Cordingley puzzle 161 #chess

White to play and win

Solution

I enjoyed this puzzle. I fear that in a real game I might play some non-descript move, but, knowing it was a puzzle, I quickly landed on 1 Ne5! Of course, if as a mode of thinking I adopted Purdy's maxim to consider all smites then Ne5+ would have been looked at in game play too.

The capture of the knight is the main line I examined: 1… Kg8 is clearly bad, and 1…Ke8 gives at least a clear plus to white. So, 1…fe 2 Qf3+ and I thought the best defence was 2…Ke8, when 3 Bc5 Qc5 4 Be6 is lethal: one of those positions where black is unable to marshal a defence.

Switching on Houdini, it too prefers 2…Ke8, but inserts the zwischenzug 3…e4! to disrupt white: the net result being white is better, but not absolutely winning. I believe that one very common human trait, which I fall into time and time again, is to automatically recapture: engines aren't programmed that way, they look at everything: Houdini would never be surprised by a zwischenzug.

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