Directmate Babsons
Composing a Babson task problem in directmate form (where white moves first, and must checkmate black against any defence within a stipulated number of moves) was thought so difficult that very little effort was put into solving it until the 1960s, when Pierre Drumare began his work on the problem which would occupy him for the next twenty years or so. He managed to compose a Babson task problem using nightriders (a Fairy piece which moves like a knight, but can make any number of knight-like moves in the same direction in one go) instead of knights, but found it hard to devise one using normal pieces — because of their limited range, it is difficult to justify white promoting to a knight because of black promoting to one way over the other side of the board.
When Drumare did eventually succeed using conventional pieces in 1980, the result was regarded as highly unsatisfactory, even by Drumare himself. It is a mate in five (first published Memorial Seneca, 1980):
Pierre Drumare, Memorial Camil Seneca, 1980| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | ||
| 8 | 8 | ||||||||
| 7 | 7 | ||||||||
| 6 | 6 | ||||||||
| 5 | 5 | ||||||||
| 4 | 4 | ||||||||
| 3 | 3 | ||||||||
| 2 | 2 | ||||||||
| 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h |
The key is 1.Rf2, after which black captures on b1 are answered by white captures on g8.
Efficiency in chess problems is considered a great boon, but Drumare's attempt is very inefficient — no less than 30 men are on the board. It also has six promoted pieces in the initial position (even a single promoted piece is considered something of a "cheat" in chess problems), which is in any case illegal — it could not be reached in the course of a game (one of the white f pawns must have made a capture, and the white and black b and c pawns must have made two captures between them, making three in total, yet only two units are missing from the board). Despite all these flaws, it is the first complete Babson task.
In 1982, two years after composing this problem, Drumare gave up, saying that the Babson task would never be satisfactorily solved.
The following year, Leonid Yarosh, a football coach from Kazan then virtually unknown as a problem composer, came up with a much better Babson task problem than Drumare's – the position is legal, it is much simpler than Drumare's problem, and there are no promoted pieces on board. First published in March 1983 in the famous Russian chess magazine Shakhmaty v SSSR, this is generally thought of as the first satisfactory solution of the Babson task. Drumare himself had high praise for the problem. It is a mate in four:
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | ||
| 8 | 8 | ||||||||
| 7 | 7 | ||||||||
| 6 | 6 | ||||||||
| 5 | 5 | ||||||||
| 4 | 4 | ||||||||
| 3 | 3 | ||||||||
| 2 | 2 | ||||||||
| 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h |
The key is 1.Rxh4, and the main lines are:
- cxb1Q 2.axb8Q Qxb2 (2... Qe4 3.Qxf4 Qxf4 4.Rxf4 mate) 3.Qb3 Qc3 4.Qxc3#
- cxb1R 2.axb8R Rxb2 3.Rb3 Kxc4 4.Rxf4 mate
- cxb1B 2.axb8B Be4 3.Bxf4 Bxh1 4.Be3 mate
- cxb1N 2.axb8N Nxd2 3.Nc6+ Kc3 4.Rc1 mate
However, Yarosh's problem has a small flaw – the key is a capture, something which is generally frowned upon in problems. Also, when first presented the black piece at h4 was a pawn, but a computer discovered an additional solution by 1.axb8N in that construction which is not there when a knight is substituted at h4. Nevertheless, when Dutch author Tim Krabbé saw this version in the Soviet publication ´64´, he records that the realisation that somebody had at last solved the Babson Task had the effect upon him as if he had " ... opened a newspaper and seen the headline ´Purpose Of Life Discovered´." Yarosh worked on the problem, and in August 1983 an improved version of it with a non-capturing key appeared in Shakhmaty v SSSR. It is generally considered one of the greatest chess problems ever composed. Again, mate in four:
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | ||
| 8 | 8 | ||||||||
| 7 | 7 | ||||||||
| 6 | 6 | ||||||||
| 5 | 5 | ||||||||
| 4 | 4 | ||||||||
| 3 | 3 | ||||||||
| 2 | 2 | ||||||||
| 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h |
The key here is non-capturing and also thematic (it is logically related to the rest of the solution): 1.a7. The variations are largely the same as in the original:
- axb1Q 2.axb8Q Qxb2 (2... Qe4 3.Qxf4 Qxf4 4.Rxf4 mate) 3.Qxb3 Qc3 4.Qbxc3 mate
- axb1R 2.axb8R Rxb2 3.Rxb3 Kxc4 4.Qa4 mate
- axb1B 2.axb8B Be4 3.Bxf4 Bxa8 4.Be3 mate
- axb1N 2.axb8N Nxd2 3.Qc1 Ne4 4.Nc6 mate
Yarosh composed a completely different Babson task problem in 1983 and another in 1986. Several other Babsons have since been composed by other authors.
Read more about this topic: Babson Task