Chess Masters: the Endgame

[Mick Norris]

Welcome Richie, good post

[Kevin Thurlow]

Well said Richie.

It's certainly true that he's always trying to win!

[Ian Thompson]

none of the participants ever suggested that they were more than keen amateur players

Has anyone ever suggested they did? As far as I'm aware, the criticism was levelled at Sue Perkins and the programme makers for making exaggerated claims about the players' ability.

Therfore, just to dispel a further myth I did not miss Qg6 , I simply chose not to play it ! ... However, the Queen hadnt even settled on the square when i realised it wasnt as good

I think most people would consider "missing" a move to mean not playing it, with no distinction between missing it because the possibility of playing the move never occurred to them and missing it because they incorrectly thought a different move was better.

[Geoff Chandler]

A touch of Lasker. See a good move look around for a better one.
Richie saw a good move, thought he found a better one.
I'm sure we have all done that. I can recall at three least personal instances all ending in a loss. Best to play the good move you see right away before you remember your Lasker.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I do hope Richie and the other contestants are free to say more, such as what their favorite moments were. But maybe that is best done as group interviews in a feature in a magazine like CHESS? Not sure if David Howell would be free to say more than he already said in his post-series statement that Chess.com published? People like him, Sue Perkins and Anthony Mathurin will need to consider the optics in relation to the commissioning of a second series (would more publicity help or not?).

[Richard Kelly]

Well said Richie.

It's certainly true that he's always trying to win!

Hi Kev, Cheers, I try my best anyway

[Richard Kelly]

Thank you for posting, Richie. It was incredible to see you and the others representing chess on prime time TV, and commiserations on losing that exciting game in the final.

(For the record, I found the way you fearlessly played g4 and h4 after Qf2 very impressive. I probably would have not had the courage to play that.)

Could I ask how accurate you think the editors and producers of the programme were in representing the games and the contestants? And indeed chess as a game?

What would you as a contestant have wished they might have done differently, either on the screen or behind the scenes (if you are now allowed to say)?

I am presuming you all signed NDAs regarding the results, but are hopefully free to give your views now?

Hi Christopher,
thanks for your kind words. Much appreciated.
I have to say that on the whole i couldnt fault the BBC for the way we were treated. Well fed and watered etc. Nice hotel . In fact they moved us to a better one after the first night even though,as far as I know, nobody complained about the original one.
We all wondered how they were going to fit so much into 30 minute episodes . There was a lot of filming and interviews and reshoots being done so we had busy days. I took some books for the Green Room but never really got a chance to read them.
So there was a huge amount of stuff edited out. And that perhaps is my only real gripe. Bizarrely i thought my best interviews were when I thought i had been knocked out and when I lost the Final v Thalia. Perhaps it was then that I was relaxed more?!
That said i must admit the editing of the team game with Thalia annoyed me somewhat. Although Thalia had the most input as she was very animated and excited throughout most of the game I felt the edited version made me look like something of a bystander almost. It did not show me having to tell Thalia to calm down or me refusing point blank to play her suggested move. Now why this was not shown , considering it makes great reality tv , especially when other Contestants were shown to be getting twitchy with one another i will leave you to draw your own conclusions.
But I must add Thalia and I are friends and I expect to see her at my garden chess event in August.
I think the Producers had a difficult job to do to cater for everyone but clearly their priority was to attract non chess players to the game and to the Programme. Overall they did as good a job as could be expected in the timeframe they were allowed.
Personally the only thing that i would have done differently was to insist on playing my move again in the Thalia team game when my capture of a piece was better according to SF than Thalias (taking Kel & Deema's Queen ) . But to be fair both moves were winning.

[Roland Kensdale]

From Magnus Take Take Take channel, he tackles some of the puzzles from the BBC series and some variants of them.

Pleased I was able to solve the queen capturing sequence of pawns puzzle in a reasonable time but didn't attempt others. I think Carlsen is right, these puzzles are testing your ability to use logic rather than your chess playing ability.

Botvinnik said chess is a game which shows the beauty of logic, which may be true, but more than logical thinking is required.

https://youtu.be/7l9ftC8CyoE?si=qeFesLnLLeafrdoU

[Roland Kensdale]

From Magnus Take Take Take channel, he tackles some of the puzzles from the BBC series and some variants of them.

https://youtu.be/7l9ftC8CyoE?si=qeFesLnLLeafrdoU

The video is similar to the TV show in that a puzzle is shown, then Magnus briefly thinking, then the solution or the final moves.

2 new variants, first considered too difficult to include in the TV programme, ignore the Kings.White queen to take all pawns in sequence. As only subsequent captures need to be considered, I didn't find it as difficult as the programme makers suggest. Magnus took 6 mins and some seconds. He felt he should have solved it more quickly.


3p2K1/1p5p/2p1p1p1/2p1p3/7p/Qp6/8/k1p5
Ignore kings and colour of pieces (I struggled with FEN rules of the site). White rook to take all pawns. Magnus solved in 7' 54"".

This is much more challenging. I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to solve. I certainly had to move the pieces.

Comments to the video, which include suggested solutions, say a number people solved them faster than Magnus.
5P1k/pp6/3p1p2/p1p1P3/6P1/PR1P2P1/2P2P1P/1ppP3K [pos]

[Matt Mackenzie]

I got the Q puzzle rather more quickly than the world's strongest player, then.

Tbh it does seem to depend a lot on getting the initial capture(s) right.

[Peter Shaw]

The first one I found easier than anything on the programme, took me less than 30 seconds. Maybe I was just lucky. I spent 10 minutes trying to solve the second one in my head before resorting to trial and error and got it after a couple of failed attempts.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I found the first one (queen one) quicker than Magnus as well. A few false attempts, but the trick is to identify the 'dead ends' (pawns where you can only arrive in one direction and cannot leave again). That gives you the start and end pawns, and then you just need to figure out how to connect them. Not tried the rook one yet, which does look hard.

*presses timer*

(so the flashing square was so annoying I took a screenshot to doodle red lines on...)

[Christopher Kreuzer]

*stops timer*

That took me about 20 mins. Oh dear. And I think drawing lines on the screen counts as moving the pieces (I used red lines for up and right, and green lines for down and left).

Might have done that faster under competition conditions.

[Neill Cooper]

I think these are more mathematical rather than chess problems. They are therefore amenable to working backwards as well as forwards. In each case one can work out the last pawn to be taken. I found the rook problem easier as without the diagonal queen move there seemed to be less options. But perhaps I was just lucky.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

This is very interesting. I definitely found the rook one harder as it involved more reversing course moves and it is just very long (18 moves in total, obviously). As it is a day later, I have of course forgotten the Queen solution ('only' 11 moves), but I still remember the rook solution as it was so intense trying to work it out. And yes, I worked backwards for the rook one at first, then got confused, then 'saw' the solution so started again and drew new lines on a new screenshot and that turned out to be the solution. I am guessing these are checked for uniqueness?

I would like to post my doodles, but is there a way to hide parts of posts on this forum in a collapsed box to avoid spoilers? I thought so, but maybe I am thinking of a different site? Maybe you put the pictures inside code tags? Or change the colour to make it invisible, though that only works for text, not pictures.