White to Play

Pete Tamburro on Jun 24, 2009

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OK, you are a person by the name of Donisthorpe playing White in London in 1892 against a fellow named Mundell. You are about to make your 15th move. What should you do?

Solution:

The game started out this way: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 d6 4.d4 Bg4 5.Be3 f5 6.d5 fxe4 7.Nxe4 Nce7 8.c4 Nf6 9.Nxf6+ A no brainer for experienced players: it lures the g-pawn away from its ability to block a check at h5...and it's coming! 9...gxf6 10.h3 Bd7 Turns out to be a fatal square to go to. When you get to the final position, you see why: the king can't escape via d7. 11.Nh4 Ng6 12.Bd3 Nxh4 13.Qh5+ Ng6 14.Bxg6+ Ke7 His only other choice was hxg6, which would lose the rook and the game, too. We're glad he went to e7.

And now our solution: 15.Qxe5+ fxe5 [15...dxe5 16.Bc5#] 16.Bg5#

We hope you found this. We didn’t tell you it was a mate or a mate in two. We didn’t drop a hint that it followed last weeks theme with the use of diagonal checks to mate a king still in the center of the board. It is, indeed, the same pattern as the three last week. If you saw it instantly ... great! If not, at least you’ve learned that recognizing patterns is important!

Send questions and comments to PTamburro@aol.com.