does king & queen always win against king & rook, or only in certain positions? And hopefully someone can provide examples.

 

thanks.

I think king and queen should win most of the time, I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but it is a very difficult ending to win.

King and queen will win as it can fork better than the rook and it has more influence Thats why the queen is worth more in points 0_o

Jaguarphd wrote: King and queen will win as it can fork better than the rook and it has more influence Thats why the queen is worth more in points 0_o

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yes but if the king and rook are next to each other maybe in the middle of the board the queen probably wont be able to fork them. So would that be a draw? or can the queen force them to separate and win the rook.

 I hvae seen the diagram below in a book somewhere i believe this is how it works if I remember correctly, and there are some other veriations but this is winning for white. So back to my original question, does K&Q always win against K&R or is this just a special case?

10_1_3_1_19_19 wrote:

So back to my original question, does K&Q always win against K&R or is this just a special case?
Except for some obscure positions where the side with the queen falls into or is trapped into some stalemate trap or gets skewered/pinned by the rook, the K&Q is a win with best play vs. K&R.

Please note that for many of us mortals, it is far from simple.

In Ian Snape's excellent endgame book, "Chess Endings Made Simple", he notes that Gelfand escaped with a 50-move rule draw against Svindler in this ending at the 2001 FIDE world championship.

Seriwan devotes 12 pages of his "Winning Chess Endings" to this topic. He acknowledges the rarity of this occurring, but suggests understanding this ending is vital in understanding the powers of the queen and the limitations of the rook. I cannot say I fully agree/understand his point, but then again, I am not a grandmaster.

Within this chapter (The Rare and the "Perfect"), Seriwan discusses this ending, and opens with the story of GM Walter Browne's battle vs. Ken Thompson and his Belle chess machine which is also recounted in some old northern California chess journals...)

I have tried my hand at playing this ending against against an endgame tablebase and can attest to the difficulty, not to mention the intimidation factor...

 

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thanks for the info. I'll have to check out that book.

Nimzovich

Tis a good book this be true. I also spent a silly amount of time trying to beat a computer with K+Q against K+R, there was more chance of me turning metal into gold, and then the gold into a human boy.

Mueller has created some decent endgame training DVD's which cover the R vs Q ending.

If you are the player with the R you need to keep the king and the rook in the centre.

 If you have the queen you want to move the enemy king to a corner or near the edge of the board so you can force the enemy to have to move their rook away from the kings defence.  At this stage the queen moves in with checks until she forks the rook or mates the king.

Neil_H wrote: If you are the player with the R you need to keep the king and the rook in the centre.

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 no. you put the rook on the 3rd rank, and the king to d1 or e1. the 3rd rank defense is the best defense, but Q vs R is always won for the attacker. the 3rd rank defense can be broken with a correctly timed Qf5 or Qc5 (and pretty much nothing else), which forces the rook to next best defense, the 2nd rank defense. which in turn can be broken by zugzwanging the rook so that it's forced to abandon its king or the defender drifts into philidor's position (which is a mate in a few moves, and not to be confused with the draw). if the rook abandons the king, it drops after a series of checks and/or some typical non-checking moves which prevent the rook from re-uniting with the king.

here's a typical example of breaking the 3rd rank defense that I just blitzed against fritz:

 

 

 

 

since the queen can threaten diaganol, unlike the rook, she can fork the king and rook in some way.  So, in order for the K&R to win, there would have to be some special circumstance where the rook puts the king in check, and by moving the king exposes but can't protect the queen (a skewer where the king is at least three squares away).

The king and queen can win against the king and rook except if pinned, skewered, desperadoed, or perpetual checked. As for the last two, here are some diagrams.