It so happened that the two 2200s were already playing each other despite three rounds remaining. Anyhow, they reached an interesting position towards the endless time trouble (90 minutes plus 30 seconds per move).
Jonas Lindahl - Anders Nilsson
This could be a suitable exercise - Black to move and win, I'll post the solution in the comment section for those too lazy to start their engine. Funny enough we looked at this afterwards but failed to find the correct moves, despite finding the first move!
A few moves later they reached the following position.
And here White found an interesting idea, playing the cool c5xb6! leaving the queen en prise but planning to resurrect her on b8.
Which led to this position:
with 20 seconds remaining on the clock Black decided to force the draw with Rg3+ and a perpetual.
Afterwards we must have looked at this for at least half an hour trying various ways of playing for a win for Black. For example: 1...Qf3 (threat Nh3#) but it fails to b8Q+ and white checks with the queen on d6 and e5 driving the king to h4 and then trades queens with Qg3+. 1...Rxe1+ (to remove Rb1-b7+) 2.Rxe1 Qf3?? fails to b8Q+ and Qa7+.
Playing ..h6 or ...h5 to give the king some luft doesn't win either after e.g. 2.b8Q+ Kh7 3.Qc8 (>Rb8 / Qf5+)
Funny enough, as far as I recall we never looked at the best move for Black, which is 1...Rf3! with the point that after 2.b8Q+ Rf8 White must play 3.Qxf8+ Kxf8 4.Kxf2 and then Qxh2+ (or Qxd3) gives Black some winning chances but with 30 seconds per move it can still go either way...
1 comment:
The solution:
1...Rf1+! 2.Kg2 Qxe3!
(We only looked quickly at the follow up: 2...Rg1+ 3.Qxg1 and wrote it off as an approximate draw - though even here Black has the in-between 3...Qd2+! 4.Kh1
Nxg1 5.Kxg1 cxb4 with good winning chances)
3.Rxf1 cxb4 and the rest should be easy to win for Black.
Note that 3.Rxe3 is no improvement as 3...Rxb1 threatens mate on g1, so Black will get a passed b-pawn on top of his extra knight.
Post a Comment