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White to Play

Pete Tamburro on

Published in Chess Puzzles

Here’s another miniature study with the same difficulty: how do you get that pawn to the promotion square. It may look easy, but composer F. Prokop shows us that it takes a bit of finesse. Let’s see if you catch it.


Solution:

White has another obvious first move. He has to prevent the bishop from getting to the b6 diagonal. Black can now make it easy or hard for White. The easy way most of us would see is: 1.Kc7 Bd4 2.Ne4 Kb3 3.Nd6 Bc5 4.Nc8 Bf2 5.Kd7 Bg3 6.Nd6. No problem. However, if Black plays 1...Be3 White has to find 2.Ne2!! as 2.Ne4 Kb3 3.Nd6 Bd2 4.Kd8 Ba5+ isn’t what White wants. 2...Bc5 3.Nc1+ Ka3 4.Nd3 Bg1 5.Ne5 and the pawn goes all the way.

 

Send questions and comments to PTamburro@aol.com.


 

 

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