Well, I hope you all had a great Christmas! and now that it is over and we move towards the new year I thought we could look at something else. We covered a lot of material in the previous six posts. Now it’s time to put that knowledge to practice. The first five are relatively simple to get you warmed up, the last five are more challenging. Also, I will not be stating which tactic is involved in each. Solving them is going to take some concentration and time. Try to give yourself 5-10 minutes for each puzzle, and make a note of the tactical theme that is used. The first move of each solution is provided at the bottom of the page. Some puzzles have one move answers while others require you to calculate variations. I will leave the calculation of variations as an exercise for the player.
Black to move
White to move
White to move
Black to move
White to move
White to move
White to move
White to move
White to move
Black to move
Answers:
1) Bg4 (skewer)
2) Rxe6 (pin)
3) Ne7+(fork)
4) Bd4(fork)
5) e5(pawn fork)
6) Nf7+
7) Re8+(decoy)
8) Qxf7+
9) Qxh7+
10) Qf3+