This is from the New York Chess forum maybe someone could help lhelfgott out.

Old Chess Problem

Can someone please help. Many years ago I saw a chess problem composed in the
18th century. White had all his pieces plus more than one queen, and the
problem was for white to checkmate black With a PAWN, functioning as a PAWN (no
promotion) but first after getting rid of all his other pieces!! Can someone
steer me to where this problem has been published? My e-mail is
. Thank you.

PJDBAD wrote, on behalf of lhelfgott:

Can someone please help. Many years ago I saw a chess problem composed =
in the
18th century. White had all his pieces plus more than one queen, and th=
e
problem was for white to checkmate black With a PAWN, functioning as a =
PAWN (no
promotion)

There has been several problems of this type, but as they went out of =
style already
in the 19th century as being considered artificial, it may not be an easy=
thing to find
them without going back to rather old sources. And that is even assuming =
that you
recalled the problem correctly.

but first after getting rid of all his other pieces!! Can =
someone
steer me to where this problem has been published?

You may be lucky -- I've very recently began going through Lewis's Che=
ss Problems (1827)
in which I find this, problem 60, by Gianutio:

4k3/P7/1Bp3Kp/1bN4P/1N1Q2B1/3Q4/6R1/3R4

White to win with a Pawn in twenty-three moves, on condition of losing=
all his pieces
but the King and that Pawn. Black's pawns are not allowed to promote t=
o any pieces but
Queen.

All white's pieces are there, as well as one extra queen, and the conditi=
on seems to fit.
Could this be it?

(General readers, please note: the condition does not say that in orde=
r to produce a mate,
White *will* lose all his pieces, as anyone can see that Qd8 mates immedi=
ately, and that
'normal' mates are imminent in every move. It says that in order to solve=
this particular problem,
White may not mate until all his other pieces are gone ... and part of th=
e enjoyment of the
problem was probably that this mate is not with the pawn most people woul=
d expect it to
be. Apart from that, the 'problem' is about how white uses his strength t=
o force black
to do exactly as he wants.)

Lewis unfortunately does not provide original source, but as Orazio Gi=
anutio published a
book on chess (Libro nel qvale si tratta della maniera di giuocar' =E0 sc=
acchi ...,
Turin, 1597) containing 12 composed problems, I would expect that to be i=
t.

There seems to be a translation in English from 1817 (The works of Gia=
nutio, and Gustavus
Selenus on the game of chess. Tr. and arranged by J. H. Sarratt. London :=
J. Ebers, 1817.)
This is probably where Lewis found the problem.

The bibliographical information is from the catalogue of Cleveland Pub=
lic Library.

Eh, what? Solution? According to Lewis, and converted to modern algebr=
aic:

1.Qh8+ Ke7 2.Qh7+ Ke8 3.Re1+ Kf8 4.Re8+ Kxe8 5.Qh8+ Ke7 6.Nxc6+ Bxc6 7=
=2EQe5+ Kf8
8.Qdd6+ Kg8 9.Qde6+ Kf8 10.Nd7+ Bxd7 11.Q6d6+ Kg8 12.Be6+ Bxe6 13.Qh8+=
Kxh8
14.Qf8+ Bg8 15.Rg5 hxg5 16.a8Q g4 17.h6 g3 18.Qd5 g2 19.Qg5 g1Q 20.Bd4=
+ Qxd4
21.Qe5+ Qxe5 22.Qg7+ Qxg7+ 23.hxg7#


For those in the newsgroup interested in chess history, it's interesting =
to note that
the original is in descriptive notation, but moves are *not* consistently=
counted from
the mover's side, as one would expect. Move 1 is "First Q. adv. K. R. sq=
=2E & checks."
(i.e. black's K.R.sq.), and move 20 is "Q. B. to Q. fourth sq. & checks" =
(i.e. this time
it's White's Q4 that is meant).

--=20
Anders Thulin http://www.algonet.se/~ath

Anders Thulin wrote:

For those in the newsgroup interested in chess history, it's interesting
to note that
the original is in descriptive notation, but moves are *not*
consistently counted from
the mover's side, as one would expect. Move 1 is "First Q. adv. K. R.
sq. & checks."

It's not quite that bad -- it actually says 'to adv. K.R.sq.'. For some reason
I missed 'to' entirely and thought the notation to be ambiguous. But it's 'to
adversary's K.R.sq.' and so unambiguous.

Still curious that moves to the upper half of the board were notated as
being to squares of the adversary.

--
Anders Thulin http://www.algonet.se/~ath