“In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else, for whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame.” – José Raúl Capablanca
In this practical rook ending Black is winning. She has much better king which can go forward, better placed rook and a passed pawn on b-file which will decide the game. Event: 34th ECC Women 2018 Date: 2018.10.17 White: Pogonina, Natalija WhiteElo: 2485 Black: Cramling, Pia BlackElo: 2465 Result: 0-1
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The following position with reverse colours was created in the game Steinitz – Neumann ( Baden-Baden, 1870 ) . White to move wins in the usual way – centralizing the rook for the purpose of driving the knight towards the edge of the board. ← Basic EndingsBasic Endings →
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6.6.2. Rook against two pawns Even though, statistically speaking, rook is materially much more valuable than two pawns and most often than not, manages to prove its tactical merit and power, in these endgames the weaker side has quite good prospects to get saved. Position of pieces greatly effects the outcome of the game. […]
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Even more beautiful is the study by F. Saavedra dating from 1895, which point out the unsurpassed depths of chess play. ← Basic EndingsBasic Endings →
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Rook shows the greatest power in the fight with the rim pawn since there the pawn can provide almost no protection for its king, so very often the mating motifs decide on the outcome. The case with the h-pawn on the second rank is very instructional. White can win only if two essential conditional […]
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A most instructive draw denouement occurred in the game Tseshkovski – Bagirov, Lvov, 1978. Despite his pawns being blocked, White to play draws transposing into a position where the knight defends the pawn from the unfavourable front side! Salvation is possible thanks to the black king being momentarily too far away from the action […]
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The farther the pawns are from the promotion square, the simpler is the knight’s task. The knight easily stops connected pawns provided they have not crossed the fifth rank. ← Basic EndingsBasic Endings →
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2.5. King and Two Pawns versus King and Two Pawns Although more material generally implies a widening of the scope of strategic and tactical ideas, these endings still belong to the simpler kind of endings; the choice of the plan is mostly determined by the elementary positional principles with which we have already become familiar. […]
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We conclude this chapter with a superb study by A. Mandler, published in 1938. Once again, the theme is restriction of the activity of the enemy king. ← Basic EndingsBasic Endings →
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In all previous examples White won easily by promoting with check, even when Black managed to promote his pawn into the queen. Possibly, the most complex win in such an ending was elaborated by L.Prokesh in a study published in 1937. White to move wins by first gaining more space whereby the guiding of […]
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