Chigorin and the Pawns

Quote of the Month: First learn K&P vs K and then branch back from there.

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In the Novice Nook King and Pawn vs. King we learned about the important
Tic-Tac-Toe Rule:
In a king and one non-rooks pawn vs. king endgame, if

Novice Nook

1) The offensive king is within a 3x3 tic-tac-toe area with its central
square the one reached by the pawn before its promotion (the seventh
rank):

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[FEN "8/3K4/8/6k1/3P4/8/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

The white king is in the center of its tic-tac-toe area for a d-pawn.
2) The pawn is on a lower rank than the offensive king, and
3) The pawn is not trivially lost, then

Simple Attacking Plans

by Fred Wilson

no matter where the defensive king is and no matter whose move it is, it
is always a win with proper play.
This is necessary information in determining if the well-known "shouldering"
position is a win:

How I Became World Champion

by Garry Kasparov

[FEN "8/8/8/8/1k1p4/3P4/1K6/8 w - - 0 0"]

White to play
Here, with White to play, Black has the opposition, so White cannot stop
Black from making progress and winning the pawn; e.g., 1.Kc2 Ka3 2.Kc1
Kb3 3.Kd2 Kb2 4.Ke1 Kc2 5.Ke2 Kc3 White has to leave the pawn since
Black has two squares where his king can currently attack it (c3 and c2) and

White has only one (e2) where he can defend 6.Ke1 Trying for the opposition
but, if the tic-tac-toe rule we quoted in the previous diagram works, that
means the opposition does not matter. 6...Kxd3 7.Kd1 Ke3 (or 7...Kf3) 8.Ke1
d3 9.Kd1 d2 and White is squeezed out by zugzwang after 10.Kc2 Ke2 and
Black wins.
But it is equally important to learn that if we move the entire set of pieces up
one rank, Black wins the pawn exactly as before, but now tic-tac-toe is not in
force, and the opposition draws:

[FEN "8/8/8/1k1p4/3P4/1K6/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

White to play
1.Kc3 Ka4 2.Kc2 Kb4 3.Kd3 This is not at all necessary, but I am showing
how the identical moves as before will now draw. White does not have to
struggle to save the pawn, but can simply head straight for squares that touch
the critical d2, waiting for Black to take the pawn. Then White can draw as
we saw in King and Pawn vs. King 3...Kb3 4.Ke2 Kc3 5.Ke3 Kc4 6.Ke2
White begins his dance. If Black now delays capturing the pawn, White can
simply go to squares which touch d2, waiting to jump on it after Black
inevitably captures the pawn. 6...Kxd4 7.Kd2 The basic opposition position.
Without Black's king being in tic-tac-toe territory (most call those, in general,
critical squares), White draws as in King and Pawn vs. King. 7...Ke4 8.Ke2
Maintaining the opposition. 8...d4 This has to come sooner or later. 9.Kd2
White must follow the rule, whenever possible, do not allow the king with the
pawn in front of the pawn! 9...d3 and now the famous "Pawn on the sixth"
rule: When the lone pawn finally reaches the sixth rank, then the defending
king must move straight back along the file of the pawn. 10.Kd1! Other
moves lose; e.g., 10.Ke1?? Ke3 11.Kd1 e2 12.Kc2 Ke2 and Black wins 10...
Ke3 11.Ke1 Again it is necessary to not allow the king in front of the pawn.
11...d2+ Black can dance around too, but this must be tried eventually to
avoid a three-fold repetition draw. 12.Kd1 and now Black has to decide
which type of draw he will allow. He can abandon the pawn and allow a draw
by insufficient mating material or he can hold on to his pawn with 12...Kd3
stalemate.
There are only a few "specific" endgames you must know if your rating is
under 1800, and the above is one of them!
The next obvious point is that if there are more pawns on the board, then the
position is almost always a trivial win for the side with the penetrating king,
no matter what the rank (there are a few rare exceptions with rook pawns, but
that is not germane here):

