Who says a GM can't win K,B + N vs K ending?

GM Harika just won the dreaded ending to tie her semi-final match in the women's tourney today.

After a hundred plus moves, and with some time pressure, she kept the dream alive to become the next challenger for the women's world championship.

Bravo!!!

Nice!

I'm very interested. Can you post a link or the game?

I don't think anyone has suggested that no GMs can win that position.  There was another one in Women's WC earlier in the tournament.  Famously, Women's WC Anna Ushenina failed to win it a few years ago

I've seen a 2350 master at our club demonstrate it as an exercise without time pressure....but if you make one mistake and let the King escape you virtually have to start over, so bravo!!!!

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1863243

That game tied her with Tan Zhongyi in the classical portion.  If she drew or lost( unlikely) she would have been eliminated.  Sadly she went 1-2 after this and still lost.

I have seen a master fail to win a 2 Bishops ending vs another master in time pressure.  A couple of mistakes is all it takes

What about this endgame...! (I didn't play it)

Thanks! That's pretty cool. It looks to me like Harika used The W Method.

King+bishop+knight vs king is always a theorical win.But pratically speaking,it is a bit harder than mate with king+rook.

...Rxb2

That was smooth. 

I'm not that good a player, but I had no trouble demonstrating it to the high school team I coached. I learned the K, B & N vs K mate technique from the old Reuben Fine endgame book.

The key is to push the lone K, say the Black K for clarity, to the edge of the board with the WK hovering two ranks or files back, as you do with a K+R mate, then push the BK to a corner of the board whose corner square is the same color the B travels on. The B and N keep eliminating squares for the BK to backtrack on under danger of walking himself into an easy mate.

Then, you want to trap the BK so he can only move on 2 squares in the corner, say a8 and b8 with the WK posted on b6 and the B several squares back from c8 and on c8-h3 diagonal.  Then, all you have to do is move the N so that when it lands on a6 it is checking the BK. If that's not the case, do an extra move (zwischenzug) with the B along the c8-h3 diagonal, keeping it back at few squares from c8 so the BK moves to b8 when the N is one move away from a6.  Then you play Na6+ Ka8 and now move the B to the a8-h1 diagonal for mate.

The same pattern applies to the other 4 corners as does the mirror image where the BK is trapped at a8 and a7, the B blocks the a6-f1 diagonal, the WK sits at c7 and the N applies check at c8.

There's another way to force mate with K, B, and N but I've found it harder to achieve.

the part that cracked me up was 103. Ng4 with the idea of Ne3 covering the pawn advance square. Of course ... Bg5 must have been heart-breaking.
I imagine there are wins and then there are wins. Fifty move limit probably felt like well too few.

It's not very difficult to win k+N+B vs k . She is not in time pressure btw. 10 minutes is more than enough to win this endgame if you know method. Let alone GM I can also do it. It was great victory anyway

The real questions is whether it is worth spending a couple of hours learning this.