Excuses, excuses

Fortunately, I can solve the vast majority: Alex Baburin or his other editors tends to choose a good mix of staightforward, average and fiendish ones; the ones which are most annoying of those which look simple, but aren’t; and those which I can’t solve, despite several or many attempts.

Such as this one:

I have reversed the board, for this ‘black to play and win puzzle’. [Try to solve now, before reading further]

I tried to make the pin 1…Bd7 work, but couldn’t, with 2 Qa3 unpinning successfully; and there seemed nothing further in the position.

Failing, I looked at the solution, and stumbling with it, intrigued by it, I found the game in Chessbase. Looking now at the position a move before,

Here, white played Nb5. Now, thinking of excuses as to why I couldn’t solve the problem, if I were playing black, I would perhaps think that Nb5 moved the knight away from the kingside/away from protecting the R on d1, and then maybe turned my attention to ways of exploiting it, even of attacking the king. However, the solution does seem deep to me, and I have to admit that I think if I were playing black in a real game, I would have exchanged on b5 and presumed equality.

But, maybe, just maybe, I can use the excuse that with a problem, you can’t see the prior move)(s), so can’t see the flow of the game; and ignore the fact that engines don’t need to see the flow.

21…Bg4!! 22 Rd3 (22 Re1 Nf3+!! 23 gf Bf3 and the best white can do is 24 h3 Qg5+ 25 Kh2 Rd2! -+, with the difference being that when Bg4 encouraged the rook to leave the d file, it permitted Rd2: very nice, very hard to see) (22 f3 Nf3+ is easier to compute) Bd7 23 Qa3 Qg5! and now the deflection of the Rd1 to the third rank means that the Rc1 is unprotected, winning).

(position first seen in Chess Today 4456)

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