Outflanking
A composition from Jan Drtina, 1907.
The first step is to identify the key squares.
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| White to move |
From there we can identify the attacking squares
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| White to move |
b5 and f5 are the attacking squares, while b7 and f7 are the defensive squares. If white manages to reach b5 or f5 while getting the opposition, he wins.
The opposition battle is played along the f-file. Getting the opposition is half of the technique. The other half is outflanking. Opposition without outflanking is useless.
In this position, you must realize that white is in the middle of the process of outflanking. That's the downside of compositions. It are freak positions of some sort.
The upside is that you can learn a lot from it what is transferable to other positions. It just takes a bit of discipline to dissect matters.
Once you see that you are outflanking the black king with the f-file as center line, matters become more clear.
- 1.Kg2
It makes no sense for black to stay on the e-file, because white simply walks over the g-file to g6
- 1. ... Kf8 2.Kf2 seizing the opposition When black gives up the opposition, white outflanks the king with Kg3.
Another try by black
The diagram below is the position after
- 1.Kg2 Kf6
- 2.Kf2 Ke7
- 3.Kg3 Kf7
- 4.Kf3 Ke7
- 5.Kg4 Kf6
- 6.Kf4 Kg6
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| White to move |
But the g-file is off limits for black, since now his distance to the defensive square b7 is too long. So white changes to the invasion on the queenside.
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| White to move |
Odds and ends
- The h-file is forbidden for the black king because it is out of the square of the d-pawn
- The g-file is forbidden for the black king because it is too far from b7
- The e-file is not suited for the opposition battle because it contains the obstacle e5
- If black tries to capture c4, white must make sure that he captures d6 and promote the d-pawn
- Notice that when the white king is on d4, he cannot push the c-pawn. Since black will be in time to take the opposition and stop the d-pawn from promotion
The Dvoretsky book is quite good. It provides everything you need. Two warnings though:
ReplyDeleteDon't waste your time with trying to solve the problems yourself. It doesn't make sense to try to solve a puzzle when you haven't learned how to solve them. Don't mess the learn factor with the test factor.
From time to time, problems that have no treatise are mixed through the puzzles. Simply block them. They make you feel bad for no reason. No calculus without explanation between the tables of multiplication. You don't need to invent calculus yourself.
For now, I have blocked 2 out of 33 problems. I think that the pace of 1 chapter in 6 weeks is doable at 3 hours per day.
ReplyDeleteThe video is necessary.
I enjoy it very much to immerse myself in pawn endings. I like the beauty of them. I can clearly see how this could bring me a lot of half points.
ReplyDelete3 chapters x 6 weeks = 18 weeks.
So this will be my main task for the tournament in december.
I'm going to try to find more information about converting a game to an ending.
That gives me some time to find out in what endgames I tend to slip. I'm a bad annotator, and usually my handwriting becomes worse during the game.
ReplyDeleteThen I can decide which endgames to study after the pawn endings. In 2026, that is.
How Smirnov got from 1600 to 2260 in 1 year
ReplyDeleteHere's an interesting ChessBase article regarding corresponding squares. It is a knight versus bishop endgame (with pawns) and the corresponding squares are between the knight and bishop, not the pawns. Same theory; different application.
ReplyDeleteLINK: https://en.chessbase.com/post/theory-of-corresponding-squares-kidambi