A line from Nakamura-Kamsky

I was intrigued by the following position from the recent game between the top two American GMs.

In particular, Alej's laconic comment that after 25 Rd6 the c6 can't be defended. What about 25…Rc8?

The obvious reason was that 26 Re6+ might be mate: and it is easy to see it is after 26 …fe 27 Re6+ Kd7 28 Qf7+. But what, I thought about 27…Kd8?

At first, I thought black would squiggle out after 28 Qf8+ Kc7, noting that the Rc5 is not LPDO, being defended by the queen. The position stumped me, until eventually I had the lightbulb moment and saw 28 Qf7!. It's first threat is 29 Re8mate, and the defence 28…Re5 loses not only to 29 f4 but even better to the sideways shuffle 29 Rd6mate!

Not the most difficult piece of analysis, but nice enough, and I far prefer the light guiding annotations typically on Chessbase than the voluminous engine enhanced works: there is a pleasure in posing and solving such questions: thank you, Alej, for being laconic!

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