Author: Mig Greengard
Date: 02:04:25 10/17/02
Hello from Bahrain. I stopped by here last night after Alex Kure of the Fritz team told me that people here were also looking at drawing lines in that final position. I stumbled onto these lines myself yesterday while preparing light analysis for the http://www.BrainsinBahrain.com site, which I'm running. I say stumbled because I only wanted to make it clear to weaker players why Kramnik resigned so they wouldn't say, "but he can take the black bishop!" Of course a few moves down the line it began to look very tricky and the next few hours were spent trying to find a forced win. My main interest was to show that *for Fritz* there is no win, regardless of what may be found some day by profound human analysis (or in some Averbakh book..) Fritz is seduced by the extra queen and gladly gives up the b-pawn and knight for that dead drawn queen vs. rook fortress. I don't know who is less happy, Frans or Vlady (who doesn't know about it yet unless his team decided to tell him). For that reason the rook+knight vs rook endgame with tiny winning chances is a moot point as far as Fritz is concerned. From a brief glance at the threads here, it is worth pointing out how difficult the moves leading up to these position are for a human. Of course Kramnik should have played on, but the rook maneuver to d7 is far from easy to see, even for a GM. There are several wandering around here and they were all stunned by these moves, which for your computers are forced and obvious. Playing the rook back to a2 or a1 are more natural moves. The perpetual check threat with the rook on the d-file is very, very hard to see. It's possible that Kramnik did see it and saw as far as black queening in that line. Like Fritz he assumed black would have no trouble winning with the passed b-pawn. But it's also very possible he did not see anything better than Raa1 or Ra2 (instead of 36.Ra7+) with a clearly lost R+K vs R position because the black b-pawn is still on the board. He had less than 10 minutes at the time and only four or five when he resigned. We'll find out more in the press conference today after game 7. Saludos, Mig
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