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'Looking for trouble' puzzles: do you smell the danger?
Looking for 'Defensive move' puzzles by starting from existing puzzlesLichess puzzles are the result of analysis of games played on the site, where a single 'blunder' move completely changes the evaluation, and where there is one move, or series of moves, that is winning for the opponent.
Sometimes when I have worked out a puzzle on Lichess I have a look at the blunder that 'caused' the puzzle. What should the player have done instead? In some cases, it turns out that there only is one move that is OK, while all other moves are a blunder.
It then struck me that these positions are themselves a puzzle: there is one, and only one move, that does prevents the opponent from getting a tactic.
Here is an example:
In this position, white played 11. Nxd5, threatening a double check by taking the knight at e7. The only way to prevent this is by taking the knight with 11...Ncd5. All other moves allow white the tactic.
The position is derived from Lichess puzzle adjva4.dpdns.org/training/HLtPy (from game adjva4.dpdns.org/O9S2GyVM). Here, black played 11...hxg5, leading to the position where the original puzzle starts.
I have collected a bunch of these positions and present them here in a study. I like to call these puzzles "Looking for Trouble" in honour of the excellent chess content producer Dan Heisman (who wrote a book with 300 of such puzzles).
Another way to look at these positions is as blunder-prevention puzzles. They are pretty hard, because you'll often have to look a couple of moves ahead. But I think they are a very good and important puzzle variant to get better at chess.
Lichess has a puzzle category 'Defensive move' which is very similar - it is described as "A precise move or sequence of moves that is needed to avoid losing material or another advantage." I don't know how these puzzles are found. But I think 'my' approach, by going through existing puzzles, and looking at the move before the blunder, could yield many more of them.
Here are 63 of these puzzles. Enjoy!