Pawning Structures

Welcome to the Agglomeration

My friend, fellow blogger, and fellow chess player Ngiammy came to me early last year and he excitedly described to me how he won an exciting game on Flyordie the night before (Yes, this was early in the days when he still cared enough about chess to actually want to improve and play stronger opponents instead of listening to Korean pop songs and deep frying macaroni with his mind). He was at the time quite proud of himself for "inventing" what is a well known endgame position, but at the time he didn't know that, and so he proceeded to show me what he called the 'Three Pawn Trick'.

It's White to move. The winning sequence here is obviously

1. b5 axb5 (cxb5 fares no better) 2. c5 bxc5 3. a5

and there is no stopping white's a pawn promoting first with check.

I recently reached a position in one of my Chess.com matches, which also featured a nice pawn structure win. The game was played in a team match, and I was playing on Board 1 for my team 'Global Teens' against the 'Mikhail Tal Fans' Board 1.

I was White, and play started as follows:

[Event "Online Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2009.10.14"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Bingshui"]
[Black "alinoe"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "2130"]
[BlackElo "1929"]
[TimeControl "1 in 3 days"]
[Termination "Bingshui won by resignation"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.Bf4 d6 5.Qd2 O-O 6.h4 Bf5 7.Bh6 Nc6 8.Bxg7 Kxg7 9.f3 e5 10.d5 Nd4
11.e4 Bd7 12.h5 Nxh5 13.g4 Nf4 14.Nce2 Ndxe2 15.Nxe2 g5 16.Nxf4 exf4 17.Qh2 Rh8 18.Qh6+ Kg8 19.e5 Qf8 20.Qxg5+ Qg7
21.Qxf4 Re8 22.Bd3 Rxe5+ 23.Kd2 Qg5 24.Qxg5+ Rxg5 25.Rae1 Re5 26.Rxe5 dxe5 27.g5 Kg7 28.Rh5 b6 29.a3 a5 30.b4 axb4 31.axb4 Ba4 32.b5 h6 33.gxh6+ Rxh6 34.Rxh6 Kxh6

The position reached is shown by this diagram.



My next move essentially wins. The only way for him to continue on a bit longer is to sacrifice his bishop by taking the pawn on b5 but instead he swaps and it's all over for him.

35.Bc2 Bxc2 36.Kxc2 Kg6 37.c5 Kf6 38.d6 Ke6 39.dxc7 1-0

I thought the ending with the pawn structures was pretty awesome. But that's just me. And I'm weird.

To conclude today's post, I leave my readers a puzzle, similar to Ngiammy's aforementioned position. Best solution will get a prize of some shape or form. Criteria are speed/accuracy/annotations. Good Luck all.

Puzzle #1 - The Four Pawn Trick

White to Move and win. For a hint, check the solution to the 'Three Pawn Trick' position.

Till next time, may you agglomerate all your unpremeditated contemplations.