Indian problem
The Indian Problem is a chess composition , published in 1845 by Howard Staunton in his chess magazine The Chess Player's Chronicle (February issue) under the title "The Indian Problem". A whole genre of chess compositions, the so-called Indians , arose from the basic idea of this composition . An analysis of the composition published in 1903 by Johannes Kohtz and Carl Kockelkorn , which was also entitled The Indian Problem , contributed to the popularization of the Indian idea . This book was at the same time the founding document of a school of chess composition that is still dominant in the German-speaking area today, the new German or logical school .
The original Indian and a corrected version
The Chess Player's Chronicle, 1845
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The "Ur-Indian":
Solution:
1. Bc1! b4 2nd Rd2 b5 3rd Kb1 (above) Kf4 4th Rd4 mate
Since the speed move (Kb1 or other) could also take place in the first or second move, there are numerous ancillary solutions and duals.
The critical move is Bc1 !. Its sole purpose is to make the intersection point d2 usable for the following adjustment.
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A stripped-down, correct and economical version:
Solution:
1. Bc1! (the critical move) e6 2. Rd2 Kf4 3. Rd4 mate
history
The composition was enclosed with a letter from India to Staunton, in which it was said that this problem had mocked the ingenuity of all in India to whom it had been shown. Staunton published it in the Chess Player's Chronicle , noting that this was the toughest four-move he had ever seen and that some of the best English players couldn't have solved it. He then used it regularly as a cover illustration for the chess magazine.
It was not until years later that it turned out that Staunton had received the problem from a British clergyman living in India (Reverend) named Henry Augustus Loveday (1815-1848). According to today's standards, this “original Indian” is incorrect, as it is often secondary and dualistic.
The idea of the "Indian" caused a sensation, there were numerous (correct) new versions, including by Loveday himself, Samuel Loyd and many other chess composers. But only over fifty years later did it contribute to the establishment of a new "school" of the chess problem, which at least in Germany to this day dominates the multi-pawns, namely the "new German" or "logical" school. In 1903 Johannes Kohtz and Carl Kockelkorn published "The Indian Problem - A Chess Study" in A. Stein's publishing house. They investigated the history of the "Indian problem", but above all they precisely analyzed its peculiarity in relation to other problems and as a result designed a whole program for the future of the chess problem. They clearly set themselves apart from the predominant practice in Germany of the variant problem (great difficulty, many variants, sacrifices, etc.), in which they themselves had been involved and that of Johann Berger in his book "The Chess Problem and Its Artistic Representation" 1884 had been codified.
The critical move
The core of the “new German” program by Kohtz and Kockelkorn was the sharply outlined logical idea, which should be presented in the greatest possible purity, without misleading accessories; all other criteria for the quality of a chess problem should be considered secondary.
This idea was the critical move here (the term comes from Kohtz and Kockelkorn). There are two long-stepped figures, in the case of the Loveday Indian tower and runner, whose lines of action (“lines of fire”) intersect at one point, the intersection (“point of intersection” in Kohtz / Kockelkorn). When either one enters this point, it blocks the other's line of action. If this situation is only created by a move whose sole purpose is to cross the point of intersection and thus make it usable, this move is called the critical move and the point of intersection is called the critical field.
In the case of the Indian, the two subject figures are white, and the sole purpose of the critical move is to enable the stone to be moved in the next move and thus to avoid black stalemate .
Only when one has fully understood this idea can the apparently nonsensical or harmful key move (the critical move) be found; you don't get it by trying it out.
For this very reason, the maneuver not only appeared to Kohtz and Kockelkorn, but also to the later “problemists” to be extraordinarily aesthetic. For over a hundred years there have been a large number of variants of the Loveday Indian.
Authorship
Who actually composed the “Indian problem” has not yet been conclusively clarified. Staunton had been in correspondence with Loveday since 1841. The letter containing the composition was dated August 1844 and was signed "Shagird", which Kohtz translated as "pupil". Oskar Korschelt , on the other hand, said in the German chess sheets that the word means "teacher"; he suspected that the Indian language teacher Lovedays had composed the problem.
Staunton himself was convinced that while Loveday was involved in composing the problem, he had not created it himself; he probably adapted it to the European style of playing, as Staunton wrote in a letterbox note in the Illustrated London News on October 13, 1855. Kohtz and Kockelkorn, on the other hand, held Loveday, the “student”, to be the author. In Loveday's letters, which have survived, no author is given for this composition. Herbert Grasemann stated in article 12 of a series of articles in the Deutsche Schachblättern that the authorship was still unclear.
Web links
- Original Indians, later versions of the idea and additional information
- First printing of the Indian problem in The Chess Player's Chronicle , Volume 6 (1845), p. 54. Online
literature
- Herbert Grasemann: One of the Reverend's ideas that made history . Berlin 1981.
- Johannes Kohtz and Carl Kockelkorn: The Indian problem - a chess study . Potsdam 1903; Reprinted in 1982 by Edition Olms, Zurich, ISBN 3-283-00074-3 . First edition online at scan.sh-kunstschach.eu ( memento from March 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (pdf, 35 MB, long loading time)