Today's topic is "A Rook vs Three Pawns". Now we are finishing with the chapter "Rook with pawns". In the endings three pawns it is enough compensation for the rook as a rule. The result depends on location of pieces, pawn's structure and how pawns has advanced. The further pawns are the more dangerous they are. For the successful fight against three pawns one needs full coordination of king with the rook, otherwise pawns may win.

Rook vs Tree Pawns

 

Anand recovered and beated Carlsen with Black. Topalov grabbed the sole lead by beating Ivanchuk with White. Aronian-Radjabov and Leko-Shirov ended in a draw. The Bulgarian is leading with 2.5 points out of 3, the world champion has half a point less. Together they scored 4 wins so far. No one else has a plus score after the first three rounds.

Games with coments round 3

 

Morelia-Linares is just two rounds ahead, but so much has happened already. Two decisive games today: Aronian defeated Anand with Black in a Marshall and Ivanchuk beat Leko in a rare line of the Ruy Lopez. Topalov and Radjabov seemed to be blundering a pawn one after another, and then drew their Berlin Wall, Shirov-Carlsen in a solid Paulsen drew their game.

The game of the day was Anand vs Aronian, in which the Armenian got a very strong attack after sacrificing a second pawn in the Marshall. It looked like Anand blundered terribly on move 30, but in reality his position was already hopeless

Tournament standing after round 2,

No	Name	Fed	Rating	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Pts
1	Alexei Shirov	ESP	2755	**	1/2	-	-	-	-	-	0	0.5
2	Magnus Carlsen	NOR	2733	1/2	**	-	-	-	-	1/2	-	1.0
3	Peter Leko	HUN	2753	-	-	**	-	-	1	0	-	1.0
4	Veselin Topalov	BUL	2780	-	-	-	**	1	1/2	-	-	1.5
5	Levon Aronian	ARM	2739	-	-	-	0	**	-	-	1	1.0
6	Teimour Radjabov	AZE	2735	-	-	0	1/2	-	**	-	-	0.5
7	Vassily Ivanchuk	UKR	2751	-	1/2	1	-	-	-	**	-	1.5
8	Viswanathan Anand	IND	2799	1	-	-	-	0	-	-	**	1.0

 Morelia.

Games with coments round 2

 

Morelia/Linares is an eight-player, double round-robin and is held from February 14 till March 8. Participants are Anand, Aronian, Carlsen, Ivanchuk, Leko, Radjabov, Shirov and Topalov. The first part takes place 14-23 February in the Mexican city of Morelia, after which the players fly to Spain for the second part of the tournament: February 28 - March 8 in Linares.

Video tour to Morelia-Linares!

Report Round 1

Morelia-Linares has had a promising start. Anand defeated Shirov with Black in Najdor with a typical sacrifice of exchange on c3, Topalov beat Aronian in home preparation a Nimzo-Indian, Leko won  as well, against Radjabov who tried a Sveshnikov, and Carlsen-Ivanchuk was a quiet draw in Najdorf)

Games with coments round 1

 

We continue with the rook's endings. Today's theme is "Rook vs Two Pawns". Of course the rook again has very good chances to win. Some of the technical approaches used in this study are the same we have seen in the previous one. However, there are also many new posibilities.

I'll consider following cases:

A) Connected Pawns

B) Isolated Pawns

Rook vs Two Pawns

 

"Later, ... I began to succeed in decisive games. Perhaps because I realised a very simple truth:
not only was I worried, but also my opponent."

GM Mikhail Tal

Video "Game Tal vs Fischer" The great Mikhail Tal, "the Magician from Riga", was one of the greatest attacking geniuses in the history of recorded chess. His attacking style consisted of beautiful displays of multiple, cascading fireworks, where the true nature of the positions during the execution of his combinations was unfathomable by his opponents, even Tal himself!, in the scant time limit imposed in human over the board chess games.

Unlike the smooth, almost effortless style of a Capablanca, Tal purposely played moves that created the maximum complications for both sides. He once said, "One doesn't have to play well. One only needs to play better than his opponent". Dr. Lasker would have loved that quote, for he too believed the game of chess as a struggle between two minds, as opposed to each player blindly making "correct" moves.

The most famous Tal's games

 

Artyom Timofeev has won this year’s Moscow Open, after a marathon last-round game against the leader Ernesto Inarkiev, who had just won 7 games in a row. Anna Muzychuk won the ladies tournament.

Timofeev became clear first with 7.5 out of 9, before Alexander Riazantsev and Sergey Volkov. Anna Muzychuk (Slovenia) won the ladies tournament with 8 out of 9, after a quick last-round draw against Harika Dronavalli (India).

And so the tournament was won by two quite young players. 23-year old Artyom Timofeev, the current #51 in the world.

The succes was even more special for Anna Muzychuk, who at only 17 years old is becoming a very strong player very fast. She was born in Ukraine but is now representing Slovenia. She’s third in the world in the girls under 20 list, behind Hou Yifan and Katarina Lahno.

The best Israeli player was GM Max Rodshtein. He has finished on 21 place with 6,5 points.

