Black to move. How do you assess this position?
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Endgame improvement
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Black to move. How do you assess this position?
Only black’s move that not loses the pawn h5 (and afterwards g4 and afterwards the whole game) immediately is Ke6.
It’s a good training for beginners to find out how white wins the pawn after Kf6?, other king moves allow Kf5.
Trying to catch f2 instead (starting with Kd6) won’t be enough.
After 1. -, Ke6 black has the opposition and white’s king can’t pass through. The only white chance is the move f2-f3 after several king moves.
It should happen (I again start counting at 1):
1. f3, gxf3
2. Kxf3, Kf5! with opposition, again – this position is a draw – there’s not even a break through threat).
So white’s exercise (before f3) is to move around with his king to either force black to give up the opposition or to give up the possibility to move Kf5 after the variation above.
It seems as is if this is impossible (I hoped for an interesting “gegenfelder” (I don’t know the english word, sorry) fight but it seems to be quite more simple for black).
Draw!?
Jochen
PS: Last but not least there’s another thing to say.
Allowing white to capture h5 and prison the king in with Kf5 DOES NOT help black. Finding the white win is good for beginners, again.
I assess this position as a draw. Black takes the opposition. and if White advances the f pwn , black takes white takes and again black takes the opposition which is a must.
This is too easy to be true. Probably I am missing something.
I don’t assess the position at all. If Black has any hope of drawing, it is by taking the opposition with Ke6. I don’t know if this will hold or not — I’ll leave that for smarter people than me to figure out — but if I’m playing Black, what do I care if the position is a theoretical draw or loss? My only try is Ke6, so I’m playing it and waiting to see what happens next. I’ll wait until I have to make a decision to engage in lengthy analysis.
That’s a pragmatic answer, at least.
Dan
It’s very odd to see row 1 at the top of the board.
Can we have these diagrams printed in the normal convention, even when it’s Black to move?
Personally, I like to see diagrams from Black’s point of view, from time to time.
I think Dan’s answer whilst “pragmatic” misses the point.
The idea of improving ones endgame is to be able to know the result quickly so when the position occurs at the end of your analysis not the beginning, you know which to play for/avoid.
Sure in a game I’d play Ke6 quickly, but I’d have known the game was (probably) drawn before this!