Cordingley puzzle 83

Black to play and win

Solution

Another Houdini surprise. I felt the solution was fairly trivial, 1…g4 2 hg h3, noting that none of white's minor alternatives, such as 2 Re1 smiting the queen, do anything: white's space is cramped, his piece coordination poor, and black must simply be better.

I was surprised when I looked at Cordingley's solution, to learn that 2…Ng4, he says !, was played, and won. I felt it was a flashier-than-necessary approach. When keying the game (which is not in Megabase) into Chessbase, and checking with Houdini, I found that 2…Ng4 is in fact ?, flawed, by the wonderful 4 Rb7+!!. Who knows what the time factor was, because Rb7 is somewhat obvious- when I checked my 2…h3, I looked at how fast white's counter play was, with both 3 Rb7+ and 3 Qa4- not fast enough, but at least the concept of Rb7+ was in my head, and it comes with massive power once the R has move from d8, and the Queen can go to d7 from g4: examine all checks, examine all smites, as CJS Purdy says.

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