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.

Black to play: evaluate 1…Ne4, as played in this famous game

Solution

1..Ne4? lost to the now famous 2 Qd8+! Kd8[] 3 Bg5+ Kc7 3 Bd8 mate.

1..Be7 or 1…Be6 would have left White with a good advantage, but not a winning one. I’ve just updated to Chessbase 15 and their Instant Analysis graphs are nice:

FEN

rnb1kb1r/pp3ppp/2p2n2/4q3/4N3/3Q4/PPPB1PPP/2KR1BNR b kq – 0 8