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Weekly Challenge 81: Smothered Mate

#1

Weekly Challenge 81: Smothered Mate

Win a game of Standard Chess vs @PS-Greedy-Two-Move with a smothered mate. For this challenge we are defining 'a smothered mate' as a checkmate with a Knight that occurs when a King could have escaped checkmate if it could have moved into a square that is occupied by one of its own pieces.

Adjudication Criteria:
1. Most opponents pieces surrounding the King (count of opponent's pieces on squares that the King can normally reach)
2. Fewest moves (plies)
3. Earliest Entry

Closing Date: Monday 28th October 1200 UTC+0

#2

Oh wow

This is a very difficult challenge.

It is going to be interesting to see how players will sort this out.

#3

Yeah, this is hard, I can't find a good strategy... I hope this challenge is not the reason my streak gets broken

#5

Technically this is not a Smothered Mate 😁

But I got the idea of the challenge now.

#6

Not only technically. THIS IS NOT A SMOTHERED MATE.
Your king should be unable to move due to being completely surrounded by its own pieces.

#7

Question: would this not be 1 piece? Even if the pawn on f6 were not there Kf6 is illegal, and similar reasoning for g7.

#8

@oruro @Pokshtya
It was decided that a full smothered mate might be too tricky for some players, and so a more loose definition was decided upon for this challenge. If you do achieve a full smothered mate, it is likely to score you very well in this challenge!

@FangCheng
Whilst @Jheps entry only has 1 pawn 'smothering' the King (h7) this is enough to allow the position to qualify for this challenge. However, the first adjudication criteria is "Most opponents pieces surrounding the King" which is 3.

#9

Oh, ok, thank you; I asked not because of that line but because of this:
"when a King could have escaped checkmate if it could have moved into a square that is occupied by one of its own pieces"
I chose to interpret this statement as true if and only if
a) if it could have moved into a square that is occupied by one of its own pieces: were the piece not there, the king could move there and
b) when a King could have escaped checkmate: if the king moved there he would not be under check.
Again, sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for explaining.

#10

@FangCheng
The challenge is perhaps a bit misleading as there was a desire to make the challenge more accessible by allowing these partial smothered mates.
The qualification criteria "a checkmate with a Knight that occurs when a King could have escaped checkmate if it could have moved into a square that is occupied by one of its own pieces."
and the Adjudication criteria "Most opponents pieces surrounding the King" are two separate definitions.

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