Jayden's Chess Journal Edition #8

Joke of the Week

Why did the king break up with the queen?

He said she was moving too much on the side!

💡Puzzle #

Black has a checkmate in two moves can you find it?

✅Solution

To find checkmate Black actually must play two moves. The first move in the setup is Qxf2 and White can either respond by moving their king to h1, which immediately leads to checkmate, or taking our Queen with nxf2.

Then we can simply play checkmate with Rxe1.

♟️Tip of the Week

Sometimes sacrificing material is necessary for a checkmate.

🪶Chess History

Today we are going to look at the Russian Grandmaster who took down Capablanca as World Champion, Alexander Alekhine. Born in 1892, Alekhine quickly took to chess playing in his first tournament at 10 years old. Alekhine quickly rose to chess stardom, and in 1927 Alekhine challenged Capablanca for the World Chess Title. With 6 wins, 3 losses, and 25 draws Alekhine was crowned the World Chess Championship a title he would win again in 1937. Let’s take a look at one of the positions of one of the strongest World Champions of all time!

In this position, Alekhine was playing blindfolded and he played the move e6, which creates a discovered check with bf4. This move directly leads to checkmate eventually, and his opponent promptly.

 That wraps up this edition of Jayden’s Chess Journal

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and if you know anyone looking for more chess knowledge, send them this link so they can access this awesome newsletter.

Thank you so much for reading this edition, until next time!