Test your chess: daily chess puzzle

Black to play and win

E Dizdarevic v A Greet, Tromsø Olympiad 2014

Solution

I saw this problem in Malcolm Pein's column in the Daily Telegraph during the Olympiad. I am an avid, and long term (forty year) reader of the Telegraph chess column- if my memory serves me right, written in the 1970s by Tony Miles and latterly by Malcolm. Each day I do the puzzle, if there is one. Most I solve by inspection or soon thereafter: some stump me, and then I cut them out, and solve them during spare moments. The above problem was one such stinker.

Eventually, I saw the solution: examine all biffs means 1…Bg2+! and after the forced 2 Bg2, bringing more pieces to the party leads to 2…Rc6! threatening the unanswerable Rh6+. The Rc6 rook lift could also be seen by following Purdy's maxim to look for nets– here, the white king is in a net.

Stockfish tells me that reversing the moves is equivalent, though it is to my mind, slightly messier: 1…Rc6 2 gh needs to be defeated, which it is by 2…Qf3+ 3 Bg2 Qg3 4 Kg1 Rf6! cutting off the f file, followed by Qh2 mate.

I have lightly annotated the game here.

http://www.viewchess.com/cbreader/2014/9/15/Game185814437.html

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