Skip to main content

All Questions

Tagged with
14 votes
1 answer
3k views

Checkmate in ω² moves with finitely many pieces

The post Checkmate in ω moves? has inspired a lot of discussion and mathematical research into positions on an infinite chessboard where white can mate in a transfinite amount of moves. The current ...
Andreas Tsevas's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
277 views

Mate-in-N problems where N scales indefinitely with board size

Motivation - Long range mating patterns This question is inspired by my recent interest in infinite chess and the post on MathOverflow Checkmate in ω moves?. Since my chess endgame skills are quite ...
Andreas Tsevas's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
417 views

Number of distinct checkmate positions

What is the number of distinct checkmate positions in each of the following categories given the following conditions? We are not interested in whether the position can be forced or not or even what ...
Playingwithnumbers's user avatar
11 votes
3 answers
2k views

How to solve this puzzle of Martin Gardner?

Martin Gardner mentioned the following "chess" problem in his column, Mathematical Games, for Scientific American (he got it from Smullyan, who learned about it from a high school math ...
Favst's user avatar
  • 221
-4 votes
1 answer
222 views

What is the total number of KNN vs K checkmate positions?

What is the total number of KNN vs. K checkmate positions? Assume that White is checkmating. Firstly the Black king must be mated on a corner. It is impossible to do it on the edge. The calculations ...
Rewan Demontay's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
347 views

How many two move checkmates exist?

I am well aware that Fool's Mate exists. But how many two move checkmates exist in total?
Rewan Demontay's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
392 views

Knights necessary to mate king on large finite board

How many knights would be necessary to mate opponent's king on large finite boards, like a billion times a billion squares? Are they fast enough to surround the opponent's king in a constant number of ...
hoacin's user avatar
  • 3,286
6 votes
1 answer
749 views

Checkmating with two bishops

Let White have the two bishops. Given any setup, has the maximum number of moves to forced mate been calculated on an nxn board (for large enough n)? If not, are there any bounds on this number? Of ...
Paul Burchett's user avatar
19 votes
1 answer
2k views

How many such positions are there? (chess/math checkmate puzzle)

I'm interested in this kind of position: There are only 4 pieces on the board. If Whites goes first, they can checkmate in one move. If Blacks goes first, they can checkmate in one move. For example: ...
Mike's user avatar
  • 293