[FEN "8/8/4p3/1k1pP3/3P4/1K6/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

White to play
1.Kc3 Ka4 2.Kc2 Kb4 3.Kd3 Kb3 4.Ke2 Kc3 5.Ke3 Kc4 6.Ke2 Kxd4 7.
Kd2 Kxe5 8.Ke3 The opposition does not matter at all. 8...d4+ The easiest
win when you have two or more pawns is to just push one non-rooks pawn
and leave the other one back for a tempo. See K&P&? vs. K 9.Kd3 Kd5 10.
Kd2 Ke4 11.Ke2 d3+ 12.Kd2 Kd4 13.Kd1 May as well go straight back for
practice; otherwise Black would not even need the extra pawn! 13...Ke3 14.
Ke1 d2+ 15.Kd1 Now without the extra pawn White would draw as in the
previous diagram. 15...e5 16.Kc2 Ke2 and Black promotes and wins.
With all this as a background we can now try a fun puzzle, which is actually
an endgame that one of the world's top players at the time, Mikhail Chigorin,
apparently lost. We will need most of the above information and more to
solve it, but that is exactly how you learn!

[FEN "8/6pp/5p2/3k1PP1/5K1P/8/8/8 w - - 0 0"]

White to play and draw

From what we have learned above, White's position looks pretty difficult:
Black is the one whose king has penetrated to the file of the base White pawn
on f5 (made it to the critical squares on the fifth rank), meaning that sooner or
later Black will be able to elbow out (or shoulder) White's king. Moreover, as
we have seen, the extra pawns on the board favor the attacker, in this case
Black. However, the presence of rook pawns (which means the edge of the
board is close, too!) is in the defender's (White's) favor. How can he use that
to his advantage?
If you are able, visualize the following analysis (the general suggestion for
improvement is to visualize answers to problems as if you are playing a game,
but when you actually play out an entire game, then get out a set it could be
electronic and play out each move of the game on the board). If you cannot
visualize this analysis, then, by all means, follow along on a board for
maximum learning experience.
When I first saw this problem I understood that 1.h5? would lose immediately
to any move that would create balance, and so Black should answer that with
1...h6! and symmetry would result (which is a small and partial result of my
much more general and advanced concept The Principal of Symmetry). After
1...h6!, even if White trades with 2.gxh6 gxh6, the presence of the second
pawn would win easily for Black just as in the previous diagram, as he would

end up with two pawns against none. If you do not understand why 1...h6! is a
good move, and how Black wins easily as before, the proper study course
would be to stop here and play this out (with a friend or with a computer) to
understand what is happening. These common endgame issues occur quite
frequently, even if a particular setup may not, and thus form the basis for
further endgame knowledge.
So what else can White try on the first move? If he tries the immediate 1.g6,
then 1...h5! immediately runs White out of moves and Black can win all his
pawns. Later we will see that answering 1.g6 with the apparently also strong
1...h6? does not win the same way as 1...h5!
But what baffled me is why 1.gxf6 did not draw. In my head I calculated 1.
gxf6 gxf6 2.Kg4 Ke5 3.Kh5 Kxf5 4.Kh6 Kg4 and now not the feeble 5.h5? f5
winning easily for Black, but instead 5.Kxh7 and it seemed that Black had
only two tries, and it further seemed that both drew!:
a) 5...Kxh4 6.Kg6 and the black pawn falls with an immediate draw.
b) The more complicated 5...f5 looks hopeless for White at first glance, but
with the Rti-like king maneuver threatening to both capture Black's pawn
and advance his own, White can draw: 6.Kg6! f4 7.h5 and both sides
promote: 7...f3 8.h6 f2 9.h7 f1Q 10.h8Q and it seems that Black's king is too
far away to win; e.g., 10...Qf5+ 11.Kg7 should draw.
So why isn't that the answer to the problem!?
It turns out the key move to refute 1.gxf6 is a little unusual, so I did not think
of it at the time and thus was unable to visualize it, but perhaps you can now:
1.gxf6 gxf6 2.Kg4 Ke5 3.Kh5 Kxf5 4.Kh6 Kg4 5.Kxh7 and now not (a) or (b)
above, but 5...Kh5! Black delays racing or capturing the white pawn!:

[FEN "8/7K/5p2/7k/7P/8/8/8 w - - 0 5"]

White to play after 5...Kh5!

