Monday, December 3, 2007

Rated E For Everyone

Since I feel that there is something to be learned in almost any game of chess played, no matter how weak the participants, I'm not surprised that I learned a few things about rook endings from watching and analyzing Soltani-Harrington from Round 4 of Sweet November at the club last Thursday. The ending contained a lot of errors, and I suspected I would find some lessons and amusement in examining the turning points after I got home; I was not disappointed. This ending is rated E for Everyone.

For beginners, there's an elementary rook mate at the end of the game.
For intermediates, there's some instructive tips on handling rooks against pawns trying to queen on both sides and how to win with a bishop pawn against a first-rank defense.
For advanced players and problem solvers, there's a study-like position after Black's 68th move and some sample starting positions for Queen versus Rook.

For starters, here is the study-like position:



White to play and draw. Does White head for d3 or d1?

Here's the game along with my annotations set at their usual maximum verbosity.

3 comments:

Ivan said...

Hello,

I was trying to use the following link you gave at chessloser:

http://www.gambitchess.com/semi/dbbooks.htm

What do I use for the password?

Thanks

Getting to 2000

ChargingKing said...

When I played Rb2 I couldn't find a move I liked....for some reason the rook check didn't appetize me. I had spend 15 minutes and couldn't see the method. I had only 16 minutes on the clock....guess I have some Rook and Pawn work to do!

Robert Pearson said...

Ernie, thanks very much for the extensive and instructive notes. I only really got the Philidor position down cold a few years ago--it's amazing how once you get that one, all rook endings a pawn down just make you want to head for that type of position.