Kavalek in Huffington: How to Cook in Chess

5/20/2011 – Actually, "to cook" in chess has nothing to do with culinary pleasures, but is a dreaded thing for chess composers. A problem is cooked when there a different unintended solution is found. But a composition can be also cooked when someone creates a sound problem or study from an unsound work and eliminates the dual solution. You can also have it both ways as Prof. Noam Elkies proved.

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How to Cook in Chess

By GM Lubomir Kavalek

Last year we published a chess study composed by Ladislav Prokes and Oldrich Duras, but as pointed out by Prof. Noam Elkies, the study was "cooked." Recently, we learned that a Slovakian player, Ivan Novak, discovered the same dual solution already in 2008. Both Elkies and Novak composed new sound versions of Prokes's study, removing the black pawns and eliminating the original solution. But prof. Elkies took it further: he resurrected Prokes's solution, kept all pawns on the board and just moved the white king one square. His elegant creation is published here for the first time.

Here is the original Prokes/Duras version. The white queen chases the black king counter clockwise around the board and creates a mating net with a quiet pawn move. But there is a problem....

Note that in the replay windows below you can click on the notation to follow the game.

The Huffington Post is an American news website and aggregated blog founded by Arianna Huffington and others, featuring various news sources and columnists. The site was launched on May 9, 2005, as a commentary outlet and liberal/progressive alternative to conservative news websites. It offers coverage of politics, media, business, entertainment, living, style, the green movement, world news, and comedy. It is a top destination for news, blogs, and original content. The Huffington Post has an active community, with over one million comments made on the site each month. According to Nielsen NetRatings, the site has around 13 million unique visitors per month (number for March 2010); according to Google Analytics the number is 22 million uniques per month.