Mind-blowing Chess Puzzle – The Luzhin Defense

In this video, you will see a mind-blowing chess puzzle from The Luzhin Defense, which is a romantic drama film released in the year 2000. The film centres on a mentally tormented chess grandmaster and the young woman he meets while competing at a world-class tournament in Italy. The screenplay was based on the novel The Defense (or The Luzhin Defense) by Vladimir Nabokov.

Nabokov based The Defense on the life of the German chess master Curt von Bardeleben, who seemingly committed suicide in the year 1924.

After the position shown in the video arrived, they had to adjourn this position but, unfortunately, in the movie he (like the person in real life, Bardeleben) actually committed suicide. He had troubles getting to the venue, he was put in the middle of nowhere by his old chess coach, who didn’t want him to win the match.

And when he did get back, he was greatly disturbed. So, his wife had to play the final moves out as he had written out the combination, which wins here for Black.

♕ How to succeed in chess? (FREE e-book):
♕ How to analyze your games (FREE course):
♕ 7 Best Chess Opening Traps (FREE course):
♕ Quick Success in Chess (FREE course):
♕ Chess Training Plan for Rapid Improvement (FREE course):
♕ Chess Opening Fundamentals (FREE e-book):
♕ Chess Courses and videos:

9 Comments

  1. Beautiful. I like puzzles with sacrifices… Thanks for the analysis !

  2. i got it in 15 minutes instead of 15 seconds

  3. Nice video and nice chess puzzle. I would be working more on puzzles to try to improve my chess game, except I sense that doing so
    would make me a much slower player in Blitz games. I already lose a lot of Blitz games on time. It would be very good if there was some way to train my mind to look at a position and very quickly know if I should spend more time looking for a winning combination. I certainly cannot win a Blitz game if I start looking for a winning combination in every position. Any help someone can give me on this dilemma would be appreciated.

  4. Lol, Gryfon, you really botched all names here 🙂 Nice puzzle, btw, thanks!

  5. Got it. But I wouldn't have found if I weren't told beforehand, that there must be a solution somehow.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.