Wednesday, February 28, 2007

A Practical King and Pawn Ending

chess diagram
Moldovan-Kernighan, KCCC 2007
White to play and win.

chess diagram
Keres 1973
White to play. What is the result?

I have posted an article analyzing the endgame from Moldovan-Kernighan, Kenilworth Chess Club Championship 2007, which is a very practical King and Pawn ending. Moldovan gave up the position as drawn, but there is a win, as demonstrated afterwards by his opponent and by FM Steve Stoyko who was observing the final moves. Moldovan annotates the game at his Chess Coroner blog, where he explains that it was "A disappointing but acceptable result since I was clearly worse at one stage...." As he goes on to show, the winning strategy is to use the passed pawn to force the Black King to the last rank, then surrender the pawn in such a way that you can claim the opposition and win the pawn at g6, when the King on the sixth rank forces through the remaining pawn to the queening square. I have included some similar examples taken from Paul Keres's excellent book Practical Chess Endings (Batsford 1973/1974). One position he gives (see diagram above) shows a way for Black to draw by counter-attack if the second pawn is on the c- or f-file. So this is a good one to know from both sides!

1 comment:

likesforests said...

Thanks for posting the position. I guess everyone has their off days and off games. King & 2 pawn vs King & Pawn endings certainly get much more tricky than this example--that's a practical and good-to-know position.