Test your chess: daily chess puzzle

White to play and win

allanbeard v mega ICC 2013, 3 minute blitz

Solution

1 Be6! with the idea of 1…de 2 Rc1! 1-0; if 1…fe 2 Qh5+ and one of the rooks drops off. If 1…a6 then 2 Be5 Qe5[] 3 Bd7+ Bd7 4 Re1.

Observant readers will have seen a theme from my games from the last several days: they are all from the Morra gambit. The Morra is a rubbish opening despite the fact that I love Marc Esserman’s book on it, and despite the fact that it is so easy for black to come out of the opening simply a pawn up, and then for white to suffer a dull death. However, it is fun to play, and fairly often you can light the board up. The above position is more or less theory: the desperado throwing away of the Bc4, normally on b5, to gain a tempo to play Rc1, is a theme of many successful Morra attacks.

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