Test your chess: daily chess puzzle # 40

White to play and ?

D Morschel v O Santos 1974

Solution

I can well imagine in a game white resigning here, especially if it had been one hard defensive slog, and the motivation to continue the fight had ebbed. But seeing it is a problem with a solution, and seeing that neither of the queen checks nor the rook check are anything, it is natural to try 1 e5+!, and immediately one sees possibilities.

If 1…de?? 2 Qh4 mate is pretty, as is 1…Qe5?? 2 Qh4 mate, so there is a poor choice between 2…Ke7 and 2…Qe5. Reitstein doesn’t bother with the former, and he is right to, since 3 Qc7+ is eventually mate…the queen and rook combine in checking heaven and somehow the rook drops, and then it is mate.

(Stockfish confirms it is mate in a few moves after 3…Ke8 4 Rg8+)

So 2…Ke5 is forced, when 3 Re3+ enters a Q v 2R ending, which Reitstein says is won for white because of the insecure positon of black’s king. That presumably means that white won the game, but I am not convinced that the resultant position is won:

Black to play

Black plays 4…Rd5[], an only move, but sufficient to I think at least cause white significant conversion difficulties. There’s no mate, and Stockfish doesn’t show me a forced tactical line whereby a rook drops off, so it is Q+3 v RR+3: a draw, I suspect.

I will try to find the game in a database to see whether my conclusion is erroneous. If it is, I will add a further posting, though reader’s are welcome to post their own comments.

Update: having arrived back home after holidays, I have now had the chance to look at Megabase, do a Google search, and also look at a file I have of South African games. Alas, this game isn’t in any of these, so my conclusions remain ‘untested’.

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