Daily Chess Puzzle

Today’s problem is from the 1972 book “Chess Combination as a Fine Art”, a book based on articles published in the 1950s-1960s by Kurt Richter.

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: in the last two days we have examined 1 Qe6 and 1 R1f7; neither of which are strong: What is White’s strongest continuation?

Kornfilt v Hukel, corres 1965

Solution

1 Nf6!! wins:

: the ‘point’ is that after 1….Qg4 the zwischenzug 2 Ne8!! wins.

Lovely; and hard. It gave me great pleasure when I solved this one.

FEN

2r1r2k/4R1pp/p7/1p6/2nqN1Q1/P5PP/1P5K/5R2 w – – 0 1