Chess Training for Club Players

Hello again! It's been a while, for reasons best not dwelt on. I however am well: starting a new low-carbs diet, and generally eating healthier with the goal of eventually losing significant weight but in slow and steady fashion. But in the past few days I've been setting training exercises for a buddy of mine on Chesscube, whose rating there exceeds 2200 and certainly is a good positional player. As for what his real rating/ECF would be, we can't say - he's not played in real life yet. Suffice it to say he's very opposite to me though, and in the work we've undertook so far he tends to play positionally above all, as opposed to trying to find wild noisy ways to continue positions.

He asked me to give him a series of exercises taken from my own games on Cube, many of which last year (as discussed in Olympic Summer) led to the sort of 'White to play and convert tactically' position that he wanted to practice. However, scanning through a set of my games from the last few years (since I became a newly minted 129 in 2009) revealed other very interesting positions and exercises for him. Of course, I therefore have to complete the exercises myself (those I haven't already self-answered, or in some cases, lost the annotations for, thanks to two great crashes inside a year on my old desktop...thanks Microsoft >.< ) and this got me to thinking that I could post them here, and give you guys a chance to train yourselves, and a chance to show my own abilities in a variety of ways that go beyond game annotation per se, therefore getting feedback from you.

Accordingly, let's plough on with the first exercise, which is aimed at anyone trying to improve the quality and depth of their analysis ability, in terms of both greater observation, more avoidance of positional errors, or, for the more advanced player, calculation exercises to supply a Principal Variation.

As the weeks go by more exercises will be added - for now this will supplant annotated game presentations on my parallel Youtube channel, since it provides greater variety of challenge, though rest assured I have many interesting games to present by video.


Your mission, whether you choose to accept it or not, is to take the position after  
1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. Bg5 Ne4 4. Bf4 c5 5. e3 Nc6 6. Bb5 Qa5+ 7. Nc3 Nxc3 8. Bxc6+ bxc6

And analyse the consequences of  9. Qd2.

Black to move. Analyse until quiescence, by hand or visualisation if you want a challenge.

By analysis I mean moving pieces around with a board (unless you are masochist/strong enough to attempt this challenge as a Stoyko/visualisation exercise too), for as long as is necessary and/or desired, writing down all your analysis, until you feel you have found the best line (or lines) of play for both sides, and have evaluated all branches, until quiescence (a position is reached where there are no further immediate forcing or threatening tactics that must be dealt with). Also please be sure to include any tactical sub-lines that have error moves for one or other side to the same level as if you were using your analysis to teach or train someone else. This last part can sometimes be especially important in analysis sessions.

In a few days I will share my analysis with you, which I have already done and which amounts to just over a screen's worth in height in a normal Fritz window. In the meantime, if you wish me to share and expound upon your work, you can email your end work to me at daniel.a.odowd@gmail.com . Be reminded that for any of you who are graded over 155 or thereabouts, it may be the case that your analysis is more complete or refined than mine - certainly it will be interesting to discuss such differences here.

As usual, a few reminders, please no engine use and please no comments about any engine saying this, that or the other about this position. That teaches nothing for anyone (: Secondly, if you do email analysis, I'd be very interested to hear your thought process too: did you reject certain moves on any basis (this means ANY basis no matter how stupid sounding it may be outside your own head, because part of this exercise is to measure our thought processes and their qualitative difference); whether you assess certain positions differently to me.

I hope this challenge inspires a good response!

British Chess Championship Torquay 2013

I'm in Torquay, for the 100th British Chess Championships, and my third attendance personally. I have rather a target to beat - last year I came 2nd= in the U160 and scored a healthy 2.5/5 in the U180, so personally, only a repeat or better performance will satisfy me even if last time I effectively had home advantage, it being held in North Shields which is just a stone's throw away from Carlisle.

Of course, I'll be posting games here with commentary almost each night unless I get some behemoth amount of prep to do, or a game is too complex to annotate within the day itself. I will rely on my own powers of calculation for posting games, but for looking them over, I will be using the engines I have - it'd be foolish not to since it provides such an easy way to monitor your failings or blind spots.

