It’s Your Move: # 8

In the following position White had just played 28.Nf1?

(no prizes for guessing the names of players!)

and resigned immediately after 28…Qe1!

But what about 28…Qd1? Doesn’t that win for Black as well?

Our readers easily remembered this position from Game 9

of the recently concluded World Championship Match 2013.

But some wrongly assumed, all roads lead to Rome

and 28… Qd1 also wins, and in the same way.

No, it doesn’t.

28.Nf1 Qd1? was the sequence Anand calculated after he rejected 28.Bf1 that did not give him any chances of victory.

(“As soon as I made the knight move I saw what I had done”- Anand. Carlsen played 28…Qe1! and Vishy resigned on the spot.)

29.Rh4 Qh5 30.Rxh5 gxh5 31.Ne3!

Threatening Nxd5 and Ne7+.

31…Be6 32.Bxd5 Bxd5

(If 32…Qd7 33.Be4!+-)

33.Nf5!+-

An imaginative idea worthy of a better fate