Daily puzzle: my pick of wonderful moves from 2016

I will start the New Year with a fairly random selection of moves seen during 2016: skewed to the last few months, since I only thought of making such a selection in December, and then had to try to recall some of my favourite moments.

Today, quite extraordinarily, I am picking another move from the same game as I selected yesterday, played in the fabulous sixth round of the equally fabulous 2016 London Chess Classic.

Furthermore, the move played wasn’t the best (per the engines/in the cold light of analysis) but for sheer imagination, what can I say?

So: today, if you don’t know the position (i) try to work out the best move; (ii) try to work out the actual move played, or, alternatively, list out all the candidate moves that you would consider if you were playing White.

 

Caruana v Nakamura, London Chess Classic 15/12/16.

Solution

1 b5?!?!

Before reading on, pause and try to work out the purpose of the move.

I watched the game live, on playchess.com, and was so puzzled that I took a screenshot and stored the position to look at later. Then, that evening, Jonathan Rowson gave the explanation on Twitter:

Later, I saw further commentary (not sure where). The move is prophylactic, aimed against both the Rb8-Qb4 assault on b2 but also weakening, perhaps, any Qb4-e1+ mechanism (e.g. by playing b2-b3).  Caruana apparently mistook the position of one of White’s rooks in a long line of analysis after the engine’s choice 1 Nf7+!! which wins, and preferred to improve that move by prefacing it with prophylaxis.

Extraordinary.