Saturday, October 4, 2008

Oh No! Not This One Again!

Here's one of those positions that I have some sort of psychological aversion to solving. I don't know why, but every time I come to it I think "Oh no! Not this one again!".

Reinfeld position #871
White to move

Maybe because the solution is an ugly little bush of variations. Maybe because the first time I attempted it my solution was... different from Fred's. Maybe because it's the sort of position that's likely to arise in practice but it looks like White doesn't deserve to be winning it.

Who knows? I have some prejudice about it. I just don't like it.

The solution is really quite straight forward, we just put a gun to the King's head and march him to an out-of-the-way place where we can bludgeon him to death. It involves visualising a few mate threats where Rooks and the Knight combine, probably this is my aversion, it's obviously something I'm not too good at.

1. b4+ Kxb4 (1. ... Kb6 2. Rb7+ Ka6 3. Ra1#) 2. Rb7+ Kc3 (2. ... Kc5 3. Rb5# Crafty prolongs the death-agony by playing 2. ... Rb6 3. Rxb6 Kc5) 3. Ne4+ Kc2 (3. ... Kc4 4. Rd4#) 4. Rbb1 and 5. Rdc1# will follow.

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