White to Play
Pete Tamburro
on
Published in Chess Puzzles
![](https://resources.arcamax.com/newspics/cache/w320h320/277/27772/2777200.jpg)
One of the nice things about king and pawn puzzles is that you can count them out. What does a straight pawn race starting out with 1.f5 tell you?
1.Ke2 a5 2.Kd3 Kb2 3.f5 a4 4.f6 a3 5.f7 a2 6.f8Q a1Q 7.Qb4+ Ka2 7...Kc1 8.Qd2+ Kb1 9.Qc2# 8.Kc2 Qc3+ 9.Kxc3 9.Qxc3 Stalemate! 9...Ka1 10.Qb2# If you had tried the pawn race with 1.f5, you would have noticed the Black pawn reaching h2 right after White queened, which would be a draw as White couldn’t stop the queening save by continually checking.
Send questions and comments to PTamburro@aol.com.