Should this be a draw, or a win for black?
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KrisRhodes
Aug 21, 2011
0
#1
White to move...
A draw; white keeps his rook on the 3rd rank (say a3, b3) so that black's king can't come closer, keeps his king in front of the pawn, and if the pawn ever advances white moves the rook up to a7 or so and starts giving checks from behind.
Aug 21, 2011
0
#3
Hrm... doing some research it appears white basically already has a "Philidor's Position" here, right? So I should have been able to draw, I think.
Instead I lost. :D
Aug 21, 2011
0
#4
kwaloffer wrote:
A draw; white keeps his rook on the 3rd rank (say a3, b3) so that black's king can't come closer, keeps his king in front of the pawn, and if the pawn ever advances white moves the rook up to a7 or so and starts giving checks from behind.
Yeah, that's what I thought after looking some things up.
Question: Giving checks from behind, the black king can eventually move up to the sixth row making my rook unable to continue giving check. Meanwhile his rook would be behind his pawn. Why doesn't this make it impossible for me to prevent his pawn from advancing eventually? I was thinking, instead, that the idea was to get my king right in front of the pawn, blocking its way so it can't advance at all, then by keeping the rook on row three I'll force a threefold-repitition draw. But does it not work that way?
Draw:
58. Ra3 Rg8+ 59. Kh2 h3 60. Ra4+ Ke3 61. Ra3+ Ke4 62. Ra4+ Kd5 63. Kxh3
KrisRhodes wrote:
kwaloffer wrote:
A draw; white keeps his rook on the 3rd rank (say a3, b3) so that black's king can't come closer, keeps his king in front of the pawn, and if the pawn ever advances white moves the rook up to a7 or so and starts giving checks from behind.
Yeah, that's what I thought after looking some things up.
Question: Giving checks from behind, the black king can eventually move up to the sixth row making my rook unable to continue giving check. Meanwhile his rook would be behind his pawn. Why doesn't this make it impossible for me to prevent his pawn from advancing eventually? I was thinking, instead, that the idea was to get my king right in front of the pawn, blocking its way so it can't advance at all, then by keeping the rook on row three I'll force a threefold-repitition draw. But does it not work that way?
That will work too in this case (with a rook pawn) but with a pawn on another file, the king would be able to go on the other side of the pawn.
If the king goes all the way up to the 6th rank to attack your rook, you just move it to a7 or so and make the king look silly; he won't do anything useful from there, so he can just walk back to the 3rd rank and you'll start checking again.