I was black and ended up with the following position.  The game was eventually drawn, but was this winnable?

Here's the starting position and one a few moves later:

hmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.......

I thought black coud force a win but upon looking at it,black has several problems which against correct play, a draw seems favourable.

viz:

1. blacks f g and h pawns are a little behind (not far up the board enough).. whites queen can easily get between them or if not the case, white can pick them up with checks.

In protest I put the position into CM10 and guess what, after 10 minutes deep analysis, its a draw....

so unless you are kasparov or carlsen , I think the draw is a fair result.. 

yes of course draw is favorable... atleast if one of ur black pawn is advanced u could have won... since all 3 pawns r behind the favorable position its hard to win...

i think this is really a draw, because  a pawn is hard to promote a queen because it is far to the endline

 

Thanks for the commentary kaos :-)

How about the consequences of Rf3 followed by g4?

It certainly allows a pawn advance. The only question is whether the BK can dance through his pawns and avoid a critical check.

Even Rg3 looks like a good try...

 Anybody care to run through a sequence or two to show me an easy draw?

 

I saw many possibilites for white to capture the center pawn - which I felt would lead to a win, but black could defend againt every tactic AND while defending, slowly march pawns across the board. Time favored black in this situation. Had the board been 20 ranks deep rather than 8, I believe that white could have pulled off a win. When you moved your pawn into the 3rd rank I could no longer see any way to take a pawn without giving you the opportunity to promote another one. The draw was white's best option here - at least by my reckoning.

as black i would have went for it, hoping that white would slip.

when I first saw the first positoin, it looked totally won for black to me, 3 connected passed pawns should be worth a lot in an endgame, but of course I'm only a patzer :)

Rybka analysis shows white is actually slightly better here (about half a pawn).  But if you add the "human factor", I think it's white that's on the defensive and has to be very careful. I would have pushed on if I were black. 

regardless of what engines say, I can't see how white could possibly stop the pawns. his king is totally cut off so it can't block anything, and the queen is impotent against the pawns. furthermore, Q vs R without pawns is hard to win to begin with, almost drawn, and adding three connected passed pawns to that seems totally won. not to mention that the biggest reason why the rook drops in the pawnless ending, is because the queen can check all over the board, which it can't do here because the pawns give shelter from the checks. I'd be hugely surprised if white could hold the draw, unless there's an immediate perpetual. which there probably isn't because rybka didn't give 0.00 straight away.

I'm pretty sure rybka is simply giving out something like 9.75 - (5 + 3*1 + worth of connected passers) = +0.5, totally regardless of what's going on in the position. it can't see deep enough to find tactics, so it'll just spit out a combination of hard coded material values + similar 'positional' ones.

my plan (in the final position) would be to use the rook as a shield from checks and advance the pawns. maybe something like Rf3 to stop the check, protect f4, then advance g-pawn and push the queen out. then block further checks from the flank with the rook and queen a pawn or two. were I black, white would have to wrestle the draw out of my cold, dead hand. I probably wouldn't give a draw even if all the pawns dropped, but instead make white prove he can mate Q vs R.

 

wormstar wrote:

regardless of what engines say, I can't see how white could possibly stop the pawns. his king is totally cut off so it can't block anything, and the queen is impotent against the pawns. furthermore, Q vs R without pawns is hard to win to begin with, almost drawn, and adding three connected passed pawns to that seems totally won. not to mention that the biggest reason why the rook drops in the pawnless ending, is because the queen can check all over the board, which it can't do here because the pawns give shelter from the checks. I'd be hugely surprised if white could hold the draw, unless there's an immediate perpetual. which there probably isn't because rybka didn't give 0.00 straight away.

I'm pretty sure rybka is simply giving out something like 9.75 - (5 + 3*1 + worth of connected passers) = +0.5, totally regardless of what's going on in the position. it can't see deep enough to find tactics, so it'll just spit out a combination of hard coded material values + similar 'positional' ones.

my plan (in the final position) would be to use the rook as a shield from checks and advance the pawns. maybe something like Rf3 to stop the check, protect f4, then advance g-pawn and push the queen out. then block further checks from the flank with the rook and queen a pawn or two. were I black, white would have to wrestle the draw out of my cold, dead hand. I probably wouldn't give a draw even if all the pawns dropped, but instead make white prove he can mate Q vs R.

 

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well it's not as easy as it seems. White queen will penetrate (and eliminate the pawn shelter of the king to stop checks) simply with a7 or c7 and then it will be hell of a lot of checks coming from white, black has to defend a lot. actually black doesn't even has time to reposition his rook for stopping queen checks.

I think the key to white's superiority here is the mobility of the queen in a wide open board, when black is immobile and clumsy with the pawns and the king.

maybe you're right diskamyl, my plan seems to run into Qb2 with huge mate threats...