Believe it or not, this position is part of my opening preparation. LOL
A position where you must be patient.
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I still think that 26. a4 is good.
Let's go! Whee! (And since Random says it's his opening prep, all the more I want to attack this position to a draw. When I saw the ridiculous defensive things black has, it started being fun pulling them out of the hat.)
Mainline is in black. The key is 26...Ka7! because of 27. Bc8 Be7! magically. I gave a few sidelines in your analysis (the first line in blue) that shows white may be able to win against black's inaccuracies, but it's very tricky and not that easy to convert. The black line I think is critical, though, try looking there.
When analysing, try to look for white's best attacking ideas, and black's best defensive ideas. Admittedly black's ideas are far harder to see (26...Be7! here and 31...Rh7! in my previous post) but they are absolutely critical.
OTB I really wouldn't want to touch this as black. Especially since the important defending moves are so magical and have to be seen a few moves in advance. But in the comfort of analysis mode, I think black has many resources at his disposal.
I'm off to sleep now and won't be back for a day (tomorrow is a looong day.)
If anyone is interested, this position comes from a forced sequence on move 5 from the english opening.
22.Rxf7 is also alright too imo
Well Remellion, I have been working on a refutation to the double bishop ending and i a can not find one, it looks like my mainline doesn't work, and it is pointless to refute your RvR ending since the double bishop draws. I will start working on Falcogrine's variation of my line and see if that comes out better.
And Infinite that was a very interesting sequence and I am intrigued in finding the sequence that you played. Is this a position that arose in a game that you played or are you just improving your opening theory.
In refutation of Falco's idea. I still do think that white can win this position, and a4 may be the way to do it, but it will need more work.
EDIT: This refutes Falco's post below me, I submitted my PGN as an edit.
My thoughts on the Kb3 line for white. Might be a forced win. I agree, this would be a nightmare to play otb. I will be gone for about a week, coming up soon. Lots of time for you to refute my line!
OK, here's my take on 27. Kb3. Very interesting this time.
35...Kc7? was a blunder on my part. 36. b6+ wins, although not because of 39. Rh7? with a drawn bishop endgame, but 39. Re7! winning the e-pawn and black is just crushed by white's centre probably.
So instead of that blunder, 35...Rd8 looks like it holds the position. White can't effectively attack black's weaknesses. OK, maybe 36. Bg6 (I didn't see this while doing the PGN) wins. I can't see nice clear lines. Forget what I said here.
OK, GainCity's 31...Rc8+; does it work? I say yes too. I think 33...Kxb5 leads to a draw; the lines there are messy but seem to work. The whole position after 33...Kxb5 34. Rxd6 h4! 35. gxh4 Rh3 36. Re6 is another Pandora's box of interesting variations, or so it seems. But I'd ignore this whole mess in favour of his 33...Kc5.
Interestingly, leaving the b-pawn on the board allows 34...Kb4! with a sudden mating attack and black has the better side of the draw for a change (I think). Even without that, I mostly agree with GainCityin that it's a draw (except at the very end of his line, but minor details bah.)
tl;dr: Black still draws. Please try to disprove this, I'll keep refuting until someone finds the winner that should be around somewhere...
To that end, I have two proposals:
(1) Allowing black to fix the pawns on g3 and h2 allow the ...h4 break in some lines and give him a space advantage mostly. So why not 23...h5 24. h4!? changing up the structure, then playing Bh3? (Note: this requires re-evaluation of all previous ideas in context of new pawn structure. Go on, hate me for it. I might try some lines later.)
(2) White's king turns out to be surprisingly far away/slow/vulnerable even, in most lines. Phylar's idea of marching the king to b5 before starting the piece-play action with Bh3 etc may be worth looking into.
I'm also interested in what Randommemory (InfiniteFlash) thinks about this position. Have you found any forced wins in your own analysis? (Just yes or no is fine too.) I see it as black being the one who can shuffle around for years until he starts countering white's active plans with several critical moves in a row.
