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I hadn’t given much thought to chess problems or compositions until recently.  Sure, as I was developing my chess game, I hacked my way through Reinfeld’s 1000 Sacrifices and Combinations and 1000 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate, working on “pattern recognition” the way some people dutifully eat their vegetables, because it’s supposed to be “good for you.”

Recently, while enjoying the interviews in Avni’s The Grandmaster’s Mind, “a look inside the chess thinking-process,” I noticed that along with some grandmasters the author had investigated the thoughts of two chess composers.  In the process of solving, he noted "Rich knowledge and considerable experience increase the probability that the right idea will emerge at the right time."

Jacob Aagaard’s new Excelling At Chess Calculation recommends (along with studying combinations, candidate move problems, pawn endgames, and complicated positions) that players work on chess studies – and a couple dozen are included in its Exercises chapter.

So I felt fortunate when I encountered Peter Wong’s Parallel Strategy, subtitled 156 Chess Compositions.  Was this another way to boost my game, build my intuition, and help with my pattern recognition?  Well, yes and no.  It turns out I was largely asking the wrong question.

After 20 challenging mate-in-2s, mate-in-3s and mate in–mores, which Wong refers to as Directmates, I encountered some Helpmates (with which I was somewhat familiar) and a variety of Helpgames (new to me, but understandable: both players cooperate to reach a certain position in a certain number of moves.)  However, after encountering royal units, nightriders, traitors and neutral units, I began to feel a little bit like Alice, after she had fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.  By the time I encountered lions, jaguars, hoppers and bouncers, I began checking my coffee cup for foreign substances…

Readers who are frequent travelers to the world of problems or compositions, especially those who are familiar with Wong’s works – which have been published many places, including the author’s One Hundred Chess Compositions, which anticipates the current book – are probably laughing their heads off at this review right now.  Let me start over, with some help from Parallel Strategy’s Introduction:

…[A] chess problem is a specially constructed position that works on two levels.  On a basic level, it’s a puzzle with a task – typically to achieve mate – that must be fulfilled in a specified number of moves…  On a higher level, a problem is composed to show an interesting or attractive idea through its play.  That specific idea, in a sense the point of a problem, is known as its theme.  The aesthetic nature of themes merits the alternative term for problems: “chess compositions.”

Hence Wong’s contention that “the chess problem is an art appearing in the form of a puzzle.”  Problems are typically orthodox compositions, which follow the normal rules of chess, or fairy chess, with unorthodox tasks (e.g. helpstalemate), unorthodox conditions (e.g. Kamikaze chess) and/or fairy pieces (e.g. nightrider).

There are many reasons to enjoy the apparently self-published Parallel Strategy, starting with its handy 5 ½ x 8 inch format, attractive cover, and well laid-out pages.  There is effective use of bolding, italics, underlining, capitals and white space in the print sections; and creative use of chess fonts – fairy pieces tend to be represented by orthodox pieces, rotated 90° or 180°.  (The diagrams could be a tiny bit clearer, but, then again, that’s probably my tired eyes at work.)

Since the author has published a large variety of compositions over the last 20 years, his current collection practically takes on the form of a tour guide through Orthodox & Fairy Land.  Each chapter, grouped by type, has introductory paragraphs that identify and explain the form of composition being presented.  Many of the individual problems have further helpful, and sometimes hintful, text – this is nice when the challenge is relatively straight-forward, and necessary when it is quite complicated.  Chapters end with “Further comments” and Solutions.  Parallel Strategy itself ends with a Bibliography and Index.

