Cordingley puzzle 57

White to play and win

Solution

I have learned enough about the selection of puzzles in Cordingley that I knew were to stop. In a modern puzzle book, there would be a strong presumption that the winning line ends in mate or overwhelming advantage. With The Next Move is… , I know that often the main lines lead to a good or strong advantage, but not an immediately terminal one.

So, here, after the obvious 1…Nf6+, and the forced line included ..Bf4+ Qf4. I assumed black would then take the queen (in the game, Alekhine played Qe1 instead) and then I was choosing between fe or Re7: in my visualisation of the end result, I tended to prefer Re7, for qualitative reasons: hits the Bb7; the f6 pawn locks in the black kings, control of the e file/seventh rank; but recognised that fe was likely also good, with in both cases there being the imminent capture of the d4 pawn. I assessed either position as strong advantage to white; Houdini assesses them as around +3, and after it shows me a few lines, I can see where it is coming from, but the great extent of the advantage isn't obvious to me.

As a puzzle, then, not great: the main line is transparent. Of more interest is that the loser was Alekhine. He was then 21, so getting near his peak, so I also checked what could be found about his opponent. A quick google resulted in:

His game versus Spielmann seems to be more prosaic: but clearly a very strong master, to defeat two such titans.

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