Not much going on in the chess world right now. I mean, it's not like there's a dubious candidate hoping to be elected ECF President or a national newspaper columnist up to no good.
So I think I'll pop back to Torquay and have a look at some of the rook endgames played in the championship. We'll kick-off by revisiting Stephens - Balaji from round three and ask ourselves the following question: the perfect example of what can go wrong if you find yourself short of time and lacking theoretical reference points or a total irrelevance?
To recap: well after the first time control the chaps reached the position above. White could have killed the game dead with 52 Ra3. Instead, apparently never having made it as far as Lesson Number One in his study of rook endings, he played 52 Ra8. The objective evaluation of the game then swung back and forth between 'draw' and 'win for black' for 30 or so moves until White found a neat stalemate trick on move 89.
Curiously our man got another crack at the Philidor position in his game against McCullough a couple of days later. This time he did indeed bring his rook back to cut off the enemy king in approved fashion and eventually, after 83 ... Rc1-c4, reached our second diagram.
The reason the Philidor defence works is that any attempt to block the action of the rook like this allows a trade into a drawn king and pawn ending. Even if you weren't aware of that, though, if you'd got further than The Square in your study of king and pawn endings you'd see straightaway that trading rooks is the logical way to secure the draw. What White actually did, however, was to play his rook to f3 although five moves later the game the players agreed to draw anyway (the pgn files incorrectly give the result as a Black win).
Now, I think most of us would acknowledge that our understanding of the endgame is rather lacking, but on the basis of these two games it's hard to come to any other conclusion than that our friend Mr Stephens hasn't studied that area of the game at all. I mean not even the briefest glance. After all, if you don't have Phildor or that king and pawn ending in your locker, what do you have?
Well, each to his own. There's no reason at all why he should look at endings if he doesn't want to. What about the general principle, though? What can the rest of us take from this?
Conscious or unconscious, implicit or explicit, this is a choice that everybody makes in one way or another.
So I think I'll pop back to Torquay and have a look at some of the rook endgames played in the championship. We'll kick-off by revisiting Stephens - Balaji from round three and ask ourselves the following question: the perfect example of what can go wrong if you find yourself short of time and lacking theoretical reference points or a total irrelevance?
White to play
To recap: well after the first time control the chaps reached the position above. White could have killed the game dead with 52 Ra3. Instead, apparently never having made it as far as Lesson Number One in his study of rook endings, he played 52 Ra8. The objective evaluation of the game then swung back and forth between 'draw' and 'win for black' for 30 or so moves until White found a neat stalemate trick on move 89.
White to play
Curiously our man got another crack at the Philidor position in his game against McCullough a couple of days later. This time he did indeed bring his rook back to cut off the enemy king in approved fashion and eventually, after 83 ... Rc1-c4, reached our second diagram.
The reason the Philidor defence works is that any attempt to block the action of the rook like this allows a trade into a drawn king and pawn ending. Even if you weren't aware of that, though, if you'd got further than The Square in your study of king and pawn endings you'd see straightaway that trading rooks is the logical way to secure the draw. What White actually did, however, was to play his rook to f3 although five moves later the game the players agreed to draw anyway (the pgn files incorrectly give the result as a Black win).
Now, I think most of us would acknowledge that our understanding of the endgame is rather lacking, but on the basis of these two games it's hard to come to any other conclusion than that our friend Mr Stephens hasn't studied that area of the game at all. I mean not even the briefest glance. After all, if you don't have Phildor or that king and pawn ending in your locker, what do you have?
Well, each to his own. There's no reason at all why he should look at endings if he doesn't want to. What about the general principle, though? What can the rest of us take from this?
What's the problem? White drew both games in the end anyway, didn't he? He scored a very respectable 5/11 in a tournament for which most folk (certainly not you, blogger boy) wouldn't even qualify and his grade is considerably higher than than most (and certainly higher than yours) too. Clearly acquiring ending knowledge is an unnecessary waste of time.
Knowing endgame stuff doesn't make you a good chesser any more than not knowing it makes you a bad one. Still, while these games might have been saved there will be others one day. However good you are, sooner or later this sort of thing will cost you points.
Conscious or unconscious, implicit or explicit, this is a choice that everybody makes in one way or another.
Rook and pawn Index