Cordingley puzzle 116 #chess

White to play and win

Solution

This one took me longer than it should have. I instantly saw the correct first move, 1 d6, but found the layout of the pieces hard to calculate through, even though I knew that I should be able to. Eventually, I calmed down, re-focussed, and saw enough: 1…Nd6 was the only move worth computing, and 2 Rb6 is a pretty natural follow up: what took me a while was to decide upon (after 3…cb) 3 Bb6 as being superior to 3 Qb6, but when I saw 3…Nc8 4 Bf5 I knew it was game over, especially since the Q is tied to the c7 square (4…Qd2 5 Bc7 mate). I only quickly checked 3…Nb5, reasoning that both 4 a4 and 4 Rb1 must be good enough. Checking with Houdini, it prefers 4 Rb1 as shown in the attached analysis.

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