With this unusual idea Black wins on the spot, as White's king is shut out
from both going after the f-pawn and helping the h-pawn. Neat!
But eliminating 1.gxf6 means that all of White's pawn moves, on his first
move, lose. So the drawing idea must involve starting with a king move. But
deductive logic (and the previous examples) show that making only white
king moves throughout the solution must also lose since the white king can be
shouldered off the f-pawn sooner or later. That means the solution must begin
with the king move, but then involve pawn moves at some point, not
something I would have suspected when I first saw the problem (at that point
I thought the first move was likely a pawn move, since just king moves were
hopeless).
The most reasonable king move to try first is 1.Kg4. But how does that help
after 1...Ke4 (or 1...Ke5)? It turns out that king move prevents the otherwise
winning line 2.g6 h5+ Remember that 1.g6 h5 lost for White, but with the
moves 1.Kg4 Ke4 inserted first before 2.g6 h5+, White has 3.Kxh5 and now
Black can never capture the f-pawn because of stalemate; e.g., 3...Kxf5
stalemate. But that would be Black's only try to make progress in that
position. Aha! Now we are onto something.

So that means that after 2.g6 Black cannot play 2...h5 but, because of the
threat of 3.gxh7, the only two moves left are 2...hxg6 and 2...h6. But with the
above information we should be able to discern that 2...h6 fails to the same
stalemate pattern 3.Kh5! when Black can never take the pawn on f5 without
ending the game immediately. This also explains why, after 1.g6 h6? fails
(instead of the previously discussed 1...h5! winning), since White can
transpose with 2.Kg4 Ke5 3.Kh5! and draws. I told you the edge of the board
encroaching would be to White's advantage!
So that only leaves one last try for Black, 2.g6 hxg6 3.fxg6 Now the only
dangerous move is 3...f5+ (or Black could have tried 1.Kg4 Ke5 2.g6 hxg6 3.
hxg6 Ke4, but White can race safely with 4.h5) 4.Kg5! White races forward
rather than go back toward the first rank with dubious defense. Of course,
before you choose a move like 4.Kg5, you must count the race and make sure
it works. You cannot just guess, as I see so many players do when they play
quickly in the endgame, and then they wonder what you have to do to become
a better player!
Play would continue 4...f4 5.h5 f3 6.h6 gxh6+ Most of the time the player
may as well make this capture, since it does not affect the race but does save
the pawn. 7.Kxh6 f2 8.g7 f1Q 9.g8Q and Black can make no progress; e.g.,
9...Qh3+ 10.Kg7 Qg4+ 11.Kf7 is an easy draw.
So that solves the puzzle! According to Fundamental Chess Endings by
Mller and Lamprecht, Chigorin, as white, lost to Tarrasch at Ostend in 1905
after 1.gxf6? gxf6 2.Kg4 Ke5 3.Kh3 Kf4 with an easy win for Tarrasch.
This month's column is an excellent example of how to take a basic idea and
build it up into a more advanced one. In this case we started with how a king
can "shoulder" another king in certain king and pawn vs. king and pawn
positions and used this to eventually build up our knowledge until it was able
to help us find the solution to a problem that one of the world's best players
was unable to solve over-the-board.

