No. 11.

Otago Witness, Issue 2387, 30 November 1899, Page 52

No. 11.

By Otto Mies lino,

Xt 3, 4 p 3, C P 1. P 3 k 1 p 7, 1 p 2 p Xt 2, 1 R 2 p 3, 4 X 3, 4 Q 3. Mate in three moves.

Jn each, White is very strong and Black very weak. Such positions are very usual in problems, although very unlikely in actual play, becpuse in play Blucli would have resigned long before such positions were reached. Notice the intricate and odd position of the men placed on the king's file in No. 11, which can only be explained by a tacit understanding between the players to ploy specially with the purpose of attaining it. See to -what contradictions such a. criterion (in our opinion erroneous) of judging and defining a problem on the footing of its being the result more or less natural of a series of moves casually occurring between two players leads! We think it more reasonable to regard problems as conventional and imaginary positions, baeed nevertheless on the spirit of the laws of chess, and purposely composed according to the exigencies of a special code, which we have endeavoured to formulate in our analytical treatise on the che3s problem. We know very well that the two branches of chess are branches from the same atom and that they arc nourished by the same soil and the same sap. but it is 213 leflfl true that the nume-

rous fruits which hang on the two branches are of different species, for in. colour and taste they are alike very different. The fruits on the first branch, that is to say, games, are the practical manifestations of actual play, whilst problems on. the other hand are ideal or artistic representations of play. A game is essentially a personal contest of an uncertain kind, the essential being to win at all costs. The problem is a symbol of that contest entered upon under imaginary conditions, in platonic spheres, in the vast field of imagination. It is needful to notice that in this symbol, to win at all costs is not demanded, but merely to obtain a mate in a determinate number of moves -calculated and foreseen beforehand by the composer, and to do so in a. correct, ingenious, and pleasing manner. Those who will not admit the characteristic difference between the game and the problem should at least give up every kind of convention, and not contradict themselves by striving to regulate minutely the construction of the problem, and to be logical with regard to their position accept the sole rule that the problem should be composed in conformity with the laws which regulate the play in the game. But then it follows as a corollary to this precept that all positions which are more or less unlikely would be rejected and only those admitted which the distinguished Professor Max Lange calls problems based on practical ideas, that is to say, those compositions usually termed 'studies and end games.