Daily Chess Puzzle

I’ve recently just come home from my first visit of 2018 to London; for me, no trip there is complete without popping into Malcolm’s Pein’s shop and buying some books. This time, amongst those I bought were a 2015 book which I had been hoping to buy for a while, but which has long been out of stock at Amazon (which I hate to use for chess books) and at my preferred chess vendor, Malcolm’s shop. But this time, I was pleased that GM Ramesh’s Fundamental Chess: Logical Decision Making was in stock.

His very first diagram is today’s puzzle: what would you play? The puzzle sets the tone for what I suspect, from my dipping into it so far, is a really instructive book.

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

Carlsen v Aronian, Bilbao 2008

Solution

1 d5!!

A move I would never, ever, consider. And, alas, as soon as I saw the move in the book, I had vague recollections of seeing the game 10 years ago. The move doesn’t win, but expands the scope of at least two of White’s pieces (Bb2 and Nf3-d4)  whilst Black’s king is in the centre and he is still a move or two from castling.

Not a winning move, of course, but incredible ingenuity; maybe silicon created, but stunning nevertheless. The game is in Megabase, with detailed annotations by Igor Stohl.

FEN

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