A Practical King and Pawn Ending

Moldovan-Kernighan, KCCC 2007

White to play and win.

Keres 1973

White to play. What is the result?

I have posted an article analyzing the endgame from Moldovan-Kernighan, Kenilworth Chess Club Championship 2007, which is a very practical King and Pawn ending. Moldovan gave up the position as drawn, but there is a win, as demonstrated afterwards by his opponent and by FM Steve Stoyko who was observing the final moves. Moldovan annotates the game at his Chess Coroner blog, where he explains that it was "A disappointing but acceptable result since I was clearly worse at one stage...." As he goes on to show, the winning strategy is to use the passed pawn to force the Black King to the last rank, then surrender the pawn in such a way that you can claim the opposition and win the pawn at g6, when the King on the sixth rank forces through the remaining pawn to the queening square. I have included some similar examples taken from Paul Keres's excellent book Practical Chess Endings (Batsford 1973/1974). One position he gives (see diagram above) shows a way for Black to draw by counter-attack if the second pawn is on the c- or f-file. So this is a good one to know from both sides!

Frankenstein and Dracula Meet the Werewolf

I thought I knew all about the Frankenstein-Dracula Variation of the Vienna (1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bc4 Nxe4 4.Qh5). Then the other night at the club, a mysterious stranger introduced me to the Werewolf with 4...Ng5!?!? and it really freaked me out. I had never seen that before. In fact, I had never even imagined that there might be another move for Black besides 4...Nd6.

As far as I know, that move is not in any book. As you might expect, it probably is not very good on close inspection. But proving that upon first encounter is another story--especially late at night at ICC, with a full moon overhead. I have been enjoying playing the Werewolf quite a bit these past few days. And I'm just itching to play it again.

For those interested in learning more about the mainline Frankenstein-Dracula, I suggest the articles by Tim Harding at ChessCafe:

• Frankenstein and Dracula at the Chessboard
  
• Winning by One Tempo: Clever or Not?
  
• Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, or Has He?


• Putting Dracula Back in His Coffin


• Interview with a Chessplaying Vampire

You might also enjoy Vienna Backwaters by IM Andrew Martin, which offers an introduction to Santasiere's forgotten surprise gambit alternative to the Frankenstein-Dracula that may be even scarier: 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bc4 Nxe4 4.Qh5 Nd6 5.Bb3 Nc6 6.d4!?

Examples of Underpromotion

Cole-NN, USATE 2007

White to play and win.

Play continued 1.Rf8!? Rxf8 ...

At the Kenilworth Chess Club the other night, I spoke with Jim Cole about his experience as captain of the Kenilworth CC Rookies at the US Amateur Teams East. It was his first rated tournament, so a lot was new and exciting to him. But he had one rather awkward experience that he was still having trouble digesting.

During one of his games, he reached the position in the diagram above as White against a young opponent. Seeing a quick way to Queen his pawn, Jim naturally played 1.Rf8!? and the game continued 1....Rxf8 2.gxf8, at which point Jim reached for and grasped the Queen that was sitting beside the board.

His opponent jumped up and declared, "Stalemate!"

"But I haven't even completed my move," Jim protested, just now realizing that a Queen on f8 would make an immediate draw.

"It doesn't matter," his young opponent declared with complete confidence. "Touch move rule! You touched your Queen! Stalemate!"

I assured Jim that his opponent was mistaken, and that he was allowed to touch any piece that was off the board without being forced to place it on the queening square. We analyzed the position a bit and it was clear that making a Bishop would win very quickly. I realized later that even a Knight would work. But the fact was past and, as a practical matter, it had been settled as soon as he shook his opponent's hand and signed the scoresheet--even if his move was never completed on the board.

When I got home that night, I immediately took out my rule book and looked it up. According to Rule 10H of the USCF's Official Rules, 5th edition, "There is no penalty for touching a piece that is off the board. A player who advances a pawn to the last rank and then touches a piece off the board is not obligated to promote the pawn to the piece touched until that piece has been released on the promotion square" (pp. 22-23). Jim was right to be upset.

