White to move and win. How should White proceed?
4k2r/5R1p/4K3/7p/8/8/8/8 w k – 0 1
Pogosiants, 1977
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Brilliant endgame improvement
White to move and win. How should White proceed?
4k2r/5R1p/4K3/7p/8/8/8/8 w k – 0 1
Pogosiants, 1977
Since Black can castle, White first gives check with 1. Re7+ and then 2. Ra8, threatening mate or a skewer to capture the rook.
1. Ra7 Kf8 2. Kf6 Ke8 3. Ra8+ Ke7 4. Rxh8 1-0
Its pretty simple it seems… 1.Ra7 Kf8 2.Kf6 +- maybe?! 🙂
It seems easy!
1. Ra7 Kd8
2. Ra8+ Kc7
3. Rxh8 followed by eating both black h pawns
If 1….Kf8
2. Kf6 Ke8 (any other move allows 3. Ra8 mate)
3. Ra8+ Kd7
4. Rxh8 followed by eating both black h pawns.
Any move other than 1…Kd8/Kf8 allows 2. Ra8 mate.
Harry
Ra7
Ra7
1 Ra7 (threatening mate) Kf8
2 Kf6 Ke8
3 Ra8+ wins Rook
1. Ra7 Kf8 2. Kf6 Ke8 3. Ra8+ Kd7 4. Rxh8 wins
1. Ra7 Kf8
(If black moves either the rook or the pawns, then 2.Ra8#)
(If 1…Kd8 then 2 Ra8+ loses the rook).
2. Kf6 Ke8 (again moving the rook or the pawns, or playing Kg8 leads to mate).
3. Ra8+ Kd7
4. Rxh8 is winning for white.
It helps if you know what the uncapitalized “k” in the FEN stands for (it indicates black can still castle kingside), but obviously this wouldn’t be much of a puzzle if black couldn’t castle. So, the first thing that occurs to me is to make sure black can no longer castle by making him move the king immediately, then go for the mate/skewer on the 8th rank:
1. Re7 Kf8
Black will lose if the tries Kd8: [1. …Kd8 2.Ra7! Re8 3.Kd6 and white will skewer the king and rook to win, or black can give up the rook at e6. Continuing:
2. Rf7! Kg8
If black returns the king to e8, white wins with Ra7/b7 with the unstoppable threat of Ra8/b8+ to win. Continuing:
3. Kf6 h6 (h4 4.Rg7 Kf8 5.Ra7+-)
4. Rg7 Kf8
5. Ra7 Kg8
6. Kg6 Kf8 (or get mated)
7. Ra8 wins.
A quick FEN tutorial:
Each piece is designated by the first letter of it’s common English name except for the knights which is “N”. The different fields are separated by a space and they describe in order the locations of the pieces, which side is to move, who can castle and in which direction, any en passant squares, the half-move clock, and full move number.
Black pieces are designated with uncapitalized letters and white pieces are designated with capitalized letters.
So, let’s examine the present puzzle’s FEN:
4k2r/5R1p/4K3/7p/8/8/8/8 w k – 0 1
Field one are different ranks from rank 8 to rank 1 with each separated by the slash symbol. So, rank 8, read from the a-file to the h-file has 4 empty squares, then a black king, 2 more empty squares and a black rook. Rank 7 has 5 empty squares, a white rook, then 1 empty square, then a black pawn. And so on, until you reach ranks 4-1 which just contain 8 empty squares each.
After that, there is a space, then a “w” which indicates it is white to move. Another space and a “k” which indicates that black can castle kingside still. If black could castle queenside, too, it would read kq, and if white could also castle in both directions, it would read KQkq.
After another space, the field for en passant target squares is empty, but if there were such squares, they would indicated by the typical algebraic notation like d4, for example, and they are indicated even if there are no opponent pawns capable of such a capture.
The half-move clock is “0” in the present FEN, and this indicates the numbers of half moves since the last capture or pawn move, and is used to determine whether or not someone can claim a draw by the 50 move rule.
And the last field is “1”, and indicates the the full move number. For compositions, this is usually going to “1”, but a position for the game will indicate what move the position was taken from.
1. Ra7
Yancey, that’s really nice. I never paid attention to FEN, thanks to you I will know how to read it in future!
@Yancey Ward, 2013-12-31 10:53:00 AM CST:
Thanks for the tutorial!