Rooks

My students this week are seeing a series of positions involving rooks. I present each of these for them to solve, then we look at the sources, where we explore what actually happened in the game (or in the case of the position from Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, how I failed against Stockfish). As always, our concern is for how the players should have played more than for how they did.

The first two come from a game on a chess website between two fairly weak players, one of whom made some outlandish claims about his endgame knowledge that sent me looking at his games. The skill he claimed was not evident in this game.

White to move

White to move

The next one is from Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual. I skimmed the entire rook chapter in the course of two hours Sunday morning. The elegance of this exercise caught my eye.

White to move

The last two are from a game played at the Spokane Chess Club last Thursday. During the quarantine, the club is meeting online.

White to move

White to move

I might add that errors were made from each of these positions in the original games, except Dvoretsky. I saw the solution before I played it against Stockfish. My errors were much later in the game, after the basic problem had been solved.