The Chess Scholar Noviembre - Diciembre 2007 | Page 18

break up Black’s structure
and create safe squares for
the wK to sit on, while
Black tries to avoid this
and eventually promote a
pawn or two.
This game requires
constant vigilance. Even
in positions that are winning for Black, one slip
will often allow the wK to
slip through Black’s pawn/
piece shield to hunt down
his opposite number.
Avoiding this, Black will
still have difficulty trapping the double-moving
wK, so Black will have to
be very patient and carefully set up a mating net
(rather than simply chasing the wK around, which
isn’t so effective), which is
also a useful lesson for
Chess.
Progressive Chess
In
“Progressive
Chess,” the starting position and goal (deliver
checkmate) are the same
as in Chess. However, on
his first turn, White
makes one move, then
Black makes two moves on
his first turn, then White
makes three moves on his
second turn, then Black
makes four moves on his
second turn, and so on. If
either player delivers
check, that ends his turn.
If either player begins a
turn in check, his first

move of that turn must get
him out of check. If a
player makes a doublestep pawn move during a
turn and does not push
that pawn any further, the
opponent may capture
that pawn en passant on
the first move of his next
turn. If you find yourself
not in check with moves
remaining on your turn
but with no legal moves
available, then you are
stalemated and the game
is drawn.
Both players must
be careful to avoid early
checkmates. (For example, a common scenario is
White playing 1. e4, Black
playing 2. e5 Nf6, and
White playing 3. Bc4 Qh5
Qxf7#.) Thus, early strategy consists of making
sure your King has lots of
squares to run to and trying to keep some material.
Later strategy consists of
promoting lots of pawns.
Placing your King so that
pawn moves by your opponent deliver check can
make it difficult for him to
promote. A subtle strategy (known as “ghosting”)
involves forcing your opponent’s first move to deliver
check, thereby preventing
him from playing any
more moves on that turn.
This game rewards
creativity—visualizing
strange checkmate posi-

tions will take you far, and
such practice will help you
to build mating nets in
Chess. As an example,
I’ve taken the following
problem, by Doug Hyatt,
from his Online Guide to
Progressive
Chess
(www.cs.utk.edu/~hyatt/
wipcc98/guide1.html).
series-mate in 7 moves

The stipulation means
that White has seven remaining moves and must
deliver checkmate. With
the exception of the last,
none of the moves should
deliver check (as then
White’s turn would end).
This is tricky (I couldn’t
solve it too quickly), so
there’s a hint at the back
of the magazine and the
solution will be in my next
article (in which I may
take the opportunity to
further explore this problem genre [as an excuse
for showing one of my own
compositions]).