Saturday, January 04, 2014

The twelve rook and pawns of Christmas



White to play

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Well, I don't remember it but apparently it's one of the great grinder's endgame masterpieces, against another famous Viking. The basic idea is to get a passed d-pawn by winning the e-pawn and following up with e5. You shouldn't mind losing your h and f pawns, because the d pawn threat is much more powerful. I looked at the alternative of trying to trap the black rook on h2 by 1.Ke3 and 2.Rb1 but it doesn't get anywhere.

Anonymous said...

I was expecting a Carlsen game from the previous comment, but it turns out to have been Ulf v Bent from 1975. That's too late for Levenfish & Smyslov but does it feature in most subsequent books on R&P endings?

RdC