Thursday, March 26, 2009

Endgame Skillz

Having spent time preparing the posts "To belabor a point..." and "Reeling Sequel", you would think that I (with the White pieces) would have been ready for the following endgame position:



Something "neutral" like 34.g3 g6 35.f4 gxf4 36.gxf4 Rf7 would have kept the game in balance and led to the "inevitable" draw.

Instead, I moved my f-pawn.

34.f3 Rf4+ 35.Rxf4 gxf4


You don't actually have to be able to see 14 moves ahead to know that this is going to result in an unfortunate, un-draw-able Queen-vs-advanced-f-pawn endgame:

36.Kd4 Kb5 37.Ke4 Kc4 38.Kxf4 c5 39.Ke3 Kxc3 40.g4 c4 41.f4 Kc2 42.f5 c3 43.g5 Kd1 44.f6 gxf6 45.gxf6 c2 46.f7 c1Q+ 47.Ke4 Qc8 48.Ke5 Qf8 49.Kf6 Kd2




With the White pawn blocked, Black marches his King up to help collect it – standard strategy.

50.Ke6 Ke3 51.Kf6 Kf4 52.Kg6 Ke5 White resigned

Only after the game did I realize that there was still a draw after Black's Rook check – provided that I didn't enter the endgame that I thought I "knew". Simply 35.Kd3 Rxg4 36.fxg4 Kd5 was enough to split the point!













[analysis diagram]

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