Although for practical purposes, nobody can read all the variations OTB within, say, 120|30 even. It's torturous to defend accurately move after move.
OTB I'd probably agree a draw with either side. Maybe a slight edge to white if he knows what he's doing, but too many complexities for me to say anything with any confidence about who would win in a game.
In the last line, I somehow thought that white could win the d5 pawn (you know, the one blocking progress and forcing the draw), seems not.
All in all, interesting position, fun to try to analyze.
pellik wrote:
Definitely not a draw. I think white has something like 5 different ways to win here. My concern was allowing Bh6-e3 and black builds a fortress, but sooner or later white is going to win the d pawn and eventually promote his own.
Ramellions line from three posts ago should be winning after just Be6 to cut the rook off from defense of d6.
Also black can be completely shut down if white plays Kd3 instead of Kb3, improving his king while keeping watch over d2 and e3.
I belive that is a line that falco and I worked on, and if you check my post before that a black Rc8 clears white of the important c file and gives black a great chance to draw.
pellik wrote:
No way does that draw. After ...Rc6 Rxd6+ Ka5 (or a7) Rf1 white has d6, and any attempt by black to utilize his active rook only hastens white's victory by pushing white's king into ever more useful squares.
If Rf6 then black has Bb4 then Bc5 and the white king can not push up the a file becuase of the obvious checkmate by the rook.
diagrams, plz?
Pelik that wasn't my idea at all, that is totally lost for black.
InfiniteFlash wrote:
The following position should be a forced win imo. White's rook on the 7th is super powerful and black can not develop properly, yet the pawn structure is not so easy to exploit.
It's opposite colored bishops so generally speaking, trading rooks will give black one of the easiest draws ever. White must avoid that.
I have analyzed this position to no end, and seemingly white can plays this position for years, and black has to hope he doesn't run out of moves fast otherwise it's lost.
I don't think the engines help in this position. Can you find a forced win? Please be nice about it, if it's obvious to you (which it isn't surely).
I predict some day you'll be pleasantly surprised when you quickly see an "obvious" win in an endgame position much harder than this one.
This is in your opening repertoire? Wow. I'm pretty sure my opening rep doesn't require me to know details after 10 moves in any direction (although that's almost definitely because it's nowhere near as deep as yours)
I looked at the line. It's interesting that 21.Rc1 doesn't save the knight after 21...Be7 22.Kb2+ Kb8 23.Nc7 a6! Since it took me a minute to see that, you probably don't want my analysis on this endgame lol.
BTW how far into this line have you ever got OTB? Curious more than sceptical.
pellik wrote:
GainCity wrote:
Pelik that wasn't my idea at all, that is totally lost for black.
I have no idea what your idea was. I just saw Ramellions post where black was "preventing" Bc8, and showed that the position was lost.
Allow me to repost
And allow me to repost:
Slightly updated, with 31...Rc8+ brought to the forefront.
27. Kd3 b5 followed by ...Kb6 if needed with the plan of erasing white's a-pawn. It works because the king is then on d3 rather than b3. Different plans for different cases, not every white response is met by the same black plan. In particular, black's bishop does not need to get active in most lines. Its main function is to defend d6 and supply ingenious things like Be7 to simplify to a different endgame.
Once again playing devil's advocate to GainCity, I really appreciate this "dialogue" of sorts, it's fun and beneficial. Now, first blue line in the BvB endgame again:
Key idea is black fortresses. King on c7 and infinite tempo moves with bishop can keep white out indefinitely. See the variations for details (also included is some line with ...Ka6? Bc8+ and white walks in on c6; black must prevent this.)
Now. The "mainline" with 31...Rh7 (although I believe the bishop endgame can't be lost, keeping the rooks give both sides practical chances.)
The important part is moves 33 and 34, I think. Those are key lines. It looks far from a clear white win, though. (Which irritates me, I sincerely thought the starting position was won for white too, before looking through these variations.)
Argh.