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Subject: Re: Can white win? (no)

Author: martin fierz

Date: 01:44:59 01/18/04

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On January 18, 2004 at 02:27:35, Kurt Utzinger wrote:

>On January 18, 2004 at 01:25:52, Kurt Utzinger wrote:
>
>>[D]8/8/5pk1/5b2/7K/3R3p/7P/8 w - - 0 1
>
>How on earth should White win this position? I see no way
>to do this. Some reasons for my assumption:
>
>1.)
>If White at some time takes the h3-pawn with the rook,
>the pawn ending is a draw.
>
>2)
>The only try would be to win Black's f6-pawn. But
>this can't be done.
>
>3)
>But even in the case that due to some Zugzwang
>White wins the f6-pawn, the position still looks
>drawn.
>
>Any counter arguments.
>Kurt

hi kurt, uri,

this is an interesting position. the first thing to note are a couple of
theroetically known endgames:

-> if white succeeds in winning both black pawns, he wins
[D]8/8/6k1/5b2/7K/3R4/7P/8  w - - 0 1

-> however, if he is careless then, he only draws
[D]7k/R7/7P/6K1/8/3b4/8/8  w - - 0 1

these two endings are just interesting so i posted them anyway. but they are
irrelevant. the relevant ending is if white wins the f-pawn:

[D] 8/8/6k1/5b2/7K/3R3p/7P/8  w - - 0 1
this is supposed to be a win in endgame theory AFAIK, and that is the
counter-argument to kurt's argument #3 - if white succeeds in winning f6, he
will in fact win the game. in addition, the wins of this type of endgame usually
are very very deep, so even searching this position to 30 or 40 ply might not be
enough to see the win of the h-pawn.

if somebody has the KRPKBP tablebase and time to spend he could run the original
position over night and se what happens...

cheers
  martin



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