White to play and win.
SOLUTION: This study was recently given on Chessbase. Usually Chessbase gives difficult positions to solve. But seeing the reduced amount of material on the board, i understood that i can work like a computer here and calculate all the lines and find the answer! This is basically known as the theory of elimination. which means that when the material is reduced on the board and when you can calculate all the possibilities then you must do so and eliminate all the wrong ones until you get the right one! Lets see how this works.
First i tried the pawn pushes 1.e5 fe5 2.g5 e4 3.g6 e3 4.g7 e2 5.g8=Q e1=Q and i see no way for white to win.
Next up was the other pawn sacrifice. 1.g5 fg5 2.e5 g4 3.e6 g3+ 4.Kh3 g2 5.e7 g1=Q 6.e8=Q Qg3#!!
hahaha!! its pretty funny that white managed to lose from the starting position.
So with the pawn moves out of the equation, what is left are the king moves to h3 and h1.
1.Kh3 has to be met with Kf3 and now pushing the g pawn makes no sense as then the g pawn will come down with a check and hence only logical move can be 2.e5 fe5 3.g5 and again both queen at the same time and white has the move but he cant do anything special!
So the last opportunity has to be the right one! you can even make that move without calculating because all others dont work but of course for the sake of self satisfaction we must see how white wins!
1.Kh1!! now if black king steps on the g file i will push the e pawn and queen the g pawn with a check.
and if the black king steps on the e file, i shall push the..... yes e pawn again!! for eg 1...Ke3 2.e5! (not 2.g5 because of fg5 3.e5 Kf2! 4.e6 g4 5.e7 g3 6.e8=Q g2+ and its black who wins!!) 2...fe5 3.g5 and white wins with a tempo.
Hence there are two answers for 1.Kh1. they are Kf1 and Kf3.
1...Kf1 is not a hard nut to crack as after 2.e5! fe5 3.g5 e4 4.g6 e3 5.g7 e2 6.g8=Q e1=Q and now i hope you saw it coming! 7.Qg2#!
So Kf1 is out of the way! the only other move and the most dangerous is 1...Kf3! black is now attacking both of whites pawns and hence white must do something radical.
2.g5? is not only a bad move because bad moves only draw. this move just loses the game after 2...fg5 3.e5 Kf2! not allowing white king to come to g1. 4.e6 g4 5.e7 g3 6.e8=Q g2+ 7.Kh2 g1=Q 8.Kh3 Qg3#!!
and hence by elimination we come to the fact that the right move is 2.e5!! fe5 3.g5 now black cant waste time with his king as then he will be a tempo down and hence he must push the pawn 3....e4 and now comes a move that might have been a little difficult to see because in this pawn race, white decides not to win by coming first but by preventing his opponent from coming first! 4.Kg1!! and now the e pawn cannot be queened! for eg 4...e3 5.Kf1! e2 6.Ke1! the white king has stopped the pawn and the pawn on g5 is ready to increase its value by 8 points!!
Conclusion: I dont really think this study was difficult and at the most to a trained solver should take 5 minutes to figure out the nuances but what i find is the problem with most players is that they cannot calculate with the necessary discipline. Instead of following the process of elimination i.e eliminating one possibilty after the other, they indulge in haphazard calculation and the result is total confusion and missing important moves in important variations. Hence i strongly advocate solving such simple studies to players who just cannot calculate with discipline!
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