Chess Composition - Eliminating Duplicate Solutions – Automatically?

Recently there have been headlines along the lines of "A Machine Composes Problems". The question I am interested in here however is a bit different - with so many chess problems and studies having been composed over the last two three hundred years, it would be curious to test their correctness in a fashion as automatic as possible.

The test would have to check both that the problem is correct, and that the problem one and only one solution. Loading a position into Fritz is obviously going to show that, but how would one automatically run a test on the entire database of checkmate  problems/studies/tactical solutions?

Has anyone heard of such an initiative and whether this has been ever done either by chess composers or engine authors?

I would imagine those two categories of people are probably quite interested in doing something like this.

Checkmate with 4 queens - from Alekhine to Kasparov

Reading Kasparov’s books is quite entertaining, and some parallels between various historic chess battles can be observed.
Kasparov – Karpov, 1986 match, game 22
After 43.Rb4!
Black’s king is vulnerable against the attack on the c1-h6 diagonal, and although I was familiar with this idea/position before, only now I noticed that the main line of the combination contained a pretty mate:
43. Rb4 Rxb4 (Karpov actually played 43… Rc4) 44. axb4 d4 45. b5 d3 46. b6 d2 47. b7 d1=Q 48. b8=Q

Both sides have a new queen, but White’s threats are more dangerous, Qf4 is a threat.
48… Qc1 49. Nxg6 Qxg6 50. Qh8+ Qh7 51. Qgxg7#

Checkmate! Does that look familiar?

Well, now all sorts of bells start ringing, and indeed, I found a similar mate in another book by Kasparov:
Capablanca – Alekhine, 1927, Game 11
Checkmate after 67. Qh1#

Sometimes it’s worth digging a bit deeper into trees of variations in Kasparov’s books as now I understand why every time he mentions game 22 of the 1986 match, he calls it a “study like win”. It is also not surprising that Kasparov thinks that Alekhine is the World Champion with chess style most similar to his own.

Unexpected queen sacrifice

I overlooked the following neat idea while playing a blitz game today:

White to move
In this typical Spanish structure, I erred with 27. Rxa8 Rxa8 28. Qf7 which brought me nothing after Qd8. Disappointed, I lost the game. Instead I had the brilliant queen sac:
27. Qf7!!

  White threatens Qg8 with mate, and otherwise Black has to give up two rooks for the queen:
27… Rxf7 28. Nxf7+ Kg8 29. Nh6+ (the point) Kf8 30. Rxa8+ Ne8 31. Rea1 White is much better:
Bishop will be transferred to g4, White controls the only open file and Black’s kingside pawn structure is damaged. It won’t be easy…

The King Walk – Chigorin – Caro, 1898

Black to move

Try to predict the outcome of this chess game! Amazingly, 10 moves later Black got mated with a sacrifice that many of you probably have seen while studying tactics. After the following moves 25. …Qg2+ 26. Kc4 b5+ 27. Kd3 Qf3+ 28. Kc2 Qf2+ 29. Kb3 Rc8 30. Rc2 Qxf4 31. Kb2 Na5 32. Ka1 Qc4 33. e6 Nc6 34. Qd1 h5 35. Rg1 Rh7 the players got to this position:

 White to move

36. Rg7!! ends the game on a spot. Notice how the white king now is safely hidden.

Replay the full game here. Below is the raw pgn that you can copy and paste into a Chessbase Light board window.

[Event "Vienna"]
[Site "Vienna"]
[Date "1898.??.??"]
[EventDate "?"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Mikhail Chigorin"]
[Black "Horatio Caro"]
[ECO "C29"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "71"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. f4 d5 4. d3 Bb4 5. fxe5 Nxe4 6. dxe4
Qh4+ 7. Ke2 Bxc3 8. bxc3 Bg4+ 9. Nf3 dxe4 10. Qd4 Bh5 11. Ke3
Bxf3 12. Bb5+ c6 13. gxf3 Qh6+ 14. Kxe4 Qg6+ 15. Ke3 cxb5
16. Ba3 Nc6 17. Qd5 Qxc2 18. Rac1 Qf5 19. Rhe1 Rd8 20. Qxb5 a6
21. Qb1 Qg5+ 22. f4 Qg2 23. Bd6 Qh3+ 24. Ke4 f5+ 25. Kd5 Qg2+
26. Kc4 b5+ 27. Kd3 Qf3+ 28. Kc2 Qf2+ 29. Kb3 Rc8 30. Rc2 Qxf4
31. Kb2 Na5 32. Ka1 Qc4 33. e6 Nc6 34. Qd1 h5 35. Rg1 Rh7
36. Rxg7 1-0

Zenit wins UEFA cup - is soccer just like chess?

Zenit from Saint Petersburg won the UEFA cup in great style (or so it seems from looking at the goals from their last two games). 4:0 against Bayern Munich and 2:0 against Glasgo Rangers - those are really impressive results, but the 2 goals from the final match are even more impressive. The main childhood memory I had from Russian soccer was "clumsy". I guess the dutch coaches have had something to do with changing things for the better.

I find that in a long chess match opponents seem to be of equal strength, but at some point one of them makes a mistake and if the other player is really stronger - he should punish such a mistake and make it look easy. I find that Arshavin's pass that perfectly went through the Rangers' defence and found the Zenit attacker is in many ways similar to how in Kasparov - Anand match (1995) Kasparov's rook travelled across the board and found its target - the c2 pawn. In both cases the opponent could never recover after a killer shot ...