Sunday, December 29, 2013

The twelve rook and pawns of Christmas



White to play

5 comments:

TAICHI WIJAYA said...

Rd6

Jonathan B said...

Yes, but one move does not a solution make.

Anonymous said...

A search for the position reveals two practical examples. The first, presumably the one in all the books, was Capablanca v Yates from Hastings in 1930. Yates was Capa's bunny, particularly in endings, but he usually started with a position offering drawing chances. Perhaps before the diagram though.

The second was Nikolic v Ftacnik from the 1997 Europe Teams in Pula.

Nikolic's winning method looks quicker and cleaner than Capa's

RdC

Jonathan B said...

Nikolic-Pula made an appearance on the blog back in September, it being included in Emms' Survival Guide to Rook Endings.

Roger's right to say that Capa-Yates is used as an example much more frequently.

Comment Moderator said...

An anonymous commenter writes:-

"How is it possible that Nikolic played the ending better when Capa was a much better player?

Answer - obviously he wasn't - sorry for the diversion - but this position is clearly relevant to the yawnsome (non)debate about how strong the old players were.

Of course if Yates came back now and learnt some modern openings he'd be 2750 in no time. Excuse me while I kill myself laughing. "