In Silman’s 3rd Edition of How To Reassess Your Chess, one of his chapters is entitled “Dogs vs. Cats/Bishops vs. Knights”. He doesn’t make any more of the comparison, but I will use his animal analogy in conjunction with the description of “Pigs on the seventh” to refer to this Two Bishops versus a Rook ending as Two Dogs versus a Pig. I know that the Bishop is related to an elephant, especially in Chinese Chess, but somehow two elephants versus a pig seemed too much of a mismatch.
This ending caught my fancy not because it was well played, but because of one major side line that led to several questions and a few tactical surprises. In the position after White’s 32nd move, can Black win? My investigation of the position (with Fritz’s help) led me to conclude that the Two Dogs beat a Pig in this ending. Many variations I ran into seemed to give White the draw, but eventually, I found that the Bishops dominate the board and can net the Rook with the a-pawn, after which, the two Bishops help the king mate the enemy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I'm a little surprised that the players missed Bb2, it's hard to see but Black is forced to comes up with something, not that it is easy by any means after that. Good analysis.
Ernie, these last two posts are extremely interesting and thanks for putting them up--this is the kind of instructional analysis that's fairly rare in the chess blogs.
I've got to talk to you about the notes in Chess Publisher--I've been having trouble getting them to work at all, and you've got analysis that works inside them! I'll get with you sometime after the long weekend and perhaps find out what I'm doing wrong.
Post a Comment