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this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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Those two being:
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Kxd8 Ba5Ke8 Rd8#
I can never understand this kind of puzzles.
Why the heck it's always assumed the opponent will play like an ass? Block the pointy hat on a5 with the mob on b6 instead?
Double check.
King has to take queen.
When Bishop moves it's a discovered check with the Rook.
You cannot block both checks therefore King has to run.
Open spot for Rook to move to back rank.
Checkmate.
It's all forced.
You're correct, my bad!
How often do y'all think mate in two can happen? I assume it works less often on higher elo players but lower maybe they don't yet know how to expect and block it?
WDYM? In this and many other cases, it is forced. Mate in two nearly always precedes mate in one, unless there is a blunder that leads to it.
I'm thinking about this in terms of how often it can be forced before the pool of people you go against shifts towards not reliably being able to force it because higher skilled people see things coming sooner.
Well there is a somewhat concrete way to determine this, or at least the lower bound. For a given set of games youโre interested in (e.g. FIDE games from the last 5 years for ratings from 1800 to 2200), how many ended in not draw or resignation but mate and didnโt have a blunder in the last move. There would still be more in the games that ended in resignation because they saw it coming.
But that may be the actual crux of what youโre saying. What level does one reach before they see it coming early enough to resign? I guess that is an interesting question.