It’s Your Move: daily chess puzzle # 68

White to play and win

A Andersen v J Johannson, Malmo 1964

Solution

Examine all biffs: I intuitively tried the correct 1 Rg6+! first, ignoring the poor 1 Bf7, let alone the fanciful Qa7 or Qd6+. After 1 Rg6, 1…fg or 1…Kg6 are the only two contenders, with 1…Kf5 at best just dropping two pawns after 2 Bf7…but at worst losing to mate in 1 by 2 Be4 mate!

Taking 1…fg first, it is clear Black is in a mating net: 2 Qh8+, and a combination of Be4/h4/f3 depending on Black’s order of moves.

So 1..Kg6 is best, when 2 Qg8+

and here 2..Kh6 is clearly best (2..Kf6 3 Qf7+ Kg5 4 Qg7+! and mates: the king is hunted down). After 2…Kh6 it isn’t obvious what to do: 3 Bf7? loses, to 3…Qf5, and Black can rustle up a defence, and then his material counts. In fact, 3 Be4! forces 3…f5, the point of which is to deny Black’s queen the use of that square, so 4 Qg8+ Kg6[] 5 Bf3 mates.

Difficult.

In the game, and in Teschner’s analysis, White ‘got there’ but there are imperfections in his moves and the annotation: chess was different pre-engines.

Now go back to the very start: Houdini assesses 1 Rg6+ as +7, initailly, rising after a few minutes to +11; but also gave 1 e4 a similar, slightly higher score, and also gives the same to 1 h4. Fascinating: the engines shows me that Black is so trussed up White should improve his position first, taking away f5 from the Q and K, and g5 from the K, first. Very instructive.