All games

Moscow Open 2008 Top 20 Standings

Rk.	Title	Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3	w	we	w-we
1	GM	Timofeev Artyom	RUS	2664	7,5	38,0	6	50,0	7,5	5,54	1,96
2	GM	Riazantsev Alexander	RUS	2628	7,0	37,5	6	49,5	7	5,42	1,58
3	GM	Volkov Sergey	RUS	2623	7,0	37,5	5	47,5	7	5,61	1,39
4	GM	Efimenko Zahar	UKR	2638	7,0	37,0	6	47,5	7	5,54	1,46
5	GM	Lastin Alexander	RUS	2604	7,0	37,0	5	47,0	7	5,25	1,75
6	GM	Jobava Baadur	GEO	2643	7,0	36,5	5	46,5	7	5,62	1,38
7	GM	Inarkiev Ernesto	RUS	2681	7,0	35,0	7	47,0	7	6,41	0,59
8	GM	Kazhgaleyev Murtas	KAZ	2594	7,0	34,5	6	41,0	7	5,52	1,48
9	GM	Moiseenko Alexander	UKR	2643	7,0	34,5	5	45,0	7	5,80	1,20
10	GM	Kurnosov Igor	RUS	2577	7,0	32,5	6	40,5	7	5,94	1,06
11	GM	Motylev Alexander	RUS	2644	6,5	34,5	4	46,0	6,5	5,69	0,81
12	GM	Naiditsch Arkadij	GER	2638	6,5	34,0	5	44,0	6,5	5,99	0,51
13	GM	Kobalia Mikhail	RUS	2623	6,5	33,5	5	46,5	6,5	6,06	0,44
14	GM	Korobov Anton	UKR	2573	6,5	33,5	4	44,5	6,5	5,02	1,48
15	GM	Potkin Vladimir	RUS	2609	6,5	33,5	4	43,5	6,5	5,73	0,77
16	GM	Khairullin Ildar	RUS	2544	6,5	32,0	5	42,0	6,5	5,17	1,33
17	FM	Zabotin Alexander	RUS	2495	6,5	32,0	4	42,0	6,5	4,76	1,74
18	GM	Malakhov Vladimir	RUS	2689	6,5	31,5	5	43,0	6,5	6,87	-0,37
19	GM	Areshchenko Alexander	UKR	2645	6,5	31,0	6	43,0	6,5	6,26	0,24
20	GM	Aleksandrov Aleksej	BLR	2618	6,5	30,5	4	42,5	6,5	6,45	0,05

Moscow Open 2008 Women Top 10 Standings

Rk.	Title	Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3	n	w-we
1	IM	Muzychuk Anna	SLO	2460	8,0	41,0	7	48,0	9	1,81
2	IM	Ushenina Anna	UKR	2484	7,5	39,5	7	50,0	8	1,25
3	WGM	Zhukova Natalia	UKR	2443	7,0	36,0	5	48,0	9	0,68
4	IM	Harika Dronavalli	IND	2455	7,0	35,5	6	46,0	9	0,67
5	GM	Lahno Kateryna	UKR	2475	7,0	34,5	6	47,0	9	0,43
6	IM	Tairova Elena	RUS	2386	6,5	37,5	6	48,5	9	1,44
7	WFM	Girya Olga	RUS	2342	6,5	35,5	6	49,0	9	1,49
8	WGM	Melia Salome	GEO	2362	6,5	33,5	5	46,0	8	0,94
9	IM	Turova Irina	RUS	2377	6,5	33,5	5	41,5	9	0,28
10	IM	Danielian Elina	ARM	2480	6,5	33,0	5	43,5	9	-0,29

 

How often did you meet in your practice Rook endings? I claim that more than half of all games pass through this part! So for improving your chess skills you'd study rook endings extremely carefully.

The rook is a powerful long-range piece and should generally be used actively. It is not adept in passive defence and the blockade of enemy passed pawns. For this reason the game may still be unclear even when one side has sacrifice his rook!

Rook ending consist in three topics:

1) Rook vs Pawns

2) Rook vs Rook

3) Double Rook endings.

Start from the first Rook vs Pawns.

 

Most important rules and principles in endings of opposite-coloured bishops

1) Most of the time, material is not as important as positional considiration

2) The defender's aim is to construct an impregnable fortress of one of the following typed:

Type 1: The king stops the passed pawn, while the bishop protects the other pawns.

Type 2: The bishop stops the passed pawns while the king assists it and stops the atacking king breaking through.

3) If a fortress of the second type can be broken, then the attacker usually creates two passed pawns on different wings and his king helps one pawn to advance, eventually winning the bishop.

4) If the attacker sacrifices material himself to create passed pawns, his bishop must be able to halt the resulting enemy passed pawns on diagonal. The principle of one diagonal is important for the attacker and the defender as a methode to avoid falling into zugzwang or being diverted.

5) As defender, attack your opponent's pawns with your bishop to force them onto squares of the opposite colour to your bishop. It is then easier to create a safe blockade.

Opposite coloured bishops

 

These are two interesting games I've played recently.

The first game was in very agressive line, known as "poison pawn" in Naidorf variant against IM Alexikov, the second was positional game, which I've played today against Zalkin D in "Paulsen" line.

Games