A nice puzzle for a wet day in the Lakes #chess

April 6, 2014

Just returned to our cottage in Borrowdale, in the Lake District.

This is where we walked today: a view from near Derwentwater towards Grange, a neighbouring village to ours.

However, it didn't look like this today, and in fact we couldn't see Grange in the torrential rain and mist. Seathwaite, a mile or so away, is official the wettest inhabited place in Britain, and today was one day why. Still, we are home and dry now, recovering, which for me includes looking on Playchess for today's chess.

One game struck out: a thirteen move crush by Miso Cebalo against Evgeny Vasiukov in the European Senior's Team Championship. The position below is a nice puzzle: previously (and will be shown in the solution below) there was a standard Bf7+ sacrifice, pulling out the black king with a subsequent Ng5+ and a threat then of Ne6 biffing the queen, but the finish is unusual, and pretty.

White to play and win

Solution

The solution is very pretty,vans unusual: 1 Nd5+ would be pretty standard, and indeed wins, but white played 1 Qd5!! which threatens both Qe6 mate and Qf7 mate, so that black must either play Qe8 or Qe7, both being met the same way- black played 1…Qe7 when 2 Nh7+! and black resigned: 2…Rh7[] 3 Bg5 mate. (There is only an absolutely trivial difference between 1 Nd5+ and 1 Qd5! – with the former, after 1…cd 2 Qd5 black can drag the game out with 2..Qa5+: so the puzzle is easy, but full marks to Cebalo for finding the accurate finish).