Problem of the Week

In September 2011, I began posting my "lesson of the week" on Chess Skills. I had been coaching youth players for a little more than a decade. Every week for the next few years, at least part of the material placed before my students appeared with the label "Problem of the Week". The practice resumed with less regularity in the past two years.

My hope is that some of my students and their parents take advantage of the opportunity to review what students are learning in after school chess clubs or in individual lessons both in-person and online. Of course, many lessons are tailored to individual students and these do not appear here. The "Problem of the Week" represents a core that is used with many or even most students and then adapted as needed.

During the past two weeks, most of my students saw positions from the last 300 exercises or so in Sergey Ivashchenko, The Manual of Chess Combinations (1997). I worked through the 1320 exercises in this book from 25 February 2022 through 23 February 2023. The first 700 or so took me less than a week at about 30 minutes per day. Then, the book was set aside for several months. I resumed in January and made a commitment to finish it.

The book is constructed in stages, each of which is more difficult than the preceding one. When I reached Stage 5 (exercises 1021-1320), I occasionally found some difficulty. There were even six or seven pages where I scored 50%. As I was finishing, I often worked through the problems and my thinking process as a lesson with my students. See "The Manual of Chess Combinations" for more about this book and its sequels.

My intention this afternoon was to start my students with a position from the 30th Collyer Memorial Chess Tournament that emphasizes assessment of danger when it appears there is an opportunity to win material. Alas, nearly eight inches of snow fell overnight and we have a snow day. Chess Club does not meet this week.

White to move

Can White win back the pawn that Black snagged 15 moves earlier?