Friday, July 27, 2012

Chicago Class: Class D recap

Congratulations to two Illinois players, David Sye and Terrence Aguinaldo, who tied for first in Class D with 4½-½ scores. (Sye's prize was limited to $500 because he had recently had a rating more than thirty points over the class ceiling; Aguinaldo won a full $1,000.)  Another local player, Ga Luang Liu, shared third place with Hongbin Chen of Michigan and Sean Cramer of Ohio: each won $166.67.

David Sye shares nice analysis of what could have occurred in his pawn ending in the money round in his post on chess.com.


(David titles his post "A complicated endgame position from the Chicago Class," but really, the position is easy if you've taken the time to learn some basic tricks--and there are several cute finesses in this simple-looking position. There might even be lines that David correctly doesn't mention because they're not Black's best try, but are still worth looking at....)

  Class D crosstable is here!

2 comments:

Frederick Rhine said...

Black can try to win with 1...b4 (1...Kf6 2.Ke4=) 2.axb4 (forced) a4! (2...axb4 3.Ke4=), when White's king is outside the square of the pawn. However, White still holds the draw with 3.b5! (not the immediate 3.f6+?? Kxf6 4.b5 Ke6 0-1) a3 4.b6 (4.f6+ also draws) Kd6 (4...a2 5.b7 a1(Q) 6.b8(Q)=) 5.b7 Kc7 6.f6 a2 7.f7 a1(Q) 8.b8(Q)+! (8.f8(Q)?? Qf1+ 0-1) Kxb8 9.f8(Q)+.

Frederick Rhine said...

Hmm, not so simple, since the try 1...a4 (analyzed by Sye) never entered my mind.