Daily chess puzzle

As my regular readers will know, one of my habits is to cut out or copy positions I find difficult, store them away, and subsequently in spare time try to solve them, whether or walks, planes, trains or at other times. Today’s problem is one such.

White to play and win

Vishnu v Negi, Indian Championship, Jalgoan, 26.12.13

Solution

This took me a long, long time: a good part of a walk around beautiful Ullswater. And when I found my solution, 1 Bf6!, which wins, it turned out that White can also win, as he did in the game, by 1 Rd6!, a move I didn’t even consider (so, yet again, I failed to follow the Purdy maxim that I know so well: examine all biffs.

There are too many possible defences after each of White’s first moves for me to summarise by text; instead I have attached the game file, with some annotations.