Daily Chess Puzzle

Today’s problem is from the new book “The Shereshevsky Method” by Mikhail Shereshevsky. A very interesting new edition to my library.

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

This game was new to me; the 16 year old Magnus Carlsen defeated Mickey Adams for the second time in Classical chess in this game (the first time was at the Turin Olympiad, 18 months earlier, which I witnessed first hand, as then England captain). Today’s problem is to determine a plan for White.

Carlsen v Adams, World Cup 3.12.2007

Solution

I would never, ever, dream of playing the moves Magnus played.  I am sure I would have played 1 e3, allowed the rc8 to penetrate into c2, and then “seen what happened”. Not Magnus.

1 Nd2! Rc2 2 Rb1 Rac8

3 Nb3! Bc4 4 Na1!!

Wow!! If I had been Black, the shock of the move would have caused me to feel great pressure for the rest of the game. Mickey played 4..Ba2, exchanging a pair of rooks, and the N then returned to a1

The rest of the game was a long grind, Magnus eventually defeating Mickey. In preparing this blog posting, I see that Rogazenco has annotated this game in Megabase 2018- as well as Shereshevsky’s coverage in his book. Worth studying; I intend to re-read Shereshevsky’s annotations and work through Rogazenco’s too, but for now I have published this posting in admiration of the concept of Na1 covering c2.

FEN

r1r3k1/p2n1ppp/bp2pn2/8/3P1B2/P4N2/1P2PPPP/R3KB1R w KQ – 0 13