Puzzle from Wijk aan zee

Today is the first round of the annual Tata Steel tournament, and whilst I have principally been watching the top games (a great day, with yet another rook and pawn endgame for me to study as Karjakin outplayed van Wely [i hope Alex Baburin or Karsten Müller explain it], and a mystifying victory by Caruana over Gelfand- mystifying in the sense that I hadn't a clue what was going on), the game Goudriaan-Zhao Xue was entertaining. As I write this blog, black has just won, with an endgame mate, but I think Goudriaan could have won much earlier.

White to play and win

Solution

White played 1 Be6, and the game went on. However, 1 Ng5! is far stronger. If black doesn't take, then white is just a pawn up with a menacing knight, so 1…hg 2 Rd6!, exploiting the fact that the Qf6 is tied to the Rh8.

Then, 2…Qg7 3 Rh8+ Qh8:

This was the limit of what I could visualise, and I thought 4 Bg6 would be strong, preventing Re8: and with three pieces in the attack, I thought white would have something. I also, when appraising 1 Ng5, thought 4 Qb7 might be a bale out.

When I entered this into Stockfish, it immediately said 4 Bh3!! is +7, and playing a few possible defences reveals that this is so. If black defends with 4…Re8, white checks away, picking up the g5 pawn, and black's king can't flee to the queen side, especially via white squares, because of discovered checks on the h3-c8 diagonal. 4…Re8 5 Qf5+ Ke7 6 Re6+ Kd8 7 Qg5+ Kc7 8 Qf4+ and the checks to go on and on. My 4 Bg6 is also shown as +3, but I can now see that the g6 square is needed for a major piece, whilst 4 Qb7? is said to be equal- whether it is, I don't know.

Finally, there is nothing special on 4 Bh3!!: Stockfish says 4 Bg4!! is just as good, and perhaps it is even better: maybe in some lines the bishop can check on h5.

The game, with my brief comments is here, posted with the One-click facility of Chessbase 12.

http://www.viewchess.com/cbreader/2014/1/11/Game689994546.html

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