It’s Your Move: daily chess puzzle # 172

White to play and win

Rossolimo v Blomberg, San Juan 1967

Solution

A standard theme, one which, if you know it, you see instantly: 1 Qg6!

Taking the Nf6 is mated by Qf6+ and Rg3+, so 1…fg 2 Ng6+ hg[] 3Rh3mate. A nice end to the rook lift.

However, there is more to the problem:

1…Qc2!? 2 Rh3!!

and, perhaps harder,

1…Ng5!

There are various lines: briefly 2 Qg5 Qd8! 3 Nfd7!! Qg5 4 Nf8 and White is winning, but the game goes on.

So:

1 Qg6! isn’t best at all! The engine immediately pops up with 1 Qe6!

This is cleaner, but far less pretty.

P.S. I wanted to see how the position arose, but the game isn’t in Megabase nor on chessgames.com, and my googling hasn’t found it. If anyone is interested enough and can find it, please let me have the game score. Thank you.

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