White to Play and Win (Botvinnik) NM Scott Massey gave a wonderful lecture on King and Pawn endings on Thursday, November 3, 2005 at the Kenilworth Chess Club. He used a number of fascinating puzzles to illustrate basic themes and challenged audience members to solve them--playing through and usually refuting their winning tries before revealing or receiving the correct solution. The most difficult problem of the evening was a composition of Botvinnik's given above. What is so amazing is that White can actually win from this position! I have played through the problem with Fritz, however, and the silicon beast may have come up with a "cook." So if you want a truly impossible challenge: find the solution and the possible cook. An even bigger challenge may be to refute the cook, and I will have to pose that to Scott when we next meet.
Scott challenges us with puzzles. I hope to post a file of all the problems he covered with solutions, but it will take quite a bit of work to put it together. I also have to figure out how to fix some of the issues you will observe in the "Problem" display in Java Applet form. If I find the time.... It's a busy semester and I may not get to it for a while.
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