Missing the Obvious - Creating Passed Pawns in the Endgame

The following game illustrates how sometimes a player can fail to apply even the well known concepts if the situation on the board is obscuring them a little bit.

Lai, Peter    --    Jiganchine, Roman
Langley Open   2012.09.03     1/2-1/2     D27
1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. e3 e6 5. Bxc4 c5 6. O-O a6 7. a4 Nc6 8. Nc3 Be7 9. Qe2 cxd4 10. Rd1 O-O 11. exd4 Nd5 12. Bd3 Re8 13. Ne5 Nxe5 14. dxe5 Qa5 15. Ne4 Bd7 16. Bg5 Bxg5 17. Nxg5 h6 18. Bh7+ Kf8 19. Nf3 Bc6 20. Be4 Rad8 21. Qe1 Qxe1+ 22. Nxe1 Nb4 23. Bxc6 Nxc6 24. f4 Rd4 25. Rxd4 Nxd4 26. Kf2 Rc8 27. Ra3 Ke7 28. Rc3 Rxc3 29. bxc3 Nb3 30. Nd3 Kd7 31. Ke3 Kc6 32. Ke4 g6 33. Nb2

 Black to move

33. ... Kc5

 33. ... b5 34. axb5+ Kxb5  was an obvious way of trying to obtain a distant passed pawn in the knight endgame.

 Black has a nearly decisive advantage here because the 'a' pawn is hard for White to deal with.

34. Kd3 Na5 35. g3 h5 36. h3 Nc6 37. Nc4 b5 38. axb5 axb5 39. Nd6 Nd8 40. Ne4+ Kd5 41. Ng5 Kc5 42. g4 hxg4 43. hxg4 Kd5 44. Ne4 1/2-1/2

Blast From the Past – Tactics from Chess World Cup

This Friday, September 11, 2015, the Chess World Cup begins in Baku, perhaps main chess event of the year. Two years ago, the World Cup in Tromso produced a lot of great games, to review some of them I invite you to checkout the combinations from that tournament that I covered in my ebook "Play Like a Grandmaster - Tactics from Chess World Cup 2013” – it is available on Amazon and on Kobo.

  

Missed Stalemate against Grandmaster

In this ICC game against a grandmaster Leonid Gofshtein I overlooked stalemate opportunity not once, but twice:

Black to move – find the drawing idea ...

Solution and full game: http://en.lichess.org/L6iS8rD7#65