Here are a couple of examples to give you the range of the creativity and difficulty involved, as well as the extensiveness of the explanatory text.  The first is an orthodox mate-in-2; the second is a mind-blowing (they’re not all this hard) Circe-(Rex Inclusive)-helpmate-in-three-with-grasshoppers-and-lions…

Problem #1:

White to move and mate in two
 

Problem #2

helpmate in 3

Circe RI
Grasshoppers [inverted Queens]
Lions [Queen rotated 90°]
(b) Pf5 à f6

…The grasshopper [acts on queen lines] hops over one piece and lands on the square immediately beyond that piece… Traveling along a queen-line, the lion hops over another piece and lands on any square beyond… A classic fairy form, Circe is perhaps the most popular unorthodox condition.  The main concept of Circe, and its many variants, is that of rebirth after capture.  In regular Circe, a captured unit is reborn immediately on its home square… A basic variant of Circe is Circe RI (Rex Inclusive).  Under this condition, the rebirth rules apply to the kings as well, so that they too can be captured and reborn on their home squares.  A king is genuinely in check only if it is attacked and its rebirth square is occupied, and thus threatened with removal from the board...

The intensive 132 incorporates two pairs of mutual captures in each solution.  When fairy units are used in a Circe problem, enemy pieces may share the same rebirth square.  This comes into consideration in one of the capture pairs, when a White grasshopper is reborn on e8, preventing the Black king from doing the same.  The other pair of captures brings about a White grasshopper switchback and positions a Black lion to capture a White pawn.  Once captured and reborn, this pawn acts as a guide for the White grasshopper, allowing it to protect the king when the latter  mates.

Wong clearly is hoping (the above difficult composition with extensive explanation is an example) that his book will be embraced by more than just composition aficionados:

…I intend to make this collection accessible to non-problemist readers.  Indeed, this book only assumes that you are familiar with the rules of chess and algebraic notation.  Whether you are new to composition chess, an occasional solver, or a seasoned problemist, and whether you attempt to solve all of the problems herein, or simply play through the solutions provided, I hope you will enjoy this anthology of 156 combinations.

Did Parallel Strategy make me a better chess player?   I have to admit that I tried solving some problems, and followed along on the solutions for others.  Either way, it was a great tweak for my imagination, but I am not sure that it helped my orthodox chess thinking or intuition in great measure.

This book might very well be for you if:

1. You’re an avid problemist (of course);

2. You’ve enjoyed David L. Brown’s columns in Chess Life, but you want more of a challenge;

3. You’ve never gotten into chess compositions before, but you’d like to look at a wide-ranging introduction and see what you like;

4. You enjoyed the retro-analysis problems in Raymond Smullyan’s The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes and The Chess Mysteries of the Arabian Knights (and maybe they were a bit too easy);

5. You’re an Aussie and you like to support talent from Down Under;

6. Your MENSA membership is up-to-date and you need a new challenge (just kidding – I enjoyed Parallel Strategy, and I’m a prime candidate for DENSA.)

Problem #1

Problem #2

Helpmate in 3

L= lion;  G= grasshopper; (x) indicates the square upon which the captured piece is reborn

(a) 1.Lxb6 (b8) Gxd6(e1) 2.Gxe6 (e8) Gxb6 (b1) 3.Lxf5 (f2) Kg1

(b) 1.Lxa2 (a8) Gxe6 (e1) 2.Gxe6 (e8) Gxa2 (a1) 3.Lxf6 (f2) Kg2

Note how the move order cannot be varied in each part.  In (a), if we try 1.Lxb6 (b8) Gxb6 (b1) 2.Lxf5 (f2) Gaxe6 (e1) ?? 3.Gxe6 (e8) Kg1, White’s second move is an illegal self-check because of the Black lion’s attack on the f-file and, simultaneously, the occupation of e1.  So the reborn pawn on f2 is used by both White and Black as a guide.

Part (b) has a similar try, 1.Lxa2 (a8) Gxa2 (a1) 2.Lxf6 (f2) Gbxe6 (e1) ?? 3.Gxe6 (e8) Kg2.

(Regular chess software like Fritz would have trouble solving anything more than "mate in X" style problems, but Wong mentions two special ones: Natch, which solves helpgames; and Popeye, which solves a large variety of problems. Interested readers should Google the programs.)

Publishers Note:  The author, Peter Wong, writes:  Price: AU$22 (payments in euros and UK pounds are also accepted.)   Email the author, Peter Wong, for more information on ordering.

Visit Peter's Problem World - Introducing the Art of Chess Composition

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