It’s Your Move: daily chess puzzle # 206

White to play and win

Unzicker v Szabo, Bamberg 1968

Solution

I failed on this one, the strongest move being beautiful: 1 Bb5!!

Instead I chose the “quite good” 1 Bg4 which with best play leads only to a smitheren of an advantage to white.

After 1 Bb5!!

Rb5 2 Re5 Qf6 3 Nb5 Bb5

White has a surprisingly large advantage. Black can’t defend on the black squares; his king is unprotected, and his Nb6 has no stability after b3 and a4-a5: all these amount to a tangible advantage to White.

I have provided more annotations in the game file here.