My hotel is wonderful - cool spacious room (certainly by last year's standards when I was literally in a room the size of a harsh prison cell, with no desk room or space to boot), wonderful location too and amazing proprietors who have already made me feel incredibly relaxed. In fact I arrived here by coach - a 10 hour journey. Lest you think this is difficult, firstly I have already once journeyed twice this distance and time (2000 miles, 18 hours overnight even!) to Chambéry in France where I played my first tournament holiday, despite having been to work the same night. Battling multiple haughty escalators and absent ascenseurs made it a hellish journey that year, though my time there was excellent, albeit I played rather horridly bad chess.

In fact there was a large rainstorm passing through Birmingham which finally ended the turbid heatwave I've been suffering under in Carlisle for the best part of a month. There is only so much Ridge Racer and Spyro The Dragon you can play in such conditions before you lose all remaining sanity. That said, many who have met me would argue that such conditions cannot possibly remove any sanity since I had none to begin with. To that I can only say, Purple Monkey Dishwasher!

I intend to go watch the Bulletteers tomorrow morning - IM Gary Lane and GM Keith Arkell playing an hour's worth of one minute chess - before losing my Grandmaster virginity in the simul. It will be particularly interesting to me to see how much of the bullet chess player's arsenal at 2500 is based on the fleeting subconscious fluency of hand moves, based on little calc except that done in the head, as opposed to the concrete conscious calculation that one might use say, in blitz. Then it'll be off to the laboratory to prepare for the U180 and PM Open, with a bit of arbiting at the Weekender in between that and the second week with U160 and PM Open. All in all I could be playing up to 8-9 hrs each day, but that doesn't bother me!

So stay tuned for lots of chess, and try to guess when the Torquay-related puns will come.

Still Here

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I know I'm not a we, but I just wanted to let you all know that I am still alive and well, and have just delayed my next post for a couple of reasons. Firstly the game I said I would show is not the easiest to annotate, so I'll do a double post with another in a few days as well, but more importantly, and hush-hushly, I'm preparing for the British Chess Championships in Torquay. Lest it all go Fawlty Towers on me I want to give it my best, and I played a good game in the city championship last Thursday, and then another very interesting one online on Sunday. That one is forcing some very deep annotation which I'm devoting myself to, but I've also been working hard too. Don't worry though: I have plenty of material to showcase here and something substantive will pop up in a day or two. :)

Pawn Endings on Autopilot (1)

White to play and win without working hard.

As you may remember from earlier in the week, I left you the above position (White to move) as a test of your abilities in Pawn Endings. Suffice it to say that it's one of the easier pawn endings to win that you may see, however there are still tricks and nuances you must be familiar with, and this remains true if you're playing it against a beastly engine to test yourself. I can thoroughly recommend this, in fact. Take a batch of positions you reached in a certain sort of ending, and play them against your engine, at a reasonable time control that mimics how much you are likely to have left on your clock in real life.

We will come back to the idea of engines endings training later in the week, and I will post a batch of positions for people to use in precisely this manner. For now though, let's take a stroll through the above ending, and see how I got on against Houdini 1.5a earlier tonight at 25 minutes each. Houdini unleashed rates itself at about 3182, though we know certainly that this isn't representative of a World Champion level of endgame knowledge. This will make for some interesting posts in the next few months as I dig out some very difficult and some deceptive pawn endings from my own play. Even good club players fall foul of subtleties all the time, so the more you can play such positions by hand, the better.

Before you enter a pawn ending, you should always know whether it's won, drawn or lost, or at least be able to eliminate one of those options. Another tip I can give you is to always treat the first move of a pawn ending as critical. It is a good chance to break the shackles of a middlegame mentality, and move towards pure calculation. In some such endings (as we will see in later entries) there is a critical first move, which makes your task much easier or that of your opponent much harder. This position is more a case of working out the possible ways things might unfold, and reacting most flexibly to that. This and subsequent posts assume that the reader has at least a basic knowledge of pawn endings no matter his grade.

