Daily Chess Puzzle

One nice angle of preparing a daily blog is that I sometimes stumble across things I otherwise never would. In producing the blog postings, I typically check on Megabase to see if the game is included (often it isn’t, especially for older games: I think hardly any from “Richter” have been in, so far). Searching for yesterday’s game, using “Krylov” as the search term, I saw that a Pavel Krylev beat Alexander Alekhine in 1933. I played through the game: a positional tour de force, culminating in a stylish finish. Vintage Alekhine, except he was the loser.

Since the start of 2018, I have decided to adopt the style of only saying which side is to play: and not giving an idea if the move wins or otherwise, unless on occasion I think signposting would be helpful. Instead, the problems are posed with the instruction to decide what you would play, as in a game.

White to play

Pavel Krylov v Alexander Alekhine, Prague 1933

Solution

1 Rg7! is obvious, 1…Kg7[] 2 Qf6+ Kh7 (2….Kg8? 3 Qd8+ picks the rook up with check) 3 Qf7+ Kh8[] 4 Rh6 Bf8[]

5 Rh6+! opening the way up for 6 Be5+ and mate on g7.

The whole game, which is in Megabase, is worth examining. White’s play was very impressive. A google search doesn’t reveal anything about Krylov, but (if it is the same player) Megabase has one game of his in 1933, a handful from 1959 and another handful from 1967.

FEN

3r3k/4R1p1/3bPp1p/1bpPp3/2q1P3/2B2QP1/5R1P/6K1 w – – 0 40