Black to move. This is an extremely difficult endgame. Can you come up with a plan for Black to win?
Note from Chess Today: “It appears that White has built a fortress, but in fact Black can still win this position – with best play it’s checkmate in 31 moves according to tablebases.”
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Black can try to play a5, then Qb4 and after Rxb4 axb4 to win the pawnending.
Tobe
That’s an amazing discovery of a winner! How did you see that??
Fritz. Naturally.
Of Black’s 30 legal moves, 22 win, 3 draw, and 5 actually lose.
1…a5 is one of the 22 that win, although it has the longest distance to mate (35 moves) of any winning move. Believe it or not, even 1…a6 mates faster.
Where do you think the boundary lies between the skill of really good players and tablebases? Carlsen-Cheparinov, Khanty Mansyisk 2007 is one hilarious data point about which computers all over the intrawebs are snickering to each other. More understandable (to me, anyway) is Karjakin-Shirov, Khanty Mansyisk 2007.
You make the diagram inside ChessBase or Fritz and save it. Import the saved jpeg into the blog or webpage.
The basic idea is good, Tobe
I wanted to try a zugzwang forcing the white rook to a4 and then try to attack with the queen from c2 forcing the king to a3 (defending b3) and then play Qb1 and look for a mate anywhere.
Actually getting to c2 looks impossible (as the king can stay on b2/b1), so your idea is much better.
But it’s not that easy as with the rook on c4 white simply laughs about the queen on b4 and can’t be forced to capture it (Kb2/a2)!
So the correct way must be zugzwang first forcing Ra4 and mousetrapping it afterwards with Qb4.
As the king now threats to enter the white fortress (e.g. via d4) black can force white to take on b4.
Even if white’s king reaches c2 before exchanging [Kb2/1 and then after Qb4 Kc2] Ke4!! wins [1. Rxb4 axb4 2. Kd2 Kd4!].
This should be the whole basic idea (or have I overseen anything?) but finding the best moves should be still hard.
Did Movsesian win it?
Best regards
Jochen
The best choice for web diagrams I know is:
chessup.net
It imports FEN by copy&paste, which means you can easily avoid mistakes because you don’t need to setup the pieces manually (your chess prog’s docs will have info how to get FEN from it). It is configurable and provides an image URL. No need to upload a graphic file to anywhere. It’s free. The author only requests to give credit, IOW. add a note with the URL if you use it.
White Pawn on the 2nd rank is a draw, though, I trust?
White Pawn on the 2nd rank is a draw, though, I trust?
You do mean White to move, I trust? Yes, tablebases say that’s drawn.
“Every one of the 94 participants is a grandmaster”
THAT IS NOT TRUE, you blogger, you.
‘Of Black’s 30 legal moves, 22 win, 3 draw, and 5 actually lose.”
You couldn’t win a 1200 player in chess. You just cheat using computers. Fraud. Clone. Shame on you. You don’t belong here with real chess players. Go home!!
The previous poster has a point, because the Nalimov tablebase result actually don’t tell us which are winning moves in the sense like used in chess literature, they only tell us which moves keep a winning position and what’s the shortest distance to mate. But to be a true winning move, it must make progress.
Nevertheless, in this particular position it looks like black can win by starting with a series of ‘mysterious’ queen moves and does not (or not soon) need to move the a-pawn.
The best tbs. move sequence after 1…a5 leads to an ending KR-KQ. – But between humans, this is a totally different story. I think if white is the better endgame technician he can draw this, but if black is the better one, he can win.