Daily Chess Puzzle: 50 years ago today

Today’s problem is another game between Bent Larsen and Heinz Lehmann, two players who featured in a recent puzzle taken from the 1972 book “Chess Combination as a Fine Art”, a book based on articles published in the 1950s-1960s by Kurt Richter. One of the pleasures of writing this blog, and using Megabase to find the games, is to learn more about different players, or see new games.

Today, having not long ago upgraded to Chessbase 15 (first impressions: some nice changes), and with its superb Instant Analysis graph, it is easy to see if games might be “interesting” or what their key moments are.

Today’s puzzle is having seen the red dip at move 33.

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.

Quite nicely, this game took place 50 years ago today

White to play: played 1 Kf3: what should Black have done?

Larsen v Lehmann, Palma de Mallorca 7 December 1968

Solution

1 Kf3? was a mistake; Black played 1…Kf6, and the game was eventually drawn, but 1…Ra6! rounds up the Pf2.

2 Kf4?? loses to 2…Rf2+ and 3….Rf5 mate, so all White can do is retreat, 2 Kg2 Rf6 3 Ra4

3…Rff2+ 4  Kg1 Rg2+ 5 Kh1 Rh2+ 6 Kg1[] Rbg2+ 7 Kf1

and Black is winning.

FEN

8/2R2pk1/6p1/r2p3p/p2P3P/R3P1P1/1r3PK1/8 w – – 0 34