White to play and win
Last week I left you with an endgame study.
Black wants to play Ng3#, and White needs to prevent this by occupying the h2-b8 diagonal. There’s another problem, though: a potential stalemate if White ends up with a queen on g3.
The main line, therefore, runs like this:
- Qc3! Nxc3
- d8B! Ne2
- Bxc7 f1N!
- b8B! Ne4
- B1f4
and White’s three dark squared bishops defeat the three black knights in the battle for g3.
There are a lot of other possible defences for Black, which I’ll leave you to work out for yourself, or, better still, read the September 2021 issue of CHESS, where you’ll find some more Korolkov studies to entertain you.