Hi!
Since I posted last week’s newsletter about puzzles with a slightly better move I have been thinking about how to improve this idea. I also got some useful feedback, which made me think of this next idea.
The idea I got was to find positions where the masters missed a move that had a 1.5 eval or better and where the second-best move was no better than 0.5. In this way, I would get a mix of tactical and strategic positions where a strong player missed a great (or obvious) move. There are also some really beautiful missed moves that I think you will find quite challenging to solve!
I wrote a python script and started extracting puzzles from a pgn-database. After running the script for around 24 hours I had around 250 puzzles. I then made a deeper search filtering and then I had 104 puzzles left. I also created a neat layout which I think turned out great.
If you like the puzzles I will fine-tune the concept and extract more puzzles for a larger book, but right now let’s just test this out.
The pdf is supplied with the solutions that state the top move in the position and the move played by the player in the game. There is also a link to two Lichess studies with all the positions, so you can try to figure out why the best move is best.
Paid subscribers can download the pdf below. Remember this is a work in progress.