Blitz Chess #3: A Puzzle to Tickle Your Brains

Here's a good brain teaser for you: try to find the forced mating sequence from this position. It's White to move and it's mate in 12.

Now, I didn't see that during the game since I didn't have time to calculate that deeply but if I had more time and was able to think calmly and calculate all the lines, it would have probably taken me too long and I would have given up and just moved whatever best move that I could think of without costing me the game. Which is what I did because I'm not a master. Anyway, when I looked at the engines, they showed that there was a forced mating sequence starting from this position so I just wanted to show it here.

I played a different line as I said but in that line, there was also a forced mating sequence. It's a much shorter one which I can calculate and I think I like it much better just because of the finesse of the mate. You can look at the entire game here but if you want to just check out the forced mating sequence, it starts from move 34.

Admittedly, I was a bit nervous at around that point as well because we were both close to mating each other's kings but I was first and so I committed to that and thankfully, it really was a forced mate. Actually, at first, I wasn't sure whether it would be mate or not but I just went with it because we were both down on time and I needed to make a move. So I thought of the only thing that would threaten something and prevent my opponent from mating me. I sort of calculated a bit and I knew that I should have a forced mate but being under pressure could make you lose focus and second-guess yourself so I wasn't sure if I was making the right call. In the end, I just went with it and the result was a good one at least.