Jim West On Chess: Chess Problem: Stalemate in 5 Moves

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Chess Problem: Stalemate in 5 Moves

Yesterday, at the Marshall Chess Club, a FIDE master showed me this problem: Black to move and stalemate himself in 5 moves (with help from White).

Don't be confused about which way the pawns are going. Even though Black's pieces are arranged on White's starting squares, White's pawn is moving upward and Black's pawns downward.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov