A Queen Ending from the Denker

One of the places that I thought Robert Moskwa might run into trouble at the Denker Qualifier due to the relatively short time he has been playing serious chess was in the endgame.  Although his calculation skills are excellent, you often don't have enough time left to calculate as thoroughly as needed when you reach the endgame.  As a result, the kind of general understanding of endgame principles that you can only get by experience, especially painful experience, can be very important.

Nowhere is the lack of time felt more than in queen endings.  On nearly every move, the players must try to visualize the consequences of an avalanche of checks.

In most endings, a player must carefully weigh the value advancing a pawn closer to the queening square against the possibility that it becomes weak due to lack of support.  Hence, the general endgame principle of pieces before pawns, i.e., unless the ending is a pure pawn race, players should try to improve the position of their pieces before they advance their pawns.

In queen endings, however, advanced pawns are much less likely to become a liability.  This is because a queen has the ability to protect a pawn and control the squares in front of the pawn at the same time without hindering the pawn's advance.  A king can blockade a pawn that is only supported by a knight, a rook, or a bishop, but it is helpless to stop the advance of a pawn supported by a queen.  In fact, it often has to worry about being mated. Even another queen acting alone cannot hold back a pawn supported by a queen.

The flip side of the queen's ability to advance a pawn without assistance is its ability to oppose a king and a pawn without assistance.  Acting alone, a knight, a rook, or a bishop has difficulty holding back a pawn supported by a king and can often be forced to sacrifice itself to prevent a pawn from queening.  A queen on the other hand has very little trouble holding back a pawn by itself.  In fact, it can often hold back several pawns.

The upshot of all this is that having the farthest advanced pawn is of paramount importance in queen endings.  It is not unusual to see a deficit of several pawns can be offset by a single pawn that has reached the sixth rank because the extra pawns can be easily rounded up if the defender can be forced to sacrifice his queen.

All of this brings us to the following position from Moskwa v. Meduri.

Fearing Black's g-pawn, Robert played 59.d7+? Qxd7 60.Qxg3 and the game ended in a draw.  However, despite the fact that Black's g-pawn is as near to its queening square as the White's d-pawn, the Black pawn is not supported by its queen and Black queen is needed to defend against mating threats.  After 59.c5!, Black can't play 59...g2 because of 60.Qb8+ Kf7 61.Qb7+ Kf8 62. Qxg2.  If Black tries 59...Qd7, 60.c6! is devastating.

Teacher Schools Student: Hart v. Moskwa 1-0

Question:  White just played 25.bxc6, overlooking the response 25...a5.  Is he going to lose the pawn on c6?



Robert Moskwa and I have played dozens of casual games, but we have never played a serious game at a long time control.  We finally got our chance Saturday when we were paired against each other in the last round of a G90 tournament at the North Shore Chess Center in Skokie.   The tournament director asked if I minded being paired against my student, but I figured that with the way Robert is improving, this might be the best shot I would ever get against him.

Knowing how well he calculates in complex positions, I hadn't planned on being particularly aggressive even though I had the white pieces.   Robert wasn't in an aggressive mood either after winning a very long game in the previous round. Since I had won prettily easily in the previous round, I had plenty of energy, but if he had played his usual defense to 1.c4, I think it might have been a fairly short draw. However, for some reason Robert chose to play the Symmetrical Variation with ...c5.  Although this tends to be the most drawish response to the English, I knew that Robert wouldn't be as familiar with the positions as I was particularly since I had been looking over it recently after a strong player played the line against me in a CICL match last month.

Even with the loss, Robert kept his rating in expert range at 2002.  I tacked on eighteen points to 2022.  Robert's next chance to get his rating ahead of mine will come at the Denker qualifier at the end of the month.

Robert Moskwa is an Expert Now

Congratulations to 1st Board Robert Moskwa who picked up the three rating points he needed to make expert yesterday at the North Shore Chess Center although Stevenson High School's Kent Cen did avenge his last round loss to Robert at the IHSA State Tournament. At 2001, Robert still trails me by three points at 2004 and I have every intention of lording it over him for as long as I can. He sure got there a lot faster than I did.

Fighting Spirit on 2nd Board

One of the problems with playing 2nd Board behind one of the top high school players in Illinois is that you tend to get a lot of tough pairings at the state tournament.   Prospect senior Caleb Royse had more than his share this year.  However, the thing I have always liked about Caleb is that no matter how bad his position is, he is always looking for a way to make his opponent's life as difficult as possible.

