Beautiful. The first 2 moves were easy to find, and 3. Bxc7 was easy to reject, but 3. Bf5 was a bit tough. After that, 3...Rc6+ is fairly obvious, as is 4. Kb5. At that point, though, it seems that 4...Rxc3 gives White a much easier win than 4...Rf6 or 4...Rb6+.
Mates, stalemates and other stuff
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Mar 19, 2023
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#3
I've seen a simpler version of this on chess.com, though I don't remember where. Nice improvement though; I was wondering how Bxc8 was the answer since it looked so simple—until black uncorked Ka8!
This study was posted earlier by lodrac91 and followed by my first improvement. The current version is justified by the extra try 1. ... Ka8 Bxf1? which is refuted by a thematic try line very similar to the main solution - but not quite the same of course!
OldPatzerMike wrote:
.... At that point, though, it seems that 4...Rxc3 gives White a much easier win than 4...Rf6 or 4...Rb6+.
Not by composition standards! "Easy" refers to ideas which are easy to find and "hard" to ideas hard to find. White's final king move, together with the placement of the bishops achieve an unexpected domination pattern! Technical endings - like when the rook does not capture Pc3 - are considered easy/boring and are ignored in composition solutions. Irrespective of their duration.
This is an improvement over another version which was an improvement over a goldie oldie. It appears that other improvements in the same direction have been attempted but turned out to be flawed by the power of modern tablebases.
White wins.