12 December 2009
Hello everybody!
I’m in Dallas, TX right now, having a great time at the Nationals K-12 Chess Championships. This morning I gave a 44-boards simultaneous exhibition, the final score was +38=5-1, you can be sure I will tell you more about this event in the coming days, with many great photos I promise!
The latest months have been very busy for me, I was so busy preparing and playing in tournaments that I didn’t even have enough time to post the three November Contest Puzzles. So in order to make sure to finish the year on the chess note before flying to Dallas I prepared 3 problems for the December Contest of the Alexandra Kosteniuk GRAND-PRIX CHESS PUZZLE CONTEST. I’m sure you will enjoy solving them and I will get many emails with correct answers.
As usual till the end of this month you can send me your solutions by email. On the 31st of December I will announce 3 winners who sent me the most complete and correct solutions. Also, on December 31, 2009 I will announce the Grand-Prize winner of the Alexandra Kosteniuk Grand-Prix Chess Puzzle Conteste who will get the top chess prize. The Grand-Prize winner will be determined by the number of times participated, and of course the maximum number of correct answers.
The more you participate in my puzzle contests, the more chances you will have to win, and of course solving my puzzles will be useful to you and will help you improve at chess.
Please answer only by email and not putting the solution in the comments to this post, give a chance to everyone to enjoy solving the problem on their own. And in the email, please mention whole variations to the end, do not only give the first move, special credit will go for completeness of the solution. When several variations are present, write them all. And please write as the subject of the email December 2009 Puzzle Contest. Good luck!
Here they are:
(Above) Puzzle 1. Black plays and wins.
Category Easy.
(Above) Puzzle 2. White to move.
White plays and checkmates in 3 moves. Category Intermediate.
(Above) Puzzle 3. Black to move
Black plays and wins. Category Difficult.
