Despite the extra rook, I don't like this position. It's probably a win, but it raises new problems.

I'm not sure if there's a way to avoid perpetual without losing the h-pawn, and Black gets a lot of play in these near-perpetuals.

The engine evals in this are quite untrustworthy. At one point all lines read 0.00, but if you slide into them the perpetual vanishes (in one case) and the evals return to +2.9 approx.

White's alternatives on move 41 aren't very impressive either. Despite the plethora of wins in other lines, this variation still looks dubious to me.

I'll catch up on your forum et al in a while.

Relax doc. It's not a cry for help...as a matter of fact the whole thing is pretty much self steering right now with all the line forums established.

Truth be told, I'm more than happy to continue forum coordination, especially now that it's such a lark...suits my nature I guess.

Reason I ask is that I wasn't sure whether your Friday "let's talk" was on, and whether you had your heart set on übermeistering the set up again. So yes, the request was a piece of all-round nice-guy inclusiveness.

In any case, I suspected that you wanted to keep going with analysis, freelance nuisancing, general commentating and maybe even...your RL job and so on and so fifth.

Did you get my test message?

I remember all these exquisite mates but not how to reach 'em.

Sigh. Story of my life, really.

I had an idea... What do you think about posting Arno's Christmas message on the main Kibitzing page?

There are many casual CG users/browsers that know about the game, but are not into the forums.

GMAN's message is more universal than what is based in each of the forums was what I was thinking.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks!

By the way, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I really have to take the time out to offer my congratulations not only on you making the List of the Most Garrulous Bastards on this Site, but doing it in record time.

In the words of an obscure literary/political figure of a past era, "young man, your prowess speaks of a wasted youth."

<Eyal> 3112 is impressive. Do you collect the things on purpose? In the past, I had to clear out my hotmail account(s) every few days, or they would overload. Mysteriously, 24 hrs after I switched to gmail, the storage went up by a factor of 20. So I kept using it, and got yet more free gigabytes a few weeks later. Strange, huh?

<twinlark> From the festive kangaroos spreading across the net, I deduce that your timezone is into Dec 25th already. I just got back from a 1-hour Dec-24th xmas shopping expedition: pic book, kiddy book, chess book, girly book, dictionary, novel, biog, coffee table book, Dawkins again, the new Ballard, und so weiter -- and some wrapping paper, please. Zap, job done. Precise distribution of items may be on a first come, first served basis. Happy Christmas, mother, and, uh, I only have this academic study of Etruscan pornography left. Or perhaps something on poker?

Actually she's an ace at poker.

But, just for the sake of having the line, I think I found the exit for the Qg4+ line, which involves marching the king over to the a4 square, where Black cannot try to attack without losing the a-pawn.

38. ... Qc8
39. Qa7+ Kh6
40. Rf7 Re2
41. h4 Rxg2+
42. Kxg2 Qg4+
43. Kf2 [Kf1 leads to unstoppable checks or worse] Qxh4+ 44. Ke2 Qe4+
45. Kd2 Qg2+
46. Kc3 Qg3+
47. Kc2 Qh2+
48. Kb3 Qh3+
49. Ka4

It does raise a question. Some people say "we escape, end of story, so Arno won't even try ...Re2" -- I'm not so confident. The thought of about six weeks playing only-moves to escape perpetual isn't exactly thrilling. What if everyone faded away or got bored? What if there's a line the engines don't see? What if the checks can start up again after a short pause?

I'm probably just fretting needlessly. This line is safe enough. But there are other very different lines where we wind up in a rook ending very like the one after 39.b5 -- so it might be best to stick with that after all.