**Five Checks & a Queen's Gambit Declined (Slightly)**

Five checks arrived, a curious sight,
A chessboard's dance, both dark and bright.
Nf3, Nf6, the pieces flew,
A bizarre ballet, quite askew.

Then g3, c5, a pawn's demise,
With Qb6 looming, a sly surprise.
"Sacré bleu!" the Frenchman cried,
As bishops clashed, and knights did ride.

dxe7, a sacrifice so bold,
A queen emerged, a story told.
With Qxh7#, the checkmate's sting,
A victory's song, the bells would ring.

The king lay prone, his reign was done,
A surreal game, beneath the sun.
"C'est magnifique," a whisper soft,
Five checks, a win, a joyful loft.

**Moral: Always check your moves, especially if they involve five checks and a French-speaking bishop.**

Some of Chess challenges have been a little too easy to achieve a challenge ending score fairly quickly.

The problem seems to be with the level of stockfish used. We want challenges to be able to doable for a large range of player abilities, but of course only the most skilled players will be able to optimise the challenge and win it.

I've been surprised at how poor low level Stockfish plays some of the challenges, where it doesn't seem to take an obvious opportunity to capture a piece. We'd be interested to hear players opinions on the preferred level of opponent for these challenges. Would it be better to increase to a higher level of stockfish (if so what level?) or should we switch back to playing against PS-Greedy-Two-Move?

The implementation of PS-Greedy-Two-Move, whilst weak in general, is consistent. It will always capture a piece that you leave hanging. Whereas Stockfish seems to just up its random blunder rate the lower the level, and so a challenge against stockfish becomes more about getting that game where it blunders repeatedly in a way that is beneficial for the challenge.

As for this challenge, I'd encourage players to attempt the same challenge against different bots, different stockfish levels and different PS-Greedy bots. There can still be some fun had with this week's challenge!

5 in row, 42 moves
playstrategy.org/IzwHK7wBnAxJ