A Puzzle no Grandmaster solved until Tal solved it

kingkrusher called it the monalisa of chess! If anybody is having trouble understanding this, check out his video on this puzzle.

Beautiful.

find a better way

wow how could anyone not know this study? Yes its beautiful but there are some better ones. should I post them?

Post away

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/now-dont-tell-me-u-can-solve-this-endgame

This is called "Plaskett's Puzzle," but it is not known who composed it. There was at least one thread about this already, and it is indeed a striking study.

Mephisto, Tal and other SuperGMs had already been working at the puzzle for a while before Tal left, but none had found the double sacrifice. It is incredibly tempting to promote the pawn to a knight, but then black draws easily with Kg4. Actually, even if white promotes to a queen I seem to remember black having drawing chances after Kg4.

wow great!

white wins

lol

shut up

If the pawns promote to queens, then there is a checkmate by the white bishop

I saw this in some video

nice, isn't it?

yeah it was.

then how is Tal not rated like 3200? 

they had no ratings in the 1960s

the puzzle?

genius

Look at which squares the knight controls. They are promoted to knights because only knights can stop the bishop checkmates. First knight promotion stops Bf3 mate, second stops Be2 mates, Nc7 stops Be8 mates, but Ba4 is unstoppable mate.

I wasn't around when this thread was started, so I didn't come across it until today. Obviously many of the comments were from people who didn't bother to watch the Kaidanov video. One comment said that the composer of the study is unknown, but Kaidanov said he learned it was composed in 1990 by a Dutchman named Van Breukelen.

I looked the position up in HHdbV and verified that it was composed by G. Van Breukelen as an entry in the composing tourney Schakend Nederland 1990. Kaidanov makes no mention of Tal. However, Tal died in 1992, probably due to organ failure resulting from a lifetime of heavy drinking and chain smoking, so it is certainly possible he was shown the position and solved it before his death.

As pointed out in the comment just before yours, this was not a game position. It is a composed endgame study.