Wednesday, December 25, 2013

The twelve rook and pawns of Christmas



White to play

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Let's have some Xmas puzzles!"

I've written a series especially for you.

Goody goody.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Jonathan B said...

The merriest of Christmases to you :-).

Anonymous said...

And to you and all your crew!

Jon H said...

Stick to poetry, Anonymous (ref The Game of the Pawn and the Queen) ...

Jonathan B said...

Anybody got an answer for me? Anyone? Anyone?

Jonathan B said...

Anyone?

Anonymous said...

ke6

one second to solve. (plus 2 mins checking a tablebase to be sure I wasn't going to make a fool of myself)

Return with a harder question or I shall taunt you a second time.

Paul C

Jon H said...


Had a lot of burgundy to accompany the turkey, and through the alcoholic haze my hand wants to play Ra7, "to prevent checks from the long side".

Or should I go and watch Doctor Who...?

Jonathan B said...

thanks for playing chaps. I was beginning to fear it was going to be a long 12 days.

Anyhoo,I suspect the problem with Ra7 is that it allows Black time for … Re1 and a short-side defence.

1 Ke6 is indeed the winning move. I shall need to see some working out though. (Not nalimov assisted preferably).

Anonymous said...

Ke6 is very obvious and takes no time to find. The essential point is to force the defending square away from the queening square. According to the table-bases the win can take approaching 40 moves including the mate with KR v K. Playing through it, there are a number of points of technical difficulty.

RdC

Jonathan B said...

Quite. It's the points of technical difficulty that are of interest to us.

1 Ke6 is not so difficult to find in itself. What follows is considerably harder.

Some - i.e. me - consider this position a contender for toughest rook and pawn against rook position there is