Cordingley puzzle 62

White to play and win

( in the game, white blundered and lost, prettily, see below)

Solution

Fairly straightforward, at least the first few moves. The first move, 1 Nf6+, is more or less the first move examined, and 2 Bh3 is also obvious. It is only the third move which needs thought, and to me, 3 Re4 is clearly better, 'bringing one more piece to the party', as Jacob Aagaard says, though 3 Qh6 is best of all, blocking black in. There is then time to bring up reserves, dependent on black's response.

That's all I calculated. Alas, in the game, white then blundered the game away. I suspect, but have no reason for saying so other than intuition, that the last few moves were in time trouble.

I never met Harry Golombek OBE (1 March 1911- 7 January 1995, but am ever grateful to him. It was his book which was my introduction to chess: I treasure the dog eared copy, which I read and read until it fell apart.

The loss to Popa was in round 16 of the Olympiad. I can well appreciate the effect of such a reverse: so I was pleased to see that in the remaining two games he played, first he drew, then he won a nice but scrappy game against another illustrious author, Al Horowitz, in England-USA.

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