Moving Three Pieces Better Than Two or One?

Logic Level 2

It's White's turn. Assume Black plays optimally. What is the minimum number of moves to checkmate the black king?

3 4 5 None of the rest

1 solution

Michael Huang
Jan 8, 2017

Here is the set of following moves to checkmate in 3 moves :

	White	Black
1.	Qg7	Ke2
2.	Qd4	Kf3
3.	Qe4#

The first step is to move to g7, which forces the Black to move to e2. By moving the queen to d4, no matter how the black king is moved, this guarantees the easy win by checkmating with a queen.

So one piece is good enough to go for! :)

Another possible solution is as follow:

	White	Black
1.	Qg7	Ke2
2.	Qd4	Kf1
3.	Qf2#

Black 2nd move can be Kf1, although white still has checkmate with Qf2#.

Jason Dyer Staff - 4 years, 5 months ago

Yep, that is correct! :)

Michael Huang - 4 years, 5 months ago

Could you add it to the solution? If there's something like 5 easy variants I will sometimes have the convention of not listing them, but with two there's no reason you can't just give both.

Jason Dyer Staff - 4 years, 5 months ago

@Jason Dyer – Added. I hope I am not missing something as games like this involve trial-and-error and looking for pattern.

Thanks for the catch!

Michael Huang - 4 years, 5 months ago

@Michael Huang – I doubled-checked you with software. It's fine.

Jason Dyer Staff - 4 years, 5 months ago

We just need 1 turn as black king is already in checkmate condition we can move white king for that

Daanish bansal - 4 years, 5 months ago

No, the black king is not being threatened. If it was and it was white's turn then we'd have an impossible scenario.

If it was black's turn then it would be stalemate.

Jason Dyer Staff - 4 years, 5 months ago

so we just need to pass turn to make black king stale mate by moving our white king

Daanish bansal - 4 years, 4 months ago

@Daanish Bansal – I don't think you understand. Stalemate means the game is a draw instead of a win for white.

Siva Budaraju - 4 years, 1 month ago

QUEEN CAN MOVE TO G2

Ajay Singh - 4 years, 5 months ago

This isn't a solution because then the black king can take the queen.

Jason Dyer Staff - 4 years, 5 months ago

OK.I began chess and stoped quickly.I know the basics and that is something I can Add to my list of things in chess.Thank you for your guidance

Ajay Singh - 4 years, 5 months ago

Isn't it already stalemate?

Finn C - 4 years, 4 months ago

It's white's move, so I suppose not.

TheVideoGameGuy Dasgupta - 2 years, 7 months ago

It would be stalemate if white (the player who has to move) has no moves. If white plays a king move, it would be stalemate as that would make it black's turn, and black indeed cannot play any moves.

Roland van Vliembergen - 2 years, 1 month ago

you are right

Asher LeGrand - 1 year, 2 months ago

not to hate on these challenge puzzles but like, it's teaching bad chess intuition so i don't get what it is you're trying to teach. These moves are only being played by a computer lol

Jerry Warner - 2 years ago

In this position it is stalemate, which is a draw. The game will instantly end in a draw if this position appears in a real chess game.

Arjun Raghavan - 2 months, 3 weeks ago

Moving Three Pieces Better Than Two or One?

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