The main festival of chess, the 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad, has just begun in Budapest, Hungary. In Day 1, Ireland faced a relatively well-known opponent, Fiji, in the first round of the Open Section. In rugby, it would be a cut-throat game and challenge. However, in chess, Ireland is a considerably better team; the Elo-point difference over the boards is around 500 (0.94 winning chance). The end result (3½–½) is a not a big surprise. Similarly, the women faced Cameroon in the first round, and they won easily by 4-0 against them.
While the odds were in favour of the Irish players, games on the board were exciting, and new lessons could be learned. As a demonstration, let me summarise the game played on the Open Section, Board 4 (between Maharaj and Fitzsimmons). Can you find the checkmate there? In the second diagram there is a harder challenge: you need to find all of the checkmates in 2 moves.
Checkmate in 3
(from Maharaj-Fitzsimmons, Board 4)
Find all of the checkmates in 2
(from Gora-Tchouateu, Board 3)
The full game is here, and you can check if you have found the right answer:
The solution of the 2nd diagram is very hard. There a total of 18 checkmates there. Please, see them below.