Picture taken by Liz West

Photograph of a chess set in the young adult room of the Boxborough library

Picture taken by Tristan Martin

He played around with different backgrounds and lighting. In order to take this picture he used a mirror, a balloon, and even a champagne glass.

Picture taken by Jack Pearce

Chess instructions on life size chess board.

Zugzwang is a position in which every move would make the position worse, and the player that has to move would be better off if he could pass and not move at all. But in chess no such thing as skipping a move is allowed. You are forced to move.




In the picture above whoever has to make a move loses.

We have seen some examples of zugzwang before:

• The Trébuchet was in fact a lesson about the mutual zugzwang.
• The game Fischer – Taimanov (1971) contains some zugzwangs.
• Opposition can be seen as an example of Zugzwang.
• And in fact most of the endgames that we have discussed before, like the mating with the rook, make use of this zugzwang concept. 

Next lesson: Make a plan.

A lot of information about the Rook and pawn versus rook endgame can be found in Wikipedia. This article gives a nice overview of the most important positions and methods to win or to hold the position.

It describes the following winning methods:

• Pawn on the sixth or seventh rank
• The king without the pawn cut off along a rank is an easy win
• The king without the pawn is cut off from the pawn’s file is a far more complicated endgame (like we have described in the two previous lessons) and it gives the rule of five.

The rule of five is for positions in which the pawn is protected and the opposing king is cut off by files: Add the number of rank of the pawn to the number of files the defender’s king is cut off. If the sum is more than five, it is usually a win. Otherwise it is normally a draw.

The article also refers to the Lucena position and describes an alternate method to win for bishop pawns and central pawns.




The next lesson will show another famous game: Fischer – Taimanov 1971.

Chess on the High Line
By Ed Yourdon (Some rights reserved)

Giant chess set on beach



Chess pieces are about 2.5 feet tall.

Picture taken at Sandals Montego Bay, Jamaica by Loren Sztajer

The Elephant Trap is a famous trap in the Queen’s Gambit Declined. I am not sure why it is called the Elephant Trap, but the name reminds me to an oil painting of Eddie William Powell. The picture above shows a part of this painting. More information about this and other paintings of this artist can be found at this website.


Another interesting trap is the Lasker Trap, but for now we continue with explaining some of the more difficult Chess Notation Symbols.

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Picture taken by Thomas Helbig (teliko82) on Flickr
Some rights reserved.

Maybe you want to have a look at the Mate in One puzzles?

Picture taken by brefoto on April 14, 2009
Some rights reserved

I’ll hope you enjoy these days and I wish you a Happy New Year

Playing chess at vlora beach. Photo by Gábor.

Chess set by Konstantin Lazorkin

Playing chess with Samantha by williamhartz on Flickr

All sizes of this photo are available for download under a Creative Commons license.

A young boy manufacturing chess pieces in a small shop above a warehouse in the souks of Marrakech, by austinevan on Flickr. All sizes of this photo are available for download under a Creative Commons license.

Inside - Chess? - "it's a small world", Fantasyland, Disneyland, Lantau, Hong Kong by thewamphyri on Flickr from where all sizes of this photo are available under a Creative Commons license.

On the use of Mirrors in the Game of Chess by alancleaver_2000
All sizes of this photo are available for download under a Creative Commons license.

"On the Use of Mirrors in the Game of Chess" by Milo Temesvar does not exist, but it was the title of a book by Umberto Eco.
The result is a nice picture.