Last week I said I was going to show you two interesting endgames. I want to keep my promise, but the second endgame I’m going to show you is not the one I originally intended! The change in plans is because I’m going to lecture on that one for ChessLecture, and I don’t want to upstage my own lecture. Sometime after the lecture goes up I will write about it here.
Instead I’ll show you a cool endgame that Mike Splane showed at his n-th chess salon yesterday, which shows that bishops of opposite colors are not as drawish as everybody thinks. Strictly speaking, the position should be a draw, almost to the very end, but Mike shows the value of never giving up as long as there are tricks that can be played.
Mike was Black, and a class-A player from the Kolty club (whose name I should remember, but don’t) was White.
First, I have to apologize that the above PGN may not be exactly right, because I did not write the moves down. In the initial position the bishop may have been at e5 rather than c7, and definitely some of the moves after move 4 in the above line were not how the game went. However, I’m showing you roughly how it went. Mike, if you want to jump in and make corrections please feel free to do so.
So here is the starting position, with some uncertainty about the placement of Black’s bishop.
Black to move.
First of all, I should tell you that many moves ago, when there were rooks still on the board, Mike played … h4 aiming for this position. His idea was to trade off all the rooks and set up the following trap.
White has just played 1. Kd2. This is a fine move but he could have played 1. Ke2. The move he played gave Mike hope that he might be oblivious to the shakiness of his kingside. Therefore, Mike innocently played the move 1. … Bd6!
The exclamation point is purely for psychology. He wants his opponent to think that there is something going on with … Bb4+, and thus lure him into the following mistake:
2. Kc3?? …
This doesn’t quite lose, but it puts White’s game in needless jeopardy. Now Mike uncorked the move that he already saw 10 moves ago:
2. … Bg3!
The bishop cannot be taken because Black would queen on g1. Also White cannot defend the f2Â pawn. Note that with the king on d2 this sacrifice would not have worked.
Still, all is not lost yet for White. A few moves later we got to a position something like this.
Again I apologize for the fact that I don’t know exactly how we got here. In the PGN I’ve put one possible sequence of moves, although I know it’s not exactly how the game went.
When I saw this position I still couldn’t imagine how White could ever lose. If he just keeps the king on e4, Black can never penetrate on the kingside. But I was a little bit too naive. Black can penetrate on the queenside, with Kd6-c7-b6-a5-b4-c3 etc. So White is going to have to give way at some point and retreat his king to e2. However, I don’t think he had to retreat as far as he did in the game.
Where do you think that the Black king is going on his long march via the hinterlands of a5 and b4? Answer: He’s going to g3! This is another master-level trick: move to the queenside when actually you want to get to the kingside. At the salon, we compared it to a play fake in (American) football, or a reverse (where the team starts moving one way and then the ball is handed off to a runner going the other way).
However, I should add that it’s really not a trick. Because Black’s path to g3 is blocked on the kingside, it’s really the only way that he can get there.
Many moves later, we got to this position, or something quite similar.
White to move.
White can still draw this game, but there is now only one correct move. (By the way, the computer is incredibly bad at this type of position. When I put it on Rybka 3 and let it run for several minutes, it couldn’t see any difference between any of White’s moves. They all led to a 2.11-pawn advantage for Black. That’s nonsense, of course. One move leads to a draw and the others lead to a loss.)
The right move is not hard to see. White must keep Black’s king from getting to g3. At the same time, he can’t do so by playing 1. Kg2 right away, because that would allow Black a decisive penetration with 1. … Ke2. So White has to play 1. Bg4. In order to get his king to g3, Black will now have to go via f4 (after first moving his bishop to d4 to protect the f2 pawn). As soon as Black plays … Kf4, White must move Kg2. Black will have no way of breaking through.
Instead, in this position or one like it, White (who by this point was down to a minute or two) played some move like 1. Bc4, allowing 1. … Kf3, and then the game was over. Black’s plan is to put his king on g3, push his pawn to e3, place his bishop on d4, and then play e2. If White takes with the king, then … Kg2 wins. If White takes with the bishop, then … Kxh3 wins.
What a triumph for long-term strategic thinking! And a great example of being patient and letting your opponent hang himself.
