The Practical Endgame / Instruction
Never Say Never
Pawn endgames and premature resignation By GM DANIEL NARODITSKY
AT THE RECENTLY-CONCLUDED POLI - tiken Cup, I witnessed a rather astonishing incident. Having finished my round five game early, I settled down in my room to watch the live transmission of the top boards. An intriguing encounter between Swedish GM Tiger Hillarp Persson and Austrian GM Markus Ragger caught my attention. After an intense tactical melee, the game fizzled out into an ostensibly unremarkable endgame:
DID THIS REALLY HAPPEN? GM Tiger Hillarp Persson (FIDE 2563, SWE) GM Markus Ragger (FIDE 2688, AUT) Politiken Cup 2015 (5), Helsingor, Denmark, 07.28.2015
his own terms: 41. ... a5 42. b4 (42. b3 b4 43. a4 f5 essentially transposes, as the queenside config- uration changes nothing) 42. ... a4 43. Kf1 f5 44. Kf1 Kh2 45. Kf2 g4 and after both 46. fxg4 fxg4 47. Kf1 g3 and 46. f4 Kh1 47. Kg3 Kg1, Mr. Zugzwang rears his ugly head.
41. ... f5 42. Kg1 With the king on f1, 42. ... Kh2 would have
decided the game in a familiar manner. As it stands, Black cannot pass the move without compromising the winning mechanism (42. ... f4 43. Kf1 Kh2 44. Kf2 is a case in point). As it turns out, however, two roads lead to Rome:
42. ... g4! Ragger employs a deadly technique that IM
Mark Dvoretsky calls widening the beachhead: “Trading off pawns, with the idea of clearing a path for the king.” Indeed, if the kingside pawns magically disappeared, Black’s king would have an unobstructed path to the queenside!
43. fxg4 Kxg4 44. Kf2 f4, White resigned. And there’s the rub: White’s king must leave
BLACK TO MOVE Had it been White’s turn, Kf2 followed by g2-
g3+ and Ke3 would have pushed Black’s king away and secured an immediate draw. But Ragger is not ready to call it a day just yet.
39. ... Kg3 40. Kf1 b5 Pawn endgames are devilish affairs. There is
no room for error, and little use for intuition. The tiniest inaccuracy or lapse of concentration entails catastrophic ramifications. In this position, White must tread with the utmost caution to neutralize Black’s active king.
41. b4! Hillarp rises to the challenge, averting Zugzwang
by the narrowest of margins. The tempting 41. Kg1?? enables Black to lock up the queenside on
48 October 2015 | Chess Life Black’s monarch leisurely advances toward the
queenside, while his counterpart can only bumble about on the first rank. Upon calculating this straightforward variation, Hillarp decided that
f2, allowing ... Kg3 followed by ... f4-f3, completing the widening operation. After 45. Ke2 (or 45. Kg1) 45. ... Kg3 46. Kf1 f3 47. gxf3 Kxf3 (diagram), the triumph of Black’s strategy is displayed in all its glory.
I was sure that the “0-1” was an error in
transmission, and that Ragger, aware of 50. a4 all along, simply offered a draw after 44. ... f4. But a trip to the playing hall allayed my skepticism: the Swedish grandmaster actually did resign! “A freak occurrence,” I hear you saying, and that
is exactly what Hillarp’s premature surrender resembles. Upon closer investigation, however, it becomes clear that pawn endgames regularly engender premature resignation. The reason is quite simple: with material so limited, it is easy to trust appearances and calculate superficially, thereby overlooking a camouflaged saving idea. The following encounter between two elite grandmasters offers a brilliant illustration.
AN OPTICAL ILLUSION
GM Alexei Shirov (FIDE 2690, LAT) GM Jan Timman (FIDE 2620, NED), Wijk aan Zee (11), Hoogovens, Netherlands, 01.26.1996
(see diagram next page)
further resistance was futile and laid down his sword. But an attentive reader will notice an amazing
defensive resource concealed within the queenside pawn configuration. After 48. Ke1 Ke3 49. Kd1 Kd3, White saves the game with 50. a4!!, a study- like thrust that places Black in a lose-lose situation: 50. ... bxa4 leaves him with two corner pawns, while 50. ... Kc3 51. axb5 axb5 52. Kc1 Kxb4 53. Kb2 reaches a well-known theoretical draw.
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