A Tactical Mess: Solution TIme

Many posts back, on March 13, I put up the following position and asked what White should play.

Eickelman-Slade (analysis)

White to play

 On March 21 I wrote:

With the Connor-Theo inspired position I posted the other day I've got pure madness, and lots of it. I've pretty much taken up residence in Bedlam. Putting all that together in a reasonable, digestible form may not be possible for a player/writer of my caliber, but I'm stuck having to try. So it's taking a while.

I've finally written up my solution. See below the fold.

The position is a total mess. I've always enjoyed playing around with positions, looking for the complexities. These days that's easier than ever, as database programs make it easy to keep track of what I've done, and the playing programs just keep getting stronger, allowing me to check my work.

So in the position above, Black has just played his 28th move. This all came from me checking an alternate move for White at move 13! Instead of 13 Rc1 as played in the game, I tried 13 Ne1. The moves are at first blush roughly equivalent to the computer, but the first move looks much better to a human. Which is what drew my attention to 13 Ne1, as I have a proclivity for awkward moves. That was my point of divergence from the game

But now back to move 29 for White. Before I've often put up the positions using diagrams and wrote up analysis in the body of the post. That just isn't feasible in this case. I've put everything in a replayable window. If anyone wants a .pgn file of all of this to run in your program of choice, just email me.