"Always make a total effort, even when the odds are against you." - Arnold Palmer

Tuesday 5 February 2013

An Interesting Bishop Ending

In our last MCCU match Derbyshire vs Lincolnshire I played with White pieces against Andrew Mort. You've already had the chance to see the whole game in my previous post.
We have reached very interesting Bishop ending where White has apparently a massive advantage and on the diagram below we can see a typical scenario "bad vs good" Bishop. The only question is whether the White advantage is big enough to win.
In the diagram position White played 43.Kf4. Black replied by natural move 43...Ke7, which was proven to be a losing mistake. So are there any other resources for Black and can he keep the draw?
Well, you can check your opinion with my analyses below.
Enjoy this interesting ending.





Well, that was the evaluation of this position supported by Houdini 3 as well as by Nalimov's database. But was it correct? Isn't this kind of blocked position with pawn chains an example of position where the computers fail?
Lets go back to the key position after Black had already sacrificed the e-pawn, White King had occupied the e5-square, Bishop had been threatening to be sacrificed on d5 and finally it was sacrificed on h5.
Grandmaster Igor Rausis came up with another plan which I missed.




The world of endings is incredible, isn't it?

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