Another puzzle for an easy Reitstein day

White to play and win (hard, worth spending time on to solve)

B Cheng v Sukander, ch-AUS(6) Melbourne, 5/1/14: seen in Chess Today, issue 4810

Solution

A corker.

It took me a good while to solve, but when I did, it gave me a lot of pleasure.

There are several motifs at play here. The Qa7 is in a net, but (if it were black to move) then 1…Ra8 2 Qa8+ Ba8 3 Rc8+ and mate: there is a back rank motif. This can also be seen with the threat of a jump biff Rd7 Rd7 and Qb8 mating. Meanwhile, white's e2 pawn is LPDO. There are threats to biff like 1 Rb1: for a while, I thought the solution was 1 Bf3 or 1 e3, seeking to win the b6 pawn (by 2 Rb1) and that may be good, but wanting more, I looked for other lines.

Eventually I saw 1 Bh3! with the point that the Rd7 is tied to defending the Bb7, so must move to e7, when it is a LPDO, so that 2 Bc8!! then wins at least the exchange.

Beautiful. Perhaps if I had considered all biffs earlier, I would have found Bh3 faster; and likewise, Purdy exhorts players to consider all nets and ties, and, then too, the tied Rd7 would have been revealed.

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