White having a Kingside majority, is winning, especially so since all of Black's poor pawns are isolated. This isn't to say they aren't useful though. His f-pawn and c-pawn might be used as splitters, to try to fracture my structure on King or Queenside, to make things more difficult or set traps. One other advantage is that White has spare tempo on his side: he has more optional pawn moves which do not compromise the structure than Black. This alone indicates that if we get to an opposition situation, it may be winning for White anyways. Knowledge such as this can help a beginning club player to maximise his chances from such positions in the face of stronger opponents.

Let's imagine you had five minutes left to play this as White, and therefore couldn't afford the luxury of taking all the time you needed to calculate everything you might have difficulty with. Where should you go first?

Since Black's pawns are so weak it stands to reason that we should see what happens if he goes route 1, and tries to promote on the Queenside. To do this, he needs to play Kd5, c4, and after the exchange, get to the back of the a-pawn, eat it, and push the a-pawn all the way himself. In the meantime, if allowed, White would eat the f4-pawn, and push his f-pawn all the way up the board. 

Pure counting shows that White would need five moves to eat the pawn and move out the way, five to promote his pawn, and one to eat the pawn that will come to c4, for a total of 11. Black meanwhile needs three moves to get his King to c4 following said exchange, five to promote his pawn, and four more to get his King off a2 once he eats the pawn there, which comes to 12. So we needn't worry about this plan from Black at all, without any calculation.

There are other ways for White to play though. He could play g3 straight away, and if Black brings the King forward, then follow up with f3: forming a barrier against further King penetration. A player who isn't as strong at deeper calculation (or equally has very little time left) might worry that Black would try 1. g3 f3 to create disruption to White's optimal King path. Indeed there are difficulties then. If White sees the idea of blocking off the Black King on the Kingside and follows up with 2. h3 Ke5 3. Kf1 Kd4 4. Ke1 Kc3 5. Kd1?! a5, he may well be too slow to win any subsequent race.

(Remember - we're looking at the safest way to play the position so as to avoid leaving any traps that can be set. It doesn't matter that however many moves actually win here. What matters is being able to bosh out your moves in however severe time trouble.)

Equally, White should realise that playing f3 will leave e3 weak, as a potential nagging square for the Black King if he tries to turn the other way. As a practical, defensively-minded measure, White could therefore avoid such things if he were playing safety first. So we play 1. Kf1 Kd5 2. Ke2 Ke4.

Now White's extra pawn moves come in handy to force clarification, since obviously we cannot make progress with the King position in the meanwhile.

If you were being lazy, you might well see that Black threatening ...f3+ gxf3+ Kf4 is annoying (again no calculation here!), so White plays 3. g3 f3+ 4. Kd2 Kd4 to cut that out. By keeping his f-pawn back, he creates a forbidden zone into which the Black King can never sneak. He is also stopping any ideas Black might have had, of pushing the h-pawn to h4 to try to eat up some of White's spare tempi.

 
Next comes 5. h3 a5 6. g4 Ke4 ensuring that the h-pawn will remain frozen, and planning to just advance the pair together, up the board. Black meanwhile is maximising his chances to set traps Queenside. Now, Black will not be able to come behind the g/h-pawn pair until White is far enough advanced that it won't present a problem. 

Let's say you'd spent 2 of your 5 minutes on the initial problem of counting moves to direct Queening for both sides. Continuing on autopilot, you should now notice that Black is threatening to come around the back, via Kf4-g5-h4xh3-g2xf2, when he would, if we err, be able to promote his hard working f-pawn. Of course if you had time you could calculate that even this fails to 7. Kc3 Kf4 8. Kxc5 Kh4, BUT only if you follow up with the immediate 9. g5 or 9. Kd4. The easier way to approach this is to play 8. Kd5 Kh4 9. Ke4 Kxh3 10. Kxf3, ensuring that Black's King has nowhere to go to play his tricks.

