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White to Play

Pete Tamburro on

Published in Chess Puzzles

Welcome to the third week of chess summer school. This week is devoted to scary king and pawn endings. Why are they scary? It’s because one little mistake and you lose or draw instead of win. Our second example of this requires you to look at the position and count. You must count in many king and pawn endings, especially when there is a race to promotion. For example, in this position, with White to Play, White promotes in five moves. If Black runs the a-pawn down to a1, that also takes five moves, but you queen first and get to take the Black queen right after it promotes. Fine! You win, right? Wrong! If White plays 1.h4, then Black responds with 1…axb5 and then promotes on b1, where it won’t be taken. Hmmmm….how do you solve that problem?


Solution:

If you think logically, then you had to realize that you need to make Black push the a-pawn down the a-file. So, you prevent him from moving over to the b-file with a capture (one line is offered out of many possibilities after the promotion): 1.b6+ Kxb6 2.h4 Kc5 3.h5 a5 4.h6 Kb4 5.h7 Kb3 6.h8Q a4 7.Qa1 b5 8.Kd7 b4 9.Kc6 a3 10.Kc5 Kc2 11.Kd4 b3 12.Qxa3 b2 13.Qc3+ Kb1 14.Kc4 Ka2 15.Qa5+ Kb1 16.Kb3 Kc1 17.Qe1#

 


Send questions and comments to PTamburro@aol.com.

 

 

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