Forced Mating Line for White

This puzzle comes from an over the board game position submitted by NM 1e41-O on the Colossal Blunders forum I created:  https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-showcase/colossal-blunders-please-post-yours-here.  He posted the position in comment #32.  And he gave me permission to post it as a puzzle.  I wanted to do so because this real game puzzle bears a strong resemblance to a composed puzzle which I find astonishing because real game puzzles rarely take on that appearance.

I personally know BryanCFB and he is a very nice person. Nevertheless, a Chess game (or any part thereof) is the property of both players and that one does not need the permission of the other to publish said game. Agreed that many puzzles have a very surrealistic look in that they do not look like they could have come from an actual game.

Thanks John. 

Well being that this was not my game and that I wanted to change it from an analysis diagram post to a puzzle post I felt as if though I should ask permission.  

Hey, that is remarkable! The solution is dual-free all the way just like a composed mate-in-8, including the excellent 6.Qd8! Qe8+ 7.Kxe8 Kg8 8.Ke7.

Exactly!  

What a puzzle. An excellent solution. Can't wait to see what you have for us next.

Glad you liked it!  It'll be hard to find another real game puzzle which resembles a composition though.

When you look at it as a composition it is indeed the perfect #8 diagnosed by Rocky64. In composition land there is no such thing as a forced mate since all wins are ultimately forced mates. Chess players will think they know what you mean but it is a vague concept.

Good puzzle!

Thank you.  I would have preferred to have titled it White to Play and Win but I noticed the Chess.com engine gave 1. Kf7 and 1. Nc5 as almost +3 for white.  So perhaps those moves win as well but obviously nowhere even close to eight moves and definitely not in composition fashion.  So I definitely still thought it was composition worthy as long as I presented it as a mating puzzle.  I didn't want to call it White to Mate in Eight though just as an added challenge.  

And you probably noticed I didn't even play the puzzle out to mate.  This was because of the multiple lines which all result in mate at move #8.  If I had titled it Mate in Eight it probably would have been even more imperative that I played it out.

So if there is an alternative method of winning on move #1 how much does it hurt a composition's aesthetics even if any alternative method is not able to be won in composition fashion?  I imagine true compositions have zero alternative methods on move #1.

Don't take my comment as criticism! I think your puzzle is totally OK. Had you posted it as a composition then Rocky's form would have been quite appropriate. As he has shown there is at least one variation with a perfect checkmate and you could have taken the solution unambiguously to that checkmate.

Since many puzzles on this forum come from games, I often comment on the differences between games, puzzles and compositions. I hope it's useful information for some!

Arisktotle, I have edited the puzzle to play it out through mate with 6...Qe8+ 7. Kxe8!! Kg8 8. Ke7#.

Thanks again (to you and Rocky64).