Game Positions: Italian Progressive Chess

Game positions from orthodox chess games often form nice exercises and puzzles. Game positions of variant chess games also can form such exercises and puzzles. One nice type of such puzzles is `mate in one turn' positions from Progressive Chess, whether it is the Italian, Scottish, or English variant of the game.

Depending on interest, it is planned to put here some positions of actual progressive chess games, just before the mating turn. Thus, the problem to solve is: find a sequence of some specified number of moves, such that the last move of the sequence is mate: the mated player doesn't move. While in general easier than composed problems, such positions form nice exercises, and may cost more time to solve than one would expect...

Position 1

The following position arrived in a game of Italian Progressive Chess, between Peter Coast and Paul Byway, in a small postal tournament, organized by Variant Chess. The tournament started in September 1995 and the games were published in Issue 21 (Autumn 1996) of Variant Chess. Paul Byway won the tournament with 5 out of 6; this was the only game he lost.

White:
King d2; Rook a1, h1; Knight b1, g1; Bishop f1; Pawn a2, b2, c2, g2, h2.

Black:
King d7; Rook a8, h8; Knight c6; Bishop d4; Pawn a7, b7, c7, e3, f7, g7, h5.

Italian Progressive Chess: 7th move

White moves 7 times successively, and mates black with his 7th move. He may not give check on earlier moves.

The moves leading to this position were: (white makes the odd moves, black the even moves):

1. e4
2. Nc6; d5
3. Qg4; Qxc8; Qxd8+
4. Kxd8; dxe4; h5; Nf6
5. d4; Bg5; Kd2; Bxf6; Bxe7+
6. Bxe7; Bh4; Bxf2; Bxd4; Kd7; e3+

Solution

The contest with this problem was: who is the first to send in a correct solution.

Fabio Forzoni was the first to send the solution. Congratulations, Fabio!