Tonight the group looked at some positions where both sides have a rook, and there is a 3 v 2 pawn situation, but all the pawns are passed on opposite sides of the board. These endings are very exciting, with the possibility of both sides promoting, and many other tactical possibilities. Games can reduce to rook versus pawns endings, or queen versus rook and pawns endings, or even crazy heavy piece endings (when both sides promote). I had the inspiration for this ending by analysing an endgame a couple of weeks ago.
I admit that I got a bit carried away analysing this endgame, but it gave me inspiration to show some interesting positions to the group.
This occurred in the game Yates-Watson London 1922 with white to make his 66th move. The Australian playing black escaped with a draw, but perhaps could have counted himself a little lucky. White's king and rook can do a comfortable job of stopping black's pawns, while the white pawns are threatening themselves.
This was Laurentius-Keres Latvian Ch 1936. The great Keres as black (about to play his 42nd move) wastes little time in pushing his outside pawns, demonstrating that a king generally would like to be stopping an opponents pawns, and white king is misplaced for this.
White here offered a draw, but we at the MCC endgame group came to the conclusion that he let his opponent off a bit easily and should have forced his opponent to find an accurate plan.. The game Grechkin-Lisitsin USSR 1938 could have continued 1..Kg6 2.Rh4 Rb1![The only way to try to draw] 3.Kxg4 Rxb3 4.Rxh3 Rb4 with the following position which is a tabebase draw, although without knowledge of the technique, it can still be difficult for black to hold:
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