Actually the chances of playing it are lower than matching 4 out of 6 in 6/49 lottery – 1: 1,032. I played about 4,000 blitz games, but only yesterday for the first time ever I got Philidor position ( I never got it in OTB, online correspondence, standard FICS, etc. games).
56. … Kf7 The Black King is going to the queening square of the pawn. The rook is already on the sixth rank, not allowing the White King to advance.
57. Ra7+ Kg8 58. Kf5 Rb6 59. Re7 Rc6 60. g6 – this is what Black is waiting for, now there is no defense from the checks from behind
60. … Rc1 61. g7 Rf1+ 62. Kg6 Rg1+ 63. Kf6 Rf1+
1/2-1/2
April 17, 2009 at 4:30 am
Nice! I liked how you illustrated it. Does that only work with the knight pawn?
April 17, 2009 at 5:05 am
Are you sure it’s Philidor position and not that other one (of which i forgot the name)?
And yes, g6 was a mistake, one had to try to swing the king towards h6 but i dont know if that works since one cannot swing the rook over to h7 since to litlle space to drive the black king away.
April 17, 2009 at 6:08 am
Lucenna position, I never really studied it, but I’ve probably done it. lol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucena_position
April 17, 2009 at 9:19 am
Linuxguy – it works with any pawn. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philidor_position
I had Lucena position twice – once blitz, I drew since I didn’t know how to play it, then learned it, got it OTB right away and screw it up in the very end – draw. See
http://rollingpawns.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/spoiled-lucena/
chesstiger – it’s a Philidor, the King is not cut off, see references above. It’s a forced draw, g6 is not a mistake, White can’t do anything else – the rook controls sixth rank.
Just found a game Magnus Carlsen drew:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1494268
April 17, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Nicely shown hope its not another 4000 games before you get it again
April 18, 2009 at 9:15 am
chessx – thanks. Yeah, I hope it will be less.
April 18, 2009 at 10:07 am
I love the title of this post. Hilarious.
April 19, 2009 at 11:02 am
BDK – thanks. Still it can’t beat “God save the queen” – I get royalists coming through search engines every day
.