Thursday, January 01, 2009

The twelve puzzles of Xmas


White to play and draw

7 comments:

Tom Chivers said...

I have to confess that despite having seen the solution to this one before, I failed to solve it this morning. Bodes well for 2009!

Anonymous said...

Kc8 forces the pawn to move then b5 kd7 b4 kd6 bf5 and kd5 lets black catch the b pawn. Guess who didn't go out last night!

ejh said...

You mean White?

I was asleep by midnight. Hurrah!

ejh said...

(John's line is a little wrong in detail, by the way)

Anonymous said...

Ke5 is needed to attack the B rather than Kd5 I think. I have seen this somewhere before- I would guess Secrets of Spectacular Chess. John Carlin posting in the comments section? What's this? A New Year's resolution John?
Andrew

ejh said...

Actually I think Andrew's right - sorry, I'm not seeing straight today.

Will post source etc when I've had a coffee..

ejh said...

OK, I never did get my coffee yesterday but having had a bucket-sized espresso this morning, I can tell you that John's line, as amended by Andrew, is correct.

The puzzle is by AV and KV Sarychev, Shakhmatny Listok, 1928. I found it searching among the Chessbase Xmas puzzles for 2002.