
An Endgame From Gibraltar
This next endgame is full of life right from the get go. The game was played only a few days ago, at the Gibraltar tournament.
The player with the white pieces was a strong Georgian player with a peak rating of 2500 FIDE, WGM Lela Javakhishvili. One of the "notable games" on her chessgames.com profile is actually a very similar one to the endgame I analyse today, and is well worth checking out here
The player with the black pieces is GM Michael Adams , a former world number four who needs no introduction.
The real intrigue begins on move 35:
Already an important decision to make - how should black respond to the attack on the h-pawn?
Adams chose something more straightforward and now we come to our next interesting decision:
Is this enough for a win or just a draw? At this stage who cares - we are just looking to set some problems.
Best play for white?
Javakhishvili found this idea (Adams did not play b3) and the game continued :
Adams did a "clever" move that actually misses the win, although finding the draw is not easy:
- the side with the smaller pawn majority can have the advantage in these endgames because they can create a passed pawn faster
For example if you removed the e and f pawns for white in this endgame and the g and f pawns for black then Javakishvili would draw this against Carlsen:
- I also liked how Adams continued setting problems for example with the king march - yes this position is a draw and a strong player like Javakishvili will play endgames very well but chess is hard - even drawn rook endgames!
- There are many other nuggets hidden in this game but the last one I will mention is that the importance of generating counterplay by playing g4 quickly despite damaging the nice pawn structure (those isolated pawns
).
I hope you enjoyed analysing this endgame with me and would love to hear your thoughts - maybe I have made some mistakes in the analysis even (Stockfish is not as helpful in these endgames because the lines are very long although it still deserves most of the credit!).
If you enjoyed it then feel free to check out my previous rook endgame blogs here and here