What are composed mating problems?
A composed mating problem is a position which didn’t occur in a real game, but was composed by someone. They usually don’t contain any unnecessary pieces on the board, have one unique solution and are usually much more difficult then your ‘normal’ mate in X problems. Here is one example:
In this post, I will mostly talk about mate in 2s since I mostly solve them. But everything I say can also be applied to other composed mating problems.
Why should you do them?
Critiques
Some people say that they think that composed mating problems are useless because they are too far removed from reality and that in a real game it’s way more practical to go for an easy win instead of the fastest one. You can certainly see this with the example from abouve, but I think that you should push yourself while studying and when solving these problems, you will learn much more than giving the fastest mate. In addition, composed problems often show the beauty and depth of chess, which might be reason enough to solve them.
Visualisation
I feel that my visualisation is trained most when solving composed mating
problems. The other side’s king has often many ways to slip out of the mating net,
so you need to visualise accurately how your first moves effect the mobility of
the other side’s king.
Here is one problem which will strain your visualisation muscels, even though it's just a mate in 2:
Imagination
Like with endgame studies, composed mating problems also train your imagination. In composed problems, the ‘obvious’ moves often don’t lead to success and you need to find unusual moves or piece setups. Practicing your imagination with composed problems will help you to see more uncommon moves in your games.
Schematic thinking
Composed mating problems are probably not the most effective way to train your schematic thinking, but I think that you train this skill more compared to solving ‘normal’ tactics. Often you need to think about the needed piece configuration to deliver checkmate to the opponent’s king since there are often no direct moves which you can calculate. It's often better to approach a problem with a question like 'How do I deliver mate?' instead of trying to go through many variations.
Where to find composed mating problems?
I have made a Lichess study which contains a couple composed mate in 2 problems, but if you want to solve more of them there are many books which
contain composed mating problems, some that I recommend are:
- Chess - Laszlo Polgar
- Rewire Your Chess Brain - Cyrus Lakdawala
- 100 Headachingly Hard Mate in Two Chess Puzzles - Martin Justesen
You can also look up many composed problems on the online database called ‘Yet another chess problem database’ and search for specific problems on the right hand side by selecting a theme (for example #2 for mate in 2) with the button next to the field ‘Stipulation’.