One of my readers has commented on this recent puzzle.
My solution was superficial: the 'obvious' move to me, it being a puzzle, is 1..Qf3, which wins easily enough.
However, my reader spotted 1…Qb2! which Houdini confirms is even stronger; and Houdini tells me even 1…Bf5 is better than 1…Qf3: though strictly we are only dealing with only alternative ways to win an overwhelming position.
I have updates my Chessbase file and added some light annotations below.
Posted with BlogsyWhite to play and win
Solution
I scored poorly on this one: less than half marks, perhaps. I quickly focussed on 1 Ng6, noting that 1…Qg7 2 Ne7+ is hopeless, so that 1…fg is forced. Then 2 Qg6+ Qg7 3 Rd8+ Rd8 and then horror of horrors! -I had thought that my rooks were doubled on the queen's file. Maybe Ivanchuk can visualise endless lines sightless (I mention Vassily since often when I have watched him he spends a lot of the time staring up into space- of course, many players can do this); but there should have been a don't try this at home warning: I was solving this one on my holiday sunbed, 'solved it', checked Cordingley's solution, and only then saw the error that I had made.
As ever with such tactical, open, positions, the engines have more to say, with some lines given in the attached analysis. Houdini 3 doesn't think highly of white's second move (after 1e5 Bg2) preferring 2 Rd8 or 2 Qg2 to the move played. Houdini shows an incredible mating line overcoming an incredible defence: well worth playing through.
I knew it would be the case, but checked afterwards, and black was the artist Marcel Duchamp, who played for France in the Prague and some other Olympiads.
Yesterday was an important day for our family. We took our elder daughter Alice to Durham Universtiy to start her undergraduate course. A recent article on the BBC website about freshers' arrival day rang true: and particularly poignant is that the day marks the end of childhood.
Fortunately the sun was shining, roads were decent, the organisation of access and unloading very efficient so the day went very smoothly. And we left Alice to finish her unpacking in a lovely room, prime position central in college and overlooking the cathedral.
I don't know how I feel today: but I think of her all the time, with a mixture of happiness that she has gone to a great and lovely university and sadness that she her room is now empty.
The heading of this blog is the motto of St Chad's: its translation is 'not yours, but you'. It means that the college aims to care not where the student is from, what their means are, but what is inside them. Happily there is a lot within Alice, and I look forward to her flourishing over the next three years.
Black to play and win
Solution
A rest day: 1…Qf3 is 'obvious' and the calculations are quite limited:
- Check that the main line, 2 gf Bh3+ 3 Kg1 Rae8 wins;
- Check there are no 'funnies', like white back-rank mating black: there aren't.
In the main line, white can grovel, with 4 Qf1 Bf1 5 Kf1 but then 5…d2 and the game is over.
Black to play and win
Solution
Before I checked with Houdini, I thought that I messed this one up. Yes, I found a nice way to win, 1…Rf3!, when 2 gf Nf3 is carnage, if he wanted, white could struggle on with 2 Ng3 and it is messy, though 2…Rb3 keeps everything under control. Far simpler, if you can see it (and I couldn't) is 1…Be4! 2 gf Nf3!!, the point of which I failed to see at first, but is 3 gf Rd2 mating. However, Houdini actually prefers 1…Rf3 (-16) to 1…Be4 (-12) although of course both assessments are so high so that the comparison is meaningless: it suggests white can grovel on by 2 Qa7 after 1…Be4.
Well, no, not really. Alas, I don't actually have a claim to fame. And whilst in the loosest of senses I was #1 for six minutes, it is not in a very important way; in fact, in a very trivial way. But being the wrong side of 50, one has to clutch at straws, however flaky.
Playchess.com, where I play most of my 3 minute per player blitz chess, has recently added to its homepage the board on its site. I suspect the algorithm is something to do with the combined rating of the two players, or maybe the rating of the higher played, but yesterday I was that player/that pairing.
(The astute reader will see that I have used all the imagination of a chartered accountant in devising my pseudonym: allanbeard )
Oh, and I didn't even get a full six minutes of fame, because my opponent resigned in the above position. So, I have now summited my personal Everest. Perhaps I should change my name to something beginning with K?
White to play and win
Solution
Not too hard: the first move, 1 Rf7! Is fairly obvious, when the only move which makes a fight of it is 1…Qd3. Then 2 Rf8++ Kh7[] 3 Bg8+ Kg6 (Kh8 Be6+ and Bf5+ skewering king and queen) 4 Nf4+ forking king and queen.
White to play and win
Solution
My initial appraisal landed on 'the move my hand wanted to play' being 1 Nf7, after which 1…Rf7?? is trivial, so only 1…Kf7 needs to be worked on. It didn't take long to find the tempo gaining manoeuvre 2 Qf3+ K-moves 3 Qh3 after which it is game over, the precise means being dependent on where black's king moves to.
A nice puzzle, not too challenging, but not simple.
Today, I had a lovely day at work. I made a keeping-in-touch call to a former colleague, had a really nice chat, including talking about another colleague who is about to return from her maternity leave, at which point my former colleague told me that within a month, he too would be a father.
Not remarkable, unless you know that his wife had had a life threatening illness, and I had presumed that, alas, there marriage would be childless. No, fortune has smiled, and I sailed through today on a wave of happiness. By sheer coincidence, my soon-to-return colleague also called in with her baby, rounding off a red letter day.
Less remarkably, my former colleague reads my blog and tries the chess puzzles. In discussing their level or difficulty, he mentioned it would be nice to have a puzzle with a queen sacrifice and mate. So, if that is taken as a hint, here is today's special puzzle.
White to play and win
(Level of difficulty: first move, fairly easy; calculating it to the end: hard)
Solution
1 Qf6+!! Bf6 2 Bf6+ Kh6 3 Rf5 when if 3….Ng7: [3…Ng5 loses to Bg5+/Bf6+/Rh5 mate, for instance]
4 Rh5+!! Nh5 5 g5mate. Spectacular, and fitting for today's news.
White to play and win
Solution
I think I made hard work of this problem, or maybe it is indeed hard. I do find some positions easier to visualise than others. Here, the spread out pieces, the threats and counters, the pinned Ne4, LPDO Rd1, threats of first rank rate, made visualising complex.
For a good while, I focussed on the wrong move: 1 Qf5; why I chose this one, before settling on 1 Qg5, I don't know. It meant that I looked at a lot of lines where the black queen got to f3, dislodging the stability of the Ne4, and hitting the LPDO Rd1: I kept trying to find the (nevertheless) winning blow, eventually giving up.
Next, I looked at 1 Bg7, which is a cute switch of move order. Again, it doesn't appear to quite work, at least before I check the position with an engine.
Eventually, I stood back, recalled the motto 'long variation, bad variation', and refocused: 1 Qg5 came to mind, and things quickly fell into place. The ideas found with 1Qf5 now work far better, and proving it was a solution was not difficult.
On reflection, why wasn't 1 Qg5 obvious to me? It should have been.
allanbeardsworth 