White to play and win. A very natty move.
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I stared and stared at this last night and went through as many possibilities as I could think of. It was only because my finger slipped and I went through to the game that I was finally able to see it. Maybe my subconscious decided that it’d had enough or something.
More chess problems, more!
My son suggested Bishop to G5.
I give in tell us please
After about ten hours of analysis, trhe best I can do is this: White first shoos away the black bishop with his king, and then moves his queen to H5. He then has Black’s king on the run. But white can evade mate for quite some time, and there are endless permutations, so that’s probably not it.
But who cares what conclusions Farrell has reached? Anyone can click on the board and find the solution (Mr Fox, did you not read TimT’s comment?). The problem, dearest Nicholas, with supplying the link, is that it takes the social element (whether competitive or cooperative), out of the exercise, and with it about half the fun. We are left with a pointer to a puzzle, for purely private consumption.
Sorry James – if you’re complaining about the link being there. I didn’t realise it was. I actually removed the link, but didn’t realise that the board itself had a link on it, to the original game. Next time I won’t do that.
What a relief.
Just one more thing, and please forgive my lamentable ignorance of the conventions here. When you say ‘white to win’, does this mean I should be looking for a forced checkmate within a few moves? Or does it just that white can fundamentally strengthen its position — say, by gaining an advantage in captured pieces — in such a way that a good player would eventually win, after another twenty moves or so?
Bishop to E6?
James, I like puzzles like the above because they’re ‘white/black to win’ or ‘white/black to draw’ rather than ‘mate in three’. Mates in three are not ‘real life’. One’s only object in playing chess is to win, and though of course others differ, I find it irritating solving ‘mate in three puzzles’ when the puzzle is so obviously unlike any situation in a real game and/or the position is devoid of the main interest of a player which is in the merits of the position – ie the player who can mate in three can so easily mate in ten or fifteen more moves, that you wonder what the point of it all is.
So in short, ‘white to win’, is ‘white to initiate a series of moves to end in a clearly won game – a game in which a grandmaster would resign – as occurred in this game.
FDB, Black’s queen could then take the pawn and force an exchange of queens, which would throw the game open and probably lead to stalemate. White’s move has to forsetall this. I don’t think it can be done with the queen, so it effectively boils down to advancing the pawn to F6, or moving the bishop to B5.
Well the thing is I thought it meant white to win in ONE move. Also the link just doesn’t work on my machine. If I have more than one move to win then sure I can do that. No wukking furries mate.
It seems as if BH6, followed by the exchange of queens (necessary for black to avoid mate) and then BF3 wins a pawn, which with the two bishops ought to be a win for White.
But that doesn’t seem “natty” to me, so I’d go with Rafe’s son. There’s no obvious way for Black to stop either QH5 or PG6, and no obvious way out after that.
B-G5 sorts things out – click through from the diagram to the game. And it’s natty.