Chess Online

A good and instructive puzzle.

should be. makes you think and excecute accordinigly. solved within a minute, however I enjoyed the puzzle very much. Thanks kingdawar

he gets the rook with that move. could not understand why he dose not take the rook its free!

could someone please explain?!

To elaborate on sicknero's comment, Qh7# is mate. Look at the all moves graph under the options tab if you want to understand why the computer made a strange move you don't understand.

simple and straight forward but oh so beautiful!

Very interesting concept, perhaps it has something to do with human nature indeed, with its unwillingness to go down without a fight, even when facing the inevitable doom.  

A really nice puzzle

with all due respect, you're a 2248 and that's amazing, but do you really expect more than 30% of chess players to think like you? if it was that easy to be rated that high, then yes, i'd be surprised too!

I think of it this way: The average rating of people who use this site is roughly between 1300 and 1500. An average solve percentage for easy puzzles is somewhere around 70-75%. I think if this puzzle was put as the "Hard" puzzle yesterday, the solve percentage wouldn't have surprised you. More players under the average GK rating of ~1400 will try the "Easy" puzzle, but not the "Hard." In turn, more players with above average GK ratings will likely attempt the "Hard," instead of the "Easy." The below average players are rated so because they still have about 900-1000 points to go before this kind of puzzle also appears to them as a basic blitz tactic and so the solve percentage of a relatively harder than "Easy" puzzle stays low.

I think the people who failed to solve this puzzle hopefully learned to change their mindset about finding the king useless as an attacker (or active defender). It takes some time to develop the chess brain to think about multiple concepts and rules of chess at once while visualizing a checkmate. In this puzzle, most beginners and even intermediate players will automatically be looking to put the King against the wall somehow, thinking it's very easy with a Queen and Rook advantage. It would only take a few more moves, and less effort to simply move the Queen and Rook around until checkmate. It's a very different idea simply to consider using the King as the wall, thinking that it provides three squares as 'illegal territory.' With only two moves, a lot of players are forced to radically change their ideas of efficiency with the pieces.

This is an endgame situation, where the King becomes the most useful. This concept of using the King to attack and defend like any other piece becomes basic and comfortable typically after the opening and middle games become basic and comfortable. As everyone probably knows, this comes after a lot of games! I mean, the sheer magnitude of possible openings and then being able to make it through the countless middlegame tactics, unblundered, is a Herculian effort. THEN, if your King is still alive while most of your pieces are dead will you begin to think about using it. Obviously, some players are bolder and braver than others.

So, that's why a 30% solve percentage with this puzzle, under the "Easy" section, seems understandable