Please join us on Monday, February 9th for a puzzle solving championship, led by David Hayes. This is a free event with the winner being dubbed North Alabama’s tactics champion. Our last event like this was a lot of fun. Hope to see you there!
Category Archives: Chess Puzzles
Tactics Competition Results
The results of the HCC’s first ever tactics competition are listed below. It was a ton of fun!
The points listed are out of a possible 30. If you missed out and wanted to try your luck at solving the problems, the worksheet and corresponding solutions are embedded for printing below.
In the future, we’re considering having paid events with prizes awarded to the top of the designated rating classes. If you have any thoughts on this, please comment below.
This and all future results will be archived here.
- Andy May (25)
- Logan Richie (19)
- Pat Dowd (19)
- Sarah May (19)
- John Dougherty (18)
- Thomas Nielson (18)
- Willie Sandifer (14)
- Michael Porter (8)
- David Richie (5)
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Blogs Postings – Are you getting them?
Unfortunately, the past couple of blogs haven’t appeared to have sent emails out. Please check them out below. Of note, our puzzle solving competition is scheduled for this evening.
Weekly Info / Help Me Find a Better Move…
The new meeting day/time, seemed to be a pretty big hit last week. We had some regulars, some new folks, and a guy we hadn’t seen since we changed our meeting night to Sunday who we were happy to see back at the Café. We hope to see all of you there tonight!
David Hayes has graciously contributed another sample exercise from one of this games. If you like these puzzles, this problem and more can be found under the tactics’ menu’s Help Me Find a Better Move.
Hayes vs Sankhala 2017
This is a position from the second round of the June Huntsville Classic. Here Black is down a piece and two pawns. In an effort to get back into the game, Black captured my Knight on f3. I quickly saw that 29. gxf3 Ne5+ would recover my Queen after any King move. So play continued 29. Qd4+ Qf6 30. QxQ NxQ 31. Rxa7 and I eventually won the endgame. Still I could have done better.
Solution: Hint: White need not fear the discovered check. Why?
Queen of Hearts Zinger
By David Hayes
2/11/2017
This is a position from the second round of the 2017 Queen of Hearts. Here white has just played 35. Bc4 with an eye on my tender pawn on f7, and confident that he will soon win my precious advanced c2 pawn. I decided to play 35… Bxh5?! with the hope that it might rattle my opponent. Of course, the immediate capture 36. gxh5 is refuted by 36… Qf4+ and QxR next. Naturally, white responded by capturing my valuable advanced c-pawn. After the position stabilized, I could manage no more than a draw. I finished the tournament in a tie for first place in the Reserve Section.
Solution: Hint: The advanced c-pawn is a winner if it can only get more support. But how?
More tactical exercises submitted by David Hayes are located at Help me find a better move.
Please email huntsvillechessclub@gmail.com to contribute articles to the site.
Additional Chess tournaments have been posted recently to the Events Calendar that will take place in the coming weeks (click the events menu item for quicker access to specific tournament info). Hope to see you out there representing the Huntsville Chess Community!