White to move. How should White proceed?
8/4p3/1pkP3Q/5p2/1K3p2/5Pq1/8/8 w – – 0 1
Kubbel 1928
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White to move. How should White proceed?
8/4p3/1pkP3Q/5p2/1K3p2/5Pq1/8/8 w – – 0 1
Kubbel 1928
Draw looks fairly simple, but can’t find a win for White 🙁
White can go for a draw after Qe6. If exd5 gives him a perpetual or even a checkmate.
If the Q moves, the d-pawn promotes on e8.
Nice.
Game drawn 1/2 – 1/2
White should play for a draw and forces this with Qe6! Position, threats and opportunity. Now black has to be very carefull.
Just an idea, not completely sure yet:
1. Qe6 ed6:
2. Qc8+ Kd5
3. Qf5: Kc6 (Kd4 4.Qe4#)
4. Qc8+ Kd5
5. Qe8 threatening 6.Qe4# – how to avoid this?!?
1. dxe7 Kd7
2. e8=Q+ Kxe8
3. Qe6+ Kf8
4. Qf6+ Kg8
5. Qe6+
aiming for eternal check, constantly keeping black on g and h file (or 8th rank) and this seems to me to succeed somehow, though white must still play very accurate.
Black must of course avoid Kh4 Qh6+, that’s not going to happen.
The first move isn’t hard to find, in my opinion, since it is one of the two moves that prevents Qe1+, it is envisioning how it wins. I basically stumbled onto the idea through trial and error.
The “obvious” move, 1.de7 discovered check I almost discounted instantly because this wouldn’t be much of a problem if that were the winning move, but let’s start with it anyway:
1. de7? Kd7!
2. Qf8
What else is better here? At least white is threatening a new queen, but now the white king is a liability:
2. ……Qe1
3. Kb5
There is no other hope of finding shelter, but this is no good either:
3. ……Qa5
4. Kc4 Qc5 and the e-pawn falls.
Clearly, white’s major problem in winning is the check from e1. White has only two move to prevent this- Qe6 and Qh1. However, on their face, neither move looks like it can win since black can win the d-pawn, but I favored Qe6 since I could at least see an indirect way to protect the f-pawn if black took the d-pawn:
1. Qe6 ed6
The threat was 2.de7 followed by e8Q putting two queens on the board before black could start the harassment of the white king- almost surely a win even without analysis. Continuing:
2. Qc8
My original thought was to check from this square and then again from a8 protecting f3:
2. ……Kd5
And, I just plodded around here for a while with 3.Qc4+, 3.Qg8+, 3.Qa8+ etc.- most of which just look bad, maybe lost for white. There was one move, though, that turned promising after I putzed around for a while:
3. Qf5! Kc6 (Kd4 4.Qe4#)
4. Qc8! Kd5
5. Qe8!
Here, I finally had the inspiration. Qe8 prevents Qe1 still, and it protects the f3 pawn because of the skewer from a8. With the f5 pawn liquidated, however, white is now threatening Qe4#- a sort of postion that is extremely difficult for one to imagine before stumbling across it. Surprisingly, there is no defense of the e4 square, nor is there a way to clear a hole for the black king- that black d-pawn is his enemy! All black can do is give up the queen at f3, g6 or e1. All are surely lost.
Qe6
Sweet…
1. Qe6 exd6
2. Qc8+ Kd5
3. Qxf5+ Kc6
4. Qc8+ Kd5
5. Qe8 Qxf3
6. Qa8+ 1-0
A small comment after Yancey Ward and Anonymous actually solved it:
The title “Endgame improvement” must be somewhat misleading here!
This is a very surprising 6 move combination.
pht,
Yes, the title was a bit misleading. “Endgame tactic” might be more appropriate.