Losing a drawn rook ending for the third time this year
Tuesday’s club game ended in a position I have now lost three times this year with small variations: king, rook and three pawns on each side, all the pawns on the kingside except one, my opponent’s lone queenside pawn being the only passed pawn on the board. The engine, afterwards, said it was a dead draw for forty moves. I lost in twelve.
The position after the queens came off, roughly: my king on g7, rook on d8, pawns f7, g6, h5. His king on g2, rook on b1, pawns b4, g3, h4. Material is level, so this is not even a pawn-down ending; he just has the only passed pawn in the game. My plan, such as it was, was to put my rook behind his pawn and wait. That is the right idea. What I did was put the rook on b8, then move it away to check his king two moves later because I was bored, and then spend six moves trying to get it back while his pawn walked to b6 and his king set off across the board to join it.
The three things I did wrong, which I have done in all three losses:
- I moved my king towards the passed pawn instead of keeping it in front of my own pawns, which let his rook get behind my pawns and start taking them.
- I gave a check that achieved nothing except moving his king to a better square.
- I left the rook passive on the eighth rank when it should have been on the second or third, cutting his king off from his own pawn.
The actual drawing method, which I should have known, is dull: rook behind the passed pawn, king in front of my pawns, and if his king comes to support the pawn, the rook checks it from behind and keeps checking until it either goes back or abandons the pawn. If his rook comes to defend, trade it off and the pawn ending is drawn because my king is close. That is the whole thing. It takes about ten minutes to understand and, apparently, three losses to remember.
So I have set up the position on the wooden board and played it out against the engine five times from each side. From the drawing side I held all five, but only after the second game, when I stopped giving checks. From the winning side I could not win it once. That is the number I needed to see.