Test your chess: Reitstein problem 77

White to play: what result?

FH Nel v LR Reitstein 1953-54

Solution

Black is Leonard Reitstein, the compiler of the book. The game was a correspondence one, and in his hint, he said after playing Qa1-h1 he expected white to resign, but was shocked by white's next move.

I think you have to play 1 Rg4+! almost out of desperation. White has to check, and 1 Be6?? is clearly hopeless, whilst 1 Bh7+ looks intuitively less good than 1 Rg4- in the sense that g5 looks a better square to get to than checking on say d3 (after 1 Bh7+ Kh7).

Firstly, black has to take: 1….Kf8 gets mated after 2 Qh6+ Ke7 3 Rg7+ Bf7 4 Qe6+ etc.

I should say that I found the variations hard to fathom, and had to set the pieces up on the board to spend the time focussing on the problem. So, what after 1…hg 2 Qg5+? (Question mark for the question, not for the move). 2…Kf8 looks best (2…Kf7 3 Bg6+)

I don't know why, but I found visualising the consequences of this position hard (from the initial position). For a while I couldn't see that 3 Qf6+ draws: 3…Bf7 4 Qh8+! (I kept looking at Qd6+ and Qh6+) Ke7 5 Qe5+!. Once I saw that 5…Kd8?? gets mated by Qd6+, I knew that the king was locked into the king side endless checking, and the problem had been solved. But my analysis wasn't clean or confident, and I also wasted time on 3 Qh6+?? before seeing that the king escapes, and black wins.

I should add that 1 Bh7+?? loses: deft movement by the king ends the checks: 1…Kh7 2 Qd3+ Kh8! 3 Qd4+ Kg8! 0-1: fancy footwork by the king, but not hard to find.

I wonder if my readers found the problem similarly hard? I am not saying it is unsolvable, just for some unknown reason I found that the checking with bishop and queen/keeping the king in its cage/ hard.

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