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White to Play

Pete Tamburro on

Published in Chess Puzzles

For week five of chess summer school, we’re sticking with the very essential rook and pawn endings. We’ve been looking at key ideas that pop up with surprising regularity in these endings, so these “little tricks” are worth remembering. Let’s see if you learned a concept from last week with this position.


Solution:

The first move seems to take away the shelter from the coming rook checks, but it wins the game: 1.a7 Rb1+ 2.Ka6 Ra1+ 3.Kb6 Rb1+ 4.Kc5 Ra1 [the very same idea results from 4...Rc1+ 5.Kb4 Rb1+ 6.Kc3 Rc1+ 7.Kb2 Rc7 8.Rh8 Rxa7 9.Rh7+] 5.Rh8 Rxa7 6.Rh7+ and the x-ray attack on the Black rook wins for White. Of course, we hope you can mate with a king and rook vs. a king.

 


Send questions and comments to PTamburro@aol.com.

 

 

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