Saturday, June 23, 2007

Endgame positions

Crappy players like myself make lots of endgame mistakes. This gives a good endgame player a chance to pull out a draw or a win from games that are lost or drawn. Here are two examples from a recent game I played.
White to play

I'm not totally certain on this position, but I know I played it wrong. I played Ra8+ Kg7 a7. And now white has totally cornered himself.

A better chance would have been Kf1 and walking over to the rook, eventually up to the pawn if necessary. Note that the king does not have to protect the f2 pawn, e.g. Kf1 Kf8 Ke1 Ke8 Kd1 Rxf2? Rb7! and black cannot stop a7 followed by Rb8+ and promoting the pawn. Black can take on f2 once his king gets to c8, but then white has Rg7 and taking on g4. Then the 2 pawn advantage should be enough to make a queen.

After the game moves, black has a draw, but he must keep his king on h7 or g7. Instead, black bailed me out by playing Kf7. Now white has a winning tactic. This is a good one to know.

White to move

Labels: , ,

posted by Loomis @ 12:54 PM 1 comments

1 Comments:

At 4:37 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yup, that's a common tactic in rook and pawn endings. Good spotting.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home