Lately I have been working through Jonathan Hawkins’ excellent book From Amateur to IM which discusses how through learning certain endings very well the author went from around 2000 to an IM. He’s now a strong GM so improvement has continued to this day.
In one of the chapters he gives this position:
Here he invites the reader to place a black bishop anywhere you’d like on the board. If you’re like me you probably were immediately drawn to the d4 square.
After all, doesn’t that look strong? The bishop and the pawn protecting one another…surely that’s the best setup possible, right?
Well, as it turns out, no. With the bishop on the same color square as the pawn the plan for White becomes to maneuver until you can exchange the rook for the bishop and pawn and transition into a won king and pawn ending.
When the bishop is on the color other than the pawn then the bishop and the pawn complement one another by attacking different color squares and it becomes possible to hold.
I invite the reader to try it for themselves with these two positions against an engine or a friend.
Loss
Draw
Now if faced with a position such as this you would know what to play if you had this position.
If you were White and it was your move you’d know to play d4. If you were Black and it were your move you’d know that you would need to get …d4 in so you’d play …Kc5 in order to be able to make …d4 unstoppable.
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
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Bishops attacking stuff is an important theme in the ending. The way to draw bishop and two connected passed pawns versus opposite-colored bishop is to set up a position like this: http://www.jinchess.com/chessboard/?p=——————b-k————–PP——K–B—————–&tm=w
Black plays bishop to a8-b7-c6 and White cannot make progress.
Another bishop attacking stuff. This is the position after Black’s 75th move in Adams-Lemos, Gibraltar 2011. Draw! http://www.jinchess.com/chessboard/?p=—————b——–R—-R——K-k————————-&tm=w You can find the game at
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1605542
Thanks!!
Thanks to Chicago Area Iconic Master Frederick Rhine for his amazing contributions to this discussion!!
Does the highly estimable “Master” Rhine have the above mentioned Endgame book?
And if so, what does he think about it?
I have the book, but like most of my thousands of chess books I’ve barely looked at it.
I had it for probably a year before I looked at it myself.