In the fifth round at state, things were looking pretty bad for Prospect against Glenbard South.  We had already lost on the bottom four boards and Caleb was in serious trouble with the White pieces on 2nd Board against Jon Helck. Still, as long as Caleb is moving the pieces, there is hope.   After taking a look at some of the matches on the top table, I returned to find the following position on the board.

White is down two pieces, but I was encouraged to see his remaining pieces swarming around the Black king and my confidence increased when I saw Black play 27...Bxe4 and Caleb snap off 28.Raxc3.  As his opponent contemplated his response to that move, my mood darkened somewhat as I saw that Caleb only had seventeen seconds left on his clock.  After Black played 28...Rxc3?? (28...g6! would have left him with a material advantage), I figured that White probably had a mate here, but should he spend his few remaining seconds looking for it or just go for a material advantage that may take many more moves to convert?

As it turned out, Caleb missed the mate and needed at least another thirty moves to convert the full point, but he gave an impressive demonstration of his blitz skills.  I particularly enjoy moves 36-45 where White methodically seeks to penetrate the Black position with his queen.  Every time Black closes one route, the White queen finds another one.   After the White queen finally corners the Black king, Caleb turns his attention to adding his knight to the attack. 

In the sixth round, Caleb played his best game of the tournament against Wheaton-Warrenville South's Dan Zurawski.  Both sides played solidly for thirty-five moves until Dan allowed Caleb to pin   a Black rook with the White queen.  Caleb seized his chance and quickly piled pressure on the pinned piece.  It appeared for a moment that Black had wriggled out of the trap, but Caleb quickly put him in another one.

 

The Kamikaze Rook

Few things in chess are more frustrating than out playing an opponent for an entire game only to come away with a draw due to falling victim to a stalemate trick.  One of the nastiest such tricks is the "kamikaze rook."  A player whose other pieces have no legal moves can sometimes force a draw by checking his opponent until he is forced either to capture the last rook resulting in stalemate or allow a draw by repetition.  It is an easy trick to overlook, particularly if you have not seen it before.

On his last move, Prospect freshman Marc Graff overlooked 52...Rf1# and played 52...c2?!  Wheaton-Warrenville South's junior Robby Badgley alertly uncorked 53. Rxg5+.  If Black captures the rook, it is stalemate because the White king has no legal moves.

The first thought in such a position is for Black to maneuver the White rook onto a square where Black can capture it with one of the pieces that is confining the White king, thereby avoiding stalemate.  Unfortunately, four out of five of the squares are covered twice so moving one piece won't do the trick.  The only square that is only covered once is d1, the only way for the Black pawn on c2 to capture the White rook is for the Black king to go to c1 forcing White to play Rb1+.  Unfortunately, ...cxb1=Q will still be stalemate.


SOLUTION:  Since there is no way for Black to give the White king any breathing room, the only solution is to free one of the White pawns to move.  This is accomplished by forcing the White rook to deliver check from b5 whereupon Black plays ...axb5 and White's a-pawn has a legal move. 53... Kf5 54. Rg5+ Ke4 55. Re5+ Kd3 56.Rd5+ Kc3 57. Rd3+ Kb4 58. Rb3+ Kc5 59. Rb5+ axb5 60. a6 Rf1#.  Unfortunately, Marc could not find this maneuver and the game wound up as a draw.

Some Pictures

MSL at State: 1st Boards Shine

The Mid Suburban League acquitted itself well at the IHSA State Tournament this weekend led by a resurgent Barrington team.  After a disappointing 3-5, regular season, Barrington went 5-2 to finish 14th in the state led by 3rd Board Vyas Alwar who went 5.5-1.5 to earn the 10th place medal for that board.  Also finishing with five points were Prospect at 16th, Buffalo Grove at 18th, and Fremd at 23rd.  Close behind was Rolling Meadows at 29th with 4.5-2.5.  Hoffman Estates finished 45th with 4-3.  Conant and Palatine went 4-3 to finish 83rd and 85th and Schaumburg scored 2.5-4.5.

Placing five teams in the top thirty was the best that the MSL has ever achieved, but the real highlight was Prospect's Robert Moskwa and Buffalo Grove's Matt Wilber taking the 1st and 2nd medals on 1st Board with perfect 7-0 scores.  Robert got the nod on tie-breaks because his opponents scored a combined 27-22 in the tournament while Matt's went 24-25.   Robert also learned that he has been invited to the Denker Qualifying Tournament at the end of March where he will play in a round robin against Sam Schmakel, Adarsh Jayakumar, Aakash Meduri, and Kent Cen.