A Pandolfini Master Class
In the May 2012 issue, “Chess Educator
Of The Year: Bruce Pandolfini,” author Dr.
Alexey Root, WIM gave two training positions that Pandolfini sometimes uses. Chess
Life added solutions, but unfortunately
ours were incomplete and did not get to the
heart of the matter. A number of readers
wrote in about this, and given the amount
of interest in these solutions we invited
Pandolfini to provide a full explanation:
Restating what I said in my talk at the
University of Texas at Dallas, I like to
present examples in series, as do many
other teachers, even good ones. Two positions I’ve often shown are those included
in Alexey’s Root article. Let’s call them
Problem 1 and Problem 2.
-+-+k+-+
+-+-+-+-+-+K+-+
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+-+-+-+-+-+Q+-+
+-+-+-+-
Problem 1
-+-+k+-+
+-+-+-+-+-+K+-+
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+-+-+-+-+-+R+-+
+-+-+-+-
Problem 2
We can see that the two positions are
not unrelated. They involve the same
squares except that in the second position
a rook replaces a queen. In both positions
it is White to move and mate. In the first
example, White mates in two moves. In
the second example, White mates in three
moves. The two setups allow me to draw
nice distinctions between the two types of
major pieces, the queen and the rook.
They also enable me to play with the
uschess.org
class for didactic purposes. When it goes
well, it tends to go very well. Yes, sometimes it doesn’t go at all.
In Problem 1, White mates in two moves
by playing any of three different first
moves: 1. Qe5, 1. Qb2, or 1. Qh2. Usually, in presenting this problem, after
saying that White mates in two moves, I
ask a question. The question is never:
Do you know how White mates in two
moves? Rather, it always takes the form:
Do you know how to solve a problem like
this? Invariably, students will give me
the answer to mate in two, as if I had
posed the first question, not the second.
Once I’ve implied it doesn’t appear that
anyone has actually listened to what I’ve
said, after a chortle of recognition emerges
from the class, I will move ahead to what
I think is the proper approach. I will try
to impart the idea that in positions where
the defender has very few options it makes
sense to visualize where the defender
must go before deciding on the attacker’s
initial move.
Getting explicit for Problem 1, if it were
Black’s turn (it’s not, but I tell the class
to pretend it is, as if they were really analyzing), Black must play either 1. ... Kf8
or 1. ... Kd8. Thus, White can set up the
mate by attacking both b8 and h8 with
the same starting move (say 1. Qe5; the
moves 1. Qb2 and 1. Qh2 also work, but
are not usually shown right away; not
until the class has apparently missed
finding them). From e5, for instance, the
white queen would be able