian”. If you were under 18 on 31 August 2022, please give your date of birth.
The closing date is 31 July 2023. After that, all solvers will receive the answer. Those who get it right will also be sent a postal round of eight harder problems, with plenty of time for solving. The best 15-20 entries from the postal round, plus the best juniors, will be invited to the final in February 2024. The champion will qualify for the Great Britain team in the 2024 world solving championship, an event where GB is often a medal contender.
The starter problem, with white and black armies crammed into half the board, is tricky. Obvious moves rarely work. It is easy to make an error, so double-check your answer before sending it. Good luck to all Guardian entrants.
The Tech Mahindra Global Chess League (GCL), the first franchise-based chess event, will be played in Dubai from next Wednesday to 2 July. Six teams of six will each include an icon, two elite GMs, two women GMs and an under-21 junior.
Magnus Carlsen is taking part, in what is an early opportunity for the world No 1 to recover from his failure at Stavanger, where he drew eight classical games and lost one. It was the first time since Dortmund 2007 that the Norwegian had been winless in a classical round robin, and his worst rating loss since Stavanger 2015. His previous ambition of achieving a record 2900 rating now looks just a dream.
Carlsen has already bounced back in this week’s preliminaries for the online Aimchess Rapid, where he overcame an early loss to qualify for the top division of eight. His opponents in Dubai will include the new world champion, Ding Liren, the defeated 2021 challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and the former champion Vishy Anand.
The Norwegian’s team, SG Alpine Warriors (the SG stands for Sanjay Gupta, CEO of its sponsoring firm), includes three top Indian talents Dommaraju Gukesh, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa and Arjun Erigaisi. They are among the favourites, although other teams appear stronger on the women’s boards.
Carlsen is also announced as the top seed for the 206-player knockout World Cup, the only major competition he has never won, which will be staged in Baku, Azerbaijan, starting 30 July. The total prize fund, including for the parallel 103-player Women’s World Cup, is a record €2.5m (£2.1m), including awards for first-round losers, but there is a snag. Competitors have to pay for their own travel and accommodation.
John Nunn, the multi-talented chess author, grandmaster, publisher, problem solver and mathematician, added another chapter to his career when he won the European over-65 championship at Acqui Terme, Italy, scoring 7/9 and having the best tiebreak.
In 2022 Nunn captured the world over-65 crown, while in winning both the over-50 and over-65 world team titles as well as the European over-50, England confirmed its status as No 1 in senior chess. That is 40 years after the vintage 1980s, when England were three times Olympiad silver medallists, behind only the golden Soviets led by Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov.
Acqui Terme also showed England’s current depth in senior chess. In the over-50s, Keith Arkell shared first but was placed fourth on tie-break, while Stephen Dishman was in the gold medal position with a round to go.
The unlucky player was Terry Chapman in the over-65s. In his teenage years Chapman was England’s No 3 in his age group behind Jonathan Speelman and Jonathan Mestel, who became strong grandmasters, and would surely have become an IM had he continued play instead of opting, like several of his contemporaries, for a successful career in IT. Returning to chess after an early retirement, he took on Kasparov in a match where the then world No 1 gave odds of two pawns and the move, and held the legend to 1.5-2.5.
Since then, Chapman has competed on the senior circuit, winning two European over-50 silver medals and IM norms. At Acqui Terme he got within a fraction of his goal as he finished in a four-way tie for first on 7/9, drawing with the gold and silver medallists Nunn and Lubomir Ftacnik but placed fourth on tie-break.
Fide regulations award an automatic IM title to players in joint first place, but only to the top three …
