This is one of those boring endgame positions that one hates to study. However, by knowing this endgame, it brought GM Gelfand a full point against GM Jobava in a 113 move marathon in Dortmund earlier today.
White to move and win. Play it out and try to understand White’s goal. No one will remember the moves. You just need to understand what White is trying to achieve.
So what is the goal for White? What does White need to do in order to be able to Queen the Pawn?
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
White is trying to achieve a position where he/she can block a check and also put the Black king in check simultaneously.This can be achieved as follows:
1.Kg6 Qg3+ 2.Kf6 Qc3+ 3.Qe5 Qf3+ 4.Ke6 Qb3+ 5.Kd7 Qb7+ 6.Qc7 Qb5+ 7.Qc6 Qf5+ 8.Qe6 Qb5+ 9.Ke7 Qb7+ 10.Kf6 Qf3+ 11.Kg5 Qg3+ 12.Qg4 Qb8 13.Qf3+ Kb2 14.Qf6+ Kc2 15.Qg6+ Kd2 16. g8=Q Qg3+ 17.Kh6 Qh2+
18.Kg7 Qc7+ 19.Q8f7 Qc3+ 20.Kh7 Qh3+ 21. Qh6+ +-
That line is from the Nalimov tablebase.
It’s worth remembering that after White promotes the pawn, he has to guard against perpetual check.
an other annotation is to be made –
promotion of the pawn needs to be protected by the queen – and the king finds the most safe place on the rank of his opponent, because “side checks” won’t be possible …
greetings, Vohaul
Very instructive!
What is your comment and/or recommendation as for white’s motive Susan?
Per the post on chessbase, White on three occasions “blundered” into a theoretical draw, and in at least a few other cases made sub-optimal moves that increased the distance to mate.
Black, of course, “blundered” out of those theoretical draws, and also made moves that shortened the distance to mate.
I’ve put “blunder” in quotes, because where there’s a known strategy, GMs don’t usually blunder that often. It makes me wonder whether there’s an actual “strategy” for this ending that is well known, or if they were just fumbling around and, unfortunately for Black, he made the last mistake.
“promotion of the pawn needs to be protected by the queen – and the king finds the most safe place on the rank of his opponent, because “side checks” won’t be possible …”
Also if the Black queen tries to blockade on g8, the White king hides out on g1 where he can’t be checked, and the White queen goes to f8 to force the queening of the pawn.
In the ChessBase analysis (http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3273) Frederic Friedel lampoons the reliance on tablebase solutions: “Some day, maybe, computers will annotate games as follows: ‘1.e4 e6?? Allows mate in 23 million moves. 1…e5, 1…d5 or 1…a6 was required to hold the draw.'”
From old-fashioned human analysis, he suggests the drawing strategy is to get Black’s king to a1! Extra credit for anyone who can explain why.
1.e4 e6?? Allows mate in 23 million moves
Only if you can find a way to stick almost half a million pawn moves and captures in there in order not to fall for the 50-move rule 🙂