But then I realized that, even if he had known the rule, Jim would have had a lot of trouble putting down his Queen and picking up a Bishop. Being an honest fellow, Jim would have had to admit that he had fully intended to place a Queen on f8 before his opponent had intervened by declaring "Stalemate!" Therefore to change his move would be unethical, practically like receiving "unsolicited advice" from others during a game (see 20E ff.)--even if the advice came from his opponent!

Best to just accept it as a lesson learned--and motivation for actually sitting down to read the Rules in full!

As I was puzzling over the position, I remembered an article by John Nunn on underpromotion that I had stumbled upon the other day in one of my chess files. I had torn it out of a magazine (likely New in Chess circa 1985-1986), so I can't give you the specific citation. It featured several fascinating tactical endings and a discussion of how rare it is to see a position where a player must underpromote in order to win. Having said that, he also gave the following interesting position, which I cover in my article.

Branimir Vujic - Marjia Petrovic
Yugoslav Ladies' Championship, Kula 1985
White to play and win.

Today's Chess Columns

Chua-Vigorito, USATE 2007
Black to play and win.

I read two newspaper chess columns on Sunday.

The first is always The New York Times's chess column by Dylan Loeb McClain, who has proven an excellent successor to GM Robert Byrne. I especially like to see more current and local games in his columns than had been the case previously. Today's piece is titled "At Amateur Team Tournament, Having a Good Costume Helps" and features Chua-Vigorito, USATE 2007, which is one of the few master games I have seen from the event. It opens with the ever-wild Botvinnik Variation of the Anti-Meran Semi-Slav. Unfortunately for students of the opening, the game only diverges from theory on move 19 (see the diagram above), and its 19th move is probably not the most incisive (see my notes).

The second article I always read is The Newark Star-Ledger's chess column by Pete Tamburro and Steve Doyle. I was hoping they would have a USATE game today and expect they will have several in the coming weeks (as they typically do following the event). Instead, today they feature the excellent game Grasso-Stoyko, NJ Open 2006, which we annotated shortly after the event in a blog article titled "FM Steve Stoyko at the NJ Open."

I am glad that these papers feature these excellent writers and hope their columns are never completely supplanted by us bloggers....

More USATE News

"Beavis and Butt-Vinnik" players James Critelli and Evan Turtel (right) sit down to play Kenilworth CC #1, led by Steve Stoyko (left).

I'm finally turning up some news stories about the US Amateur Team East, including a very good one out today by my fifth round opponent, Alan Kantor, titled "Beavis and Butt-Vinnik Take East" at Chess Life online. It includes some excellent photos, information about the event and a list of winners. It also presents Beavis and Butt-Vinnik's road to the championship. Of our teams' fifth round encounter Kantor writes: "We were paired against a tough New Jersey team. Despite Stephen Stoyko blocking the way we managed to squeak out victory with 2½ points." Very nice.

More details about the event can also be found at The Daily Record, which has a good story titled "Players from all over check in at Parsippany chess tournament." There you can get some numbers, which help to understand how big this event was (and why the bathrooms were so rank by day 3):

A total of 1,174 players --including nine international grand masters, 33 international masters and eight masters --are competing in the event, said E. Steven Doyle, past president of the New Jersey State Chess Federation. The field is diverse, with competitors ranging in age from five to 93 and hailing from various states on the eastern seaboard.

And, "this is the first time we are promoted to be the World Amateur Team," Doyle explained. "We are the largest world amateur team event in the world."

The tournament primarily has been held in New Jersey since 1972, and has taken place at the Hilton for the last 15 years, Doyle added.

I have already mentioned blog coverage by Jim West on Chess and Derek Slater of the Reassembler blog. Today I found Globular's Blog and The Rainy Day Blog.

And I think I discovered why they are now billing it as the "World Amateur Team Championship": there will apparently be no playoff among the four teams this year. I guess that means Beavis and Butt-Vinnik are World Champs.