amazing move

ok, a lot of you will know the game well, so please don't spoil it for everyone else if you do.

there's a lot going on in this position. Take in all the threats for both sides. White to move. Your goal should simply be to find the best move for white.

when this is figured out I will put more of the game up as a puzzle, and finally the whole game with a mixture of amateur and professional analysis.

here it is;

...

1. Nxc7+ Qxc7

don't know what next.

move the knight to check the queen~ then black's queen will have to capture the knight~ open an escape for the king

knight to d6   check- pawn takes knight -queen to b5 check-king to -- d8-queen to b7 mate

nah, queen takes knight. It's all over.

If I am playing then my move is h4

Yes, it certainly is all over...for White.

yes, h4! is the only move. well done for seeing it. Why?

black has three main threats. Firstly, the rook on f8 threatens to mate if the queen stops eyeing the f1 square. Because of this, it seems that white's queen is under threat from the black queen. Thirdly,  there is a simple threat on the white rook from the white knight.

by playing h4, white stops back rank threats. What's more important, is that it becomes clear that it is white who has weaved the more potent mating net.The black queen is unable to take the white one, because Nxc7 mate would follow. The black queen, therefore, is actually the one under threat, needing to stay on this diagonal to avoid being mated. The threat on the black queen naturally overrides the threat on the white rook, so by this amazing move white has rid himself of problems and put the question to black. Black, however, finds the most aggressive and ,in my view, the best continuation, Qg3!

tarikhk great puzzle really liked it

thanks tarikh, that's a very mature puzzle!! 1.h4!! is of course the hardest to get - the rest just follows naturally. I prefer this kind of puzzle to the usual stuff, which usually involves finding out what happens after things like 1.h4 happen.

Agree, really good

oh, and I forgot to mention the other threat h4 saves, which is of course, the threat the black queen has on the bishop. This is from a Tal game, btw.

Thanks for the post. Nice one.

That was pretty incredible. I love the way the situation is "reversed" with a simple pawn move.