White to move
This exercise was part of my lesson of the week just before the winter holiday last December, where it was paired with a similar position from one of my online blitz games (see "Pattern Training").
This morning, while reading an old classic that I acquired yesterday, I found a similar position.
White to move
This position is given as Gutmatyer -- Sviderski 1928 in Mikhail Tal, and Victor Khenkin, Tal's Winning Chess Combinations, trans. Hanon W. Russell (1979). I failed to locate this game in any of my databases.
White played 1.Rc1, and then missing the checkmate threat, Black blundered with 1...Qxe5. Tal and Khenkin observe that 1...Qd3 was Black's correct response.
The Khenkin (Henkin) book has been published, apparently, several times with different titles. I found it for Kindle as *1000 Checkmate Combinations*, published by Batsford (http://a.co/0N8jneJ), which, I believe, is the same book, without the Tal co-authorship. I have thoroughly enjoyed working through this book and find it is helping my board awareness and pattern recognition.
ReplyDeleteBased on the Kindle preview, that book appears to be the same, except 1000 Checkmate Combinations has been converted to algebraic notation. One wonders whether Tal did more than lend his name to a lesser master's work in the 1979 edition.
DeleteI wonder as well. I think Henkin's work was very popular in Russia as a standard chess textbook. I have also seen it listed as _The Last Check_ (Последний Шах) in Russian, and it appears to be the basis of the software CT-ART Mating Combinations (http://chessok.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7_26_44&products_id=417). I haven't purchased that, but the text seems to be the same as Henkin's, but with updated problems.
DeleteI note that the Kindle version I mentioned above has very poor board image reproductions. It is very difficult to read through the book without setting up the positions on a board or on the computer, because the images are of such low quality. I emailed Batsford about this, but I doubt they will change it soon.
I noticed that the diagrams are tiny. On my iPad, I am able to resize diagrams, but for some reason I cannot do this on my phone.
DeleteHaving published a couple of Kindle books, I am learning that Amazon does not make it easy to get diagrams the right size. Some publishers solve the problem; others do not. The diagrams in my Forcing Checkmate, for instance, are much larger than in my Essential Tactics: Building a Foundation for Chess Skill. Yet, I believe that i used the same manner and method of creation in both instances.
Haha. I stared at your last diagram for a while, trying to find the win. I saw 1.Rc1 with a Qxf7+ idea, but got stuck because I couldn't see what white had on 1...Qd3!
ReplyDeleteNothin'
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