Wednesday 21 October 2015

If you think one rook pawn is bad

Continuing my recent theme of tough endings, here is a position that occurred last night at the Belconnen Chess Club. White had earlier won a piece with a pawn promotion tactic, but Black had made the ensuing ending as difficult as possible. In the diagrammed position, White had just played c5 to try and get the Black king away from the pawns.
Even though White is a piece up, the win is a little tricky, and in the end White failed by a single tempo to achieve it.  Despite the widely separated pawns on the board, once the bishop left the board, Black had just enough time to either trap the White king on the h file, or capture the h pawn and trap the king on the a file (which is what happened).  It turns out the missing tempo wasn't some clever zugzwang idea with the bishop, but simply by pushing the h pawn, before taking on f4. However by the time this position was reached it was almost midnight, and with both players close to zeitnot such a miss, while unfortunate, is understandable.
The moves from this position (with some analysis tossed in) were:  1...e3+ [1...f3 2.Bxf3 exf3 3.c6+-] 2.Ke2 Kxc5 3.Bb7 [3.Kd3 Kb4 4.Bc6 Kc5 5.Bb5 Kd5 6.Bd7 Ke5 7.Bg4 Kd5 8.Bf3+ Ke5 9.Kc4 e2 10.Bxe2 Ke4 11.Kb5+-] 3...Kd4 4.Kf3 Kc3 5.Ba6 Kd2 6.Kxf4? [6.h5 Kd1 7.Kxf4 e2 8.Bxe2+ Kxe2 9.Kf5 Kf3 (9...Kd3 10.Kg6 Kc4 11.Kxh6 Kb4 12.Kg6 Kxa4 13.h6 Kb3 14.h7 a4 15.h8Q) 10.Kg6 Kg4 11.Kxh6 Kf5 12.Kg7+-] 6...e2 7.Bxe2 Kxe2 8.Kf5 Kf3 9.Kg6 Kf4 10.Kxh6 Kf5 11.Kh5 Kf6 12.Kh6 Kf5 13.h5 Kf6 14.Kh7 Kf7 15.h6 Kf8 16.Kg6 Kg8 17.Kf5 Kh7 18.Ke5 Kxh6 19.Kd5 Kg6 20.Kc5 Kf6 21.Kb5 Ke6 22.Kxa5 Kd7 23.Ka6 Kc8 24.Ka7 Kc7 25.a5 Kc8 26.Ka8 Kc7 27.a6 Kb6 28.a7 Kc7 1/2-1/2


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is why on move 3 a strong player would play 3. h5... rather than 3. Bb7... It could be useful later, especially if white end up trading its bishop.