Dennis M's Chess Site

This is a blog for chess fans by a chess fan. I enjoy winning as much as anyone else, and I've had a reasonable amount of success as a competitor, but what keeps me coming back to the game is its beauty. And that, primarily, is what this site will be about! All material copyrighted.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

King and Pawn Endings

One of my favorite exercises, when I'm trying to get into good playing form, is to work through a collection of king and pawn endings. No moving pieces around, no peeking - nothing. I just set the position up on a real board (that's another part of my prep - getting reacclimated to "real" sets after a steady diet of 2-d computer graphics), sit, and solve.

Unfortunately, I haven't done too much by way of composing pawn endings, but I have produced a couple: one is explicitly a composition, while the other emerged directly from one of my tournament games. Here's the composition, which I created (discovered?) in 1986:

White: King on g3, pawns on f2, f4 and h4.
Black: King on g6, pawns on f7 and h5.

White to move and draw. (That's right: draw!)

The solution will be given in a few days.

posted by Dennis Monokroussos @ 1:42 AM  

3 Comments:

  • At 1:03 PM, Blogger David Glickman said…

    Hey Dennis,

    Welcome to the chess blogosphere. I've enjoyed watching your shows on PlayChess (and Chess.fm awhile back - I think).

    I posted a formal welcome to your site for my readers and added you to the list of Chess Weblogs. Good luck with this project.

    DG - Boylston Chess Club Weblog

     

  • At 4:24 PM, Blogger Don Q. said…

    Dennis,

    Welcome and thanks for blogging. I've found blogging a big help in working on my own chess improvement. I am doubly impressed by someone like yourself who is putting info out here for the benefit of everyone else's improvement.

    I look forward to trying to crack your K&P ending. I also hope I can finally get organized to see one of your shows on Playchess.

     

  • At 6:25 PM, Blogger Dennis Monokroussos said…

    Thanks DG - I will add some links to my site soon. That's one of the things I need to learn how to do, along with inserting diagrams into the blog. Please bear with me in the meantime!

    Best wishes to Don and everyone else who's trying to solve this position. It's a sign of the practically inexhaustible character of our game that such a simple-looking position could be so difficult!

     

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