Daily chess puzzle: Check Mate #74
Another puzzle from Dragoslav Andric’s 1981 book “Matni Udar”.
Black to play and mate White
Jaffe v Kostic, New York 1919
Solution
1..e3! is natural (this being a puzzle) and the calculation is fairly linear: 2 Qf3 ed+ 3 Kd1[] Bc2+! 4 Kc2[] de+(Q) 5 Kb3[] Qe6+
This is nearly the limit of my visualisation. I was able to see that 6 c4? loses to 6…Rh3 pinning the Queen and the King; so the K has to move: in a game I would play this far, and then see what turns up: although I could see that Black can check and check again, and then likely take on b2 with check. Seeing the position when writing up this blog, I see all this is true, and in the game, White played 6 c4 when in fact Black didn’t play 6…Rh3, but played for mate with 6…Qb6+ and 7…Qb2+: it is mate either on b4 or d4.
allanbeardsworth 
Interesting — I’d rather solve it like this:
e3! 2 Qf3 ed+ 3 Kd1[] Bc2+! 4 Kc2[] de+(N)!? and win easily thereafter
Excellent suggestion: better than the line I gave (which was the line played in the game). Thank you for posting the comment.