Saturday 1 May 2010

Happily imprisoned


A curious finale to a game played at the ANU Chess Club last week. Earlier in the game White had shut the Black bishop out of the game by locking up the pawns on the queenside. But despite having a virtual extra piece he then found he couldn't break into the Black position with resorting to desperate measures. By the time I'd wondered over he had planted his bishop on e6 in the hope that Black would capture. Black, who was quite short of time, wasn't so obliging and the game ended with 1. ... g6+! 2.Ke4 fxe6 3.dxe6 Kxe6 4.d5+ Ke7. Although Black is now a piece up, is it entirely useless, and both Kings are trapped behind their own pawns. After a few perfunctory moves the players shook hands.

2 comments:

MachoM said...

A quite funny position...

Anonymous said...

According to the FIDE Laws of chess, the game actually ended with 4.d5+, as Article 5.2b states: "The game is drawn when a position has arisen in which neither player can checkmate the opponent’s king with any series of legal moves. The game is said to end in a ‘dead position’. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing the position was legal."