E Torre vs R Meulders, 1987 (33.?)

White to play and win.

Material: Up a P. The Black Ke7 has 3 legal moves. White has a standard N fork combination to finish the game.

Candidates (33.): Qxe8+

33.Qxe8+ Kxe8 [Kf6 34.Qf8+ K any 35.Qxf5 is hopeless]

34.Ng7+ K any 35.Nxf5 gxf5

"I underwent a cryopexy on 2/23. My retinal specialist says it's healing, but he want's to do a laserpexy on Monday morning [today]. I haven't lost vision, but the left eye is cloudy from where blood leaked in. [snip] I trust it will all get better in time."

"We are having a blitz tournament at my house this evening, but I'm still not sure if I will play. My doctor told me not to read for more than an hour at a time (I think to keep the eye from jumping around) and to try and lay off the computer (for the same reason). [snip] just cutting back on my reading is driving me nuts."

[snip]

Instead of 27. Ne6 Qc8 Black could have taken with 27. Ne6 Nxe6 and depending on the kind of short to follow additional exchanges, how are the resulting endgames (Pawn, or Rook or Queen) to judge? They start at least with the same number of pawns, but a dangerous white pawn at e6.

Examples:
Rooks
A) 27. Ne6 Nxe6 28. de Qa8 29. Qd5 Qxd5 30. cd Kf8 (Variant 29. Qf3, maybe an endgame with Q+R)

Pawns
B) 27. Ne6 Nxe6 28. Rxe6 Rxe6
(or really Rb7 Qe2 Rb8 Re7 Kh8?
Could it be holdable?) 29. de Qa8 30. Qf3 Qxf3, not good for Black, the white king will defend e6 and the Zugzwang-maneuvering, thanks to a2, gives White the edge. On the other hand, could the Queen-exchange be arranged farther away, f2 for example, the pawn e6 would just fall and Black would be fine.

Queens
C) 27. Ne6 Nxe6 28. Rxe6 Rxe6 29. de
c1) Qf5 30. Qxd6 Qc2+
Is this a draw due to perpetual or the threat of queen exchange far away enough (see remark under B) to conquer pawn e6?

c2) Qb8 30. Qf3 Qb2+ 31. Kh3 Qg7 looking for Qh6+. Compared to c1) it looks like checking is more difficult, but Black still has pawn d6.

White is left a clear pawn advantage and black's f and h pawns are isolated and weak.

The general plan is to bring the white king to f4 and zugzwang black by running him out of pawn moves and force him to either leave the defense of f5 completely, or move the king further away from the center so that white's king can go to d4 where it can support a c4-c5 push.

click for larger view

You should only do the combo if you know it is a win or if you are going to be worse if you don't do the combo.

What you have to known because it's a kind of easy to see is that white will surely gain <the opposition>.

Why? because white have 2 pawns which are on the 2th rank wich means white can use a 1 or a 2-move with one of them to lose a tempo.

If black pushes his pawns to avoid this, he will set a position where the black king won't be able to enter in the white camp while the white has the break through c5.

The second thing is that black has no passer as a distraction while it's easy for the white to go to d4 and play c5.

The least and not the last is that is easy to count 8 moves for the black to queen their "f-pawn" if the king is at g5 (and if the white pawns are at h2 and g3) and it takes 5 move for black to queen the "d-pawn" if the king is in d4.

However after white takes the opposition thanks to their a pawn, black will be forced the go back at g6 and then the white king will go to e3 and will be in d4 when the black king will be in f6.

Well, that was my thought when I first looked at the puzzle and the end result of the combination. At least, I didn't think it was an obvious a win as one usually finds at the end of a Monday puzzle.

But, with a little visualization and calculation from there ... I'm no endgame player, but I could see the White K marches to f4 from the given position, and Black is just about stretched to the limit at that point.

White's biggest threat is getting rid of/trading the Black d-pawn and queening whichever pawn remains, but the Black K also has to defend against White gobbling up the Black K-side pawns and pushing his own. Once White eats/trades the Black f-pawn -- the only real candidate to become a passed pawn -- the White K can comfortably get to d4, play c5 dxc5; Kxc5, then play Kc6, d6 and Kc7, and the Black K can't get back to the center fast enough to challenge, nor can Black get to White's h-pawn, get out of the way and push his own h-pawn fast enough.

And Black can't go defend against the c- and d-pawns first, because he has to go a long way around to the Q-side to get to c5, while the White K simply eats the f-pawn, goes to e6 and shepherds the g-pawn home (or grabs the d6 pawn and Black plays Kxc4).