Cordingley puzzle 15

White to play and 'win'

For win, it is more 'and improve his position, against the best defence'

Solution

This one had me fairly stumped; I enjoyed it, taking a few sittings, to try to suss it out. First glance suggested white might have some advantage, but his queen is exposed, and black didn't have too many things to be concerned about.

At bullet, not that I play 1 minute chess, I would play 1 Qh4: and I made several attempts to make it work, but couldn't. At blitz, I would also probably play 1 Qh4 but at rapid, I would choose between it and 1 Bd3, so I tried this, and quickly saw this must be the 'solution'. In my prior thinking, I had also looked at LPDO ( the Qc7 being the only loose piece, but hardly an issue, or so I thought, and also biffs such as Bf4, Bf7, Bh6, none of which are anything.

After 1 Bd3, 1…f5 2 Qc4+ the 'point' is revealed: loose pieces do indeed drop off, and the knight is pinned, so doesn't protect e7: see the attached analysis.

Therefore, only 1…g6 had to be checked, and I could only see with certainty to as far as swapping the black squared bishops off, weakening his black squares by his pawn advances g6 and h5, and improving my knight by Nf3-g5-e4. This was where I stopped, assessing the job as done, knowing white's position had improved since the start: and my judgement was right. In the game, black then played a crass error, but Re6 would have shored up his defences and left everything to play for.

An enjoyable, if flawed, puzzle.

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