Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Bishop Endings Revisited

Short - Rublevsky
White to play and win.

Ever since FM Steve Stoyko's excellent lecture last year on "Endings with Bishops of the Same Color" (Java, PGN), I have been fascinated by the theme.  I was especially impressed by the recent game Short - Rublevsky, 13th Karpov International 2012, which offered a perfect illustration of the various strategies that Stoyko outlined: creating targets on the same color squares as the bishops, attacking on both sides of the board, and needing two weaknesses to win.  Karsten Müller took note of that ending in his Endgame Magic show at ChessBase.  And today Müller has a great article on "Same-Colored Bishop Endings" (PDF) at ChessCafe, in which he adds a couple of themes to those that Stoyko covered: exploiting bishop activity (in Shulman - Seirawan, US Championship 2012) and building a fortress for defense (in Seirawan - Karpov, Match 2012).  Worth a look. 

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