On December 1st (tomorrow!), our yearly Advent calendar is back, and a chessboard signed by Magnus Carlsen is yet again up for grabs!
If you didn't participate last year, it works as follows: Every day until Christmas, you will be able to open a door to reveal a chess problem. Each correctly answered problem is awarded one ticket in the drawing for a chessboard signed by Magnus Carlsen.
And even if you don't win the chessboard, your score shown on the leaderboard will earn you valuable bragging rights!
About the problems
The problems in the calendar won't be the usual chess problems you'd find in a book of chess puzzles. Instead of finding the best move, you'll get problems where you need to find out which moves have been played in the past, or the sequence of moves that lead to a certain position. You'll find unorthodox problems like helpmates, selfmates, and retrograde analysis problems, but no "Mate in 2" or "White to play and win"! If you want to practice these types of problems before we open the first door tomorrow, take a look at the last year's problems here.
How to join?
You need an account on adventofchess.com to submit answers. Register here (even if you did create an account last year, you need to create a new one now).
When logged in, you'll be able to submit answers behind each door. Each door is open for 24 hours, meaning that you can submit answers for Day 1 from midnight, December 1st until midnight, December 2nd (UTC). The answer is published after submissions close.
Good luck!