Daily chess puzzle: Garik Kasparov

Today’s problem is from the July 1979 Chess magazine. I have hundreds (many hundreds) of magazines on my book shelves, and I thought I would dip into them; and thought I would start with going forty years back.

Whilst my previous postings from this magazine have been from the puzzles page, July 1979 was when the new kid on the block, Garik (now Garry) Kasparov arrived on the scenes, as far as English chess magazine readers were concerned. Chess printed 8 of Garry’s games, mostly annotated, all terrifying to the seventeen year old (same age) me.

A powerful face and a powerful personality

We salute Garik Kasparov

As has been my custom on this blog for a while, I 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

Kasparov v Marovic, Banda-Luka 1979

Solution

Garry played 1 Rf3, and apparently remarked that this was the strongest move he played in the whole tournament. Chess shows the game continuation after 1…f6, but also gives a line after each of 1..Bf6 and 1…Bd3+.

I won’t give the lines. The game is in Megabase, and is the type of position which only deep analysis would give justice to. For what it is worth, my iPad engine (SmallFish) isn’t impressed with Garry’s line after 1…Bf6, thinking Black is better: but maybe there is a horizon effect, and if I put the line onto deep analysis on my laptop, a different evaluation would emerge.

FEN

r4r2/pp2bp1k/4p2p/qb2Np2/3P3P/2PB2R1/P2Q1PP1/1K1R4 w – – 0 1