Daily chess puzzle

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

Onescius v Gama, Rumanian Championships 1955

Solution

1 Nf3!! ef[]

2 Qg7+!!

and after simplification, White is better, objectively winning. For instance in this position:

The save of the century: this problem took me a while to solve, but it was pleasing to have done so. I hope Gama was complimentary in the post mortem.

FEN

r1b5/5k1p/2p3pb/p3p1P1/P3P3/2qp1P2/P1P4Q/2K3RR b – – 0 1

Note

Puzzled by how this game ended, I checked in Megabase, to no avail; and then googled, finding this in Edward Winter’s Chess notes.

So maybe the outcome of the game will never be known, or maybe it was drawn.