Daily chess puzzle: Check Mate #471

October 21, 2017

Another puzzle from Dragoslav Andric’s 1981 book “Matni Udar”.

White to play and mate Black

Visier v Meresau, Hungary 1979
Solution
I found this optically hard. I knew the solution had to be some mate which would be easy when found: but finding it wasn’t easy! As Jacob Aagaard says in his recent book, Thinking Inside the Box, the solution is ‘easy but difficult’.
Having tried everything else first (including trying some things several times, such as 1 Qg7+?? – no ‘Think like a Grandmaster’ Kotovian ‘look at every line once’ process for me-and 1 Nf7?? 1 Qf8+?? 1 Nd6??, I eventually stumbled across 1 Ne6!!