 Talk to the Club by Jim Burnett, twice Yorkshire Champion.In a talk packed with interest and enthusiasm he started with some simple endgame rules which are easy to remember and yet can make the difference between a win and a draw or even a loss. His first illustration was a simple King and Pawn (ahead of King) versus King ending which should be familiar to everyone and yet Jim once won a game against a high-rated opponent who, in the heat of the moment, could not remember the correct defensive line and lost on time as he was thinking! (Jim gives an impression of a player frantically scratching his head with both hands, trying desperately to remember, "Do I play my King back or to one side???")
The answer of course is Kd8! which draws and not Ke8 or Kc8 which loses. Defensive rule: Keep the King on the same file as the pawn when forced to retreat. (And if in more general similar positions this is not possible, then in front of opposing King.) The second simple rule that is worth remembering in King and Pawn endings is that if White can get the King to one of the three squares on the sixth rank ahead of and adjoining a pawn then it is a win. This is very useful to bear in mind if you are preparing a series of exchanges to simplify to a King & Pawn ending.
However this does not apply when the pawn is on the a or h files. The game is then drawn Also recall that a similar position with the King only on the fourth rank is only a win if White has the opposition. If it is Black to move, White wins, otherwise it is a draw.
Jim then illustrated with an example how much the general understanding of chess has increased over the years by showing a position from an early world champion's game (Alekhine-Bogolyubov 1929) and asking the audience what to play. In a position like
the general plan is clear. Black will keep his rook on the 8th rank and then lose it in exchange for the queened pawn. He will then hope to advance his own pawn far enough in return to force White to sacrifice his rook and thus draw. But where should Black play the King on his next move? In the historical game Black played Kg4 and lost. By modern standards that is an astonishing blunder in a world championship match. This was illustrated when a beginner from the Alwoodley fourth team showed that he had learned enough endgame theory to know that Ke4 with the objective of blocking the advance of the White King is the better move. Note by editor: It is interesting to set this position for Fritz. It takes it quite a long time to calculate the difference between these two moves. Looking 16 half moves ahead it sees that Ke4 is perhaps half a point better than Kg4 - but in both White is calculated to be well ahead. Fritz cannot see that Ke4 leads to a draw since in fact the draw is up to 40 half moves ahead of the starting position, which is beyond the capacity of a computer. By contrast the human player, who can deal with broad considerations, can REASON, "I can always win White's pawn/queen. The Black King will have to stay near it until that happens. I will advance my pawn whenever possible. I can only lose if Black can get Rook AND King to attack my pawn. If I ensure that I keep his King away by interposing mine there is nothing he can do. So I draw with Ke4." The next useful endgame pattern is the Third Rank Defence in an ending with Rook and Pawn against Rook. Here the trick for the defender is to get his rook on his third rank until the attacker gets to the point of playing his pawn onto that rank. The rook then swiftly moves to his eighth rank and harasses the king indefinitely. A typical position might be:
then d6 is followed by Ra1=. Again notice that the human player should be able to see that White simply cannot get through in the face of the above tactic. The computer, however, gives White a slight advantage as it looks more and more moves ahead like a blind mole inching its way along trying to find a way through where we, looking down, can see that there is no way. A final useful rule applies again to Rook and Pawn endings. In the following Rook and Pawn endgame position the question for Black, who is threatened with mate by Rh8, is which side to move his King. The answer is "To the short side relative to the pawn." The reason is that this leaves the long side free for the Rook to deliver checks to the White King.
For more detail see Secrets to Practical Chess by John Nunn (Gambit) 1998. Again you will find that a computer is not as much use as you might think in deciding such a question. In the second half of the evening Jim challengingly asked us what is the most exciting opening and surprised most of us by citing the Queen's Gambit Declined. He then proceeded to show us a couple of very sharp games with roller-coaster variations and analyses which were breathtaking in their surprises. You may play through the main lines of these below.
Full analysis of these games with many other variations can be found in The Botvinnic Semi-Slav by S Pedersen, Gambit Publications 2000 After the main talk was over and members started to play arranged games, Jim remained to answer further questions. Here are two points that members might like to bear in mind. When you are playing someone of a higher grade should you play safe or sharp lines? The natural answer is, "Play safe! He will be able to analyse sharp variations better than me; he has probably already seen this line and knows its refutation. Play safe!" But that is wrong! In simple safe positions the better player will make no significant mistakes and can quietly play on waiting for you to make the inevitable small slip that he can pounce on. You are BOUND to lose. But in the sharp positions there is at least a chance, even if is only 1 in 10, that he will miss something and luck will go your way. Chess for Tigers by Simon Webb is good on this. And the final rule is Don't waste time doing deep analysis when you are not in a sharp position. (Editor's thoughts: We have all set Fritz such positions and even with all that computing power, analysing precisely 16 or more half moves ahead, far beyond human capacity, we see that there can easily be half a dozen moves that Fritz can hardly distinguish in value. In short, analysis cannot distinguish one obviously best line. Nearly any sound move is as good as another as far as analysis can go. So, as Jim says, it is a waste of time to analyse in such positions. However, as we have seen above, on such occasions the expert's strategic sense can be a powerful guide.) Many thanks to Jim for a fascinating evening! - Ed. Dylan Morgan |
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