Thorfinsson - Gunnarson, Iceland 2006Black to play and win immediately.
The position above comes from the game Thorfinsson - Gunnarson, which was broadcast live on Icelandic TV. In time pressure, Black briefly picked up his King and was forced by the touch move rule to play 37...Kg8?? upon which the game ended 38.Qxg7#. After picking up his King, Gunnarson had tried to play instead 37...Qd7?! There was a much better move, however, than either of these. It was discovered by the most famous American exile turned Icelandic citizen, Bobby Fischer, who phoned in to describe it to the commentators shortly after the game concluded. Can you find Fischer's solution? Full story and game at ChessBase News.
2 comments:
It's sort of half-great, and half-sad, to think Fischer's still got it . . .
Not sure if I would have solved the puzzle - I'd seen the answer already in the chessbase article. Brilliant sequence though.
When I first saw the position I immediately saw ... Rxg2. What I didn't find was ...Rh4!!, which is the tough move, and beautiful.
But this made me wonder, surely a computer program would see this instantly? And surely enough, a version of Crafty saw the combination in micro-seconds. I'm not sure if that lessens the value of the combination or not.
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