Question Would you be kind enough to point me to an article where you

developed the view that there is a minimum time for a student to get the hang
of things or to any reference you know of that deals with the subject?
Answer There is no minimum time to play "Real Chess." In the standard 40/2
time limit most strong players can play real chess with no problem. However,
when a game is very tense and complicated most of the way, they get into
understandable time trouble trying to do things right. With small children
usually thirty minutes is about all you can get; if they use that, it is great.
Once the students start to get older they think more like adults and for the
better ones, the more time, the more they can do. Many of my online adult
students like 45/45: the big increment shelters them if the game goes longer.
There is a Team 4545 League on the Internet Chess Club (ICC) and the ICC
also hosts a 90/30 individual organization.

Question My rating hovers around 1600 OTB in Canada. I am sixty-fiveyears old, recently retired, and, at last, able to devote more time to the game.
In order to improve, I decided that I should practice tactics. I try to do five
problems per day. I hate being under pressure, so I avoid timed exercises. But
my friend tells me that if I spend too much time on a problem, I am only
fooling myself into thinking my approach is worthwhile. I take on average
three minutes to solve the problems and sometimes up to nine minutes for
more difficult ones. I once spent thirty-five minutes on a position and never
managed to solve it. It seems to me that I am learning more by assessing the
moves calmly, as though in a real game, which means getting used to the
position, material, and candidate moves. Therefore, my question is the
following: How long should I spend on a single tactic problem? Should I try
to go as fast as possible or slowly develop my vision as I tend to do? What
approach do you recommend?

Answer It depends on the difficulty of the problem, your goals, and how
many times you have done the same problem, but this is a summary:
First, I agree with the old Soviet method: until you are a strong player,
repetitious study of easy tactics, and not studying difficult tactics, is the way
to start (and continue for a while). I also agree with Michael de la Maza in
Rapid Chess Improvement that cutting your time in half each repetition, so
that eventually you are going for recognition, and not solving of these easy
problems, is the way to go (although he does it for difficult problems, too,
which I think is counterproductive). I examined this in detail in A Different
Approach to Studying Tactics, The Four Homeworks, The Most Common and
Important Use of Tactics, and Tactical Sets and Goals.
By far the best book for intermediate tactics, which I do not recommend for a
while (as per the above articles) is Winning Chess Exercises for Kids by Jeff
Coakley, likely the highest rated book (by student feedback) I have ever
recommended. I do not recommend it until my student is at least 1600 FIDE.

Question One of my biggest problems is making one-move blunders. I know

I should always check if a move is safe. But often when I come under
pressure, in a bad position or time trouble, I move quickly and do not make a
safety check. Do you have any practical advice or training methods on how to
get rid of this bad habit?
Answer Everyone gets into time pressure occasionally. So those mistakes
happen. But most weaker players make hasty moves even when they have
plenty of time; and it only takes one bad move to lose the game. In that case it
is a combination of a good thought process (when you first see a move, ask
"Is that move safe? Can it be defeated in turn by a check, capture or threat of
my opponent in reply?"), concentration, and willpower to act consistently.
Even if you do ask "Is my move safe?" every time, you have to rely on your
pattern recognition (Study basic tactics! see A Different Approach to
Studying Tactics) and analysis to get the right answer.
You also need to play long enough time controls to get into this good habit. If
you play thirty minutes or less with no increment, this is hardly possible in
any kind of normal, complex game, so I suggest that you stick with much
longer time controls to allow good habits to form. As for breaking bad chess
habits, check out Breaking Down Barriers.

Question If chess is 99% calculation, why study anything except tactics?

Answer When you get to around 1900+ USCF/FIDE, then both sides do not
allow easy tactics, so the one that plays better strategically gets all the tactics
on his side. As Steinitz implied, at that level tactics flow from superior
positions, not opponent oversights. But whether below 1900 or above,
studying tactics is still not only useful but very much necessary, too.

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available in the ChessCafe.com Archives.

Dan welcomes readers' questions; he is a full-time instructor on the ICC as

Phillytutor.

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