Black therefore tries his last trick, playing 10...Kh2 and giving you a hard stare. After the now obvious 11. g5 Kh3 12. Kf4 Kg2, he is hoping you will play 13. Kg4??

which only draws, thanks to 13...Kxf2 14. Kh5 Kf3 15. Kh6 Kf4.

Instead, White will win after playing 13. f3 Kf2 14. Ke4 Kg3 15. f4 Kg4 16. f5 Kxg5 17. Ke5 h5 18. f6 Kg6 19. Ke6 h4 20. f7 Kg7 21. Ke7 and promoting next move.

I hope this helps some of my younger/less experienced readers to get some practical grips on pawn endings in a way that looks at it primarily from a strategical viewpoint. Let me tell you though, that to play the game to its fullest, there is no substitution for calculation, and training yourself to be able to visualise clearly and properly to correctly assess such positions and their evaluation. A lot of the time, you will be able to verbalise your thoughts in such a way only because your calculation of the underlying variations is fluent. If you can't do that, you may find you have to switch the brain on completely and see everything you can, only after the event finding ways to codify your learning.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1)

This was the pawn structure on the Queenside after ten moves of a game I played last night. Everything else has been removed (EDITED: Please ignore the King positions, I could not set up a board without them and one of them is incorrect) - all you know is the pawn structure on the a to d-files. But can you guess (or deduce) the opening from this information? If nobody can get it I'll add some clues as the days go by.

Olympic Summer

It was around this time last year that I was fortunate to get a series of competitive games on Chesscube almost every night, which put me through good form for the British Championships that summer. I'll say now that the fortnight there was the best of my life, but I won't be able to publish many games from that tournament yet for reasons that become obvious if I also tell you I will likely be attending this year. Nevertheless, this golden month of games also preceded our Golden Summer of the Olympics, so it's fitting that I show off a little and publish one of the most powerful games I played at the time. Chesscube's ratings can be a little inflated, especially if you consider that many players there are blitz or Warzone specialists (we'll see some batshit warzone games from yours truly later in the week in fact - quite whether they're sound is happily irrelevant), but I think today's game is demonstrative of an opponent seeking to complicate based on looking at his opposite number's rating, and mentally scoffing like Zippy. Prepare to taste the rainbow...

Daniel O'Dowd (1669) vs igorot63 (2140) - Chesscube game, 19.06.2012

60 minutes each for all moves.

1. e4 d6 2. d4 e5 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. Bb5 Bd7 5. Nc3 Nf6 6. O-O a6?

The opening requires some explanation. I believed a Pirc would be an excellent opportunity to test myself against a strong player - deep strategical play is often called for there. By move 3 it looks like we're going into a Philidor, which would also have made me happy, since it would clearly show me some of my shortcomings. When we got to the Spanish Steinitz this was equivalent to home advantage in football, since the opening is so common. So for Black now to play a known error was like God loading the dice for me!

Black could have sustained a normal game with 6...Be7 7. Re1 exd4 since just castling falls into the Tarrasch Trap:

7. Bxc6 Bxc6 8. dxe5 Nxe4 9. Nxe4 Bxe4

I took a little while here but this was mostly to analyse the consequences of my next move, which was an error. I would now think a bit here before moving since there's clearly some stuff to work out.

10. exd6?! Bxd6

I realised I had made a mistake here and had to act precisely to get my equality back!

Black did well to avoid  10...cxd6:

a) 11. Re1 d5 12. Nd2 Be7 13. Nxe4 dxe4 14. Qg4 ±

b) 11. c4 Be7 12. Re1 Bxf3 13. Qxf3 O-O is slightly more forgiving.

10...Qxd6 is no better: 11. Qe2 f5 12. Ng5 O-O-O 13. Nxe4 fxe4 14. Qxe4 O-O-O and although hardy souls may see practical compensation for Black, it isn't enough. 

Back to the game. 

11. Qd4 looks like an odd move, but is actually an admission of guilt. Black is being forced to give up one of his Bishops - he clearly can't afford to eat c2. 

So it may come as a surprise when you see that Black responded with 11...Qe7?

 
 

You can't do that?!

Black has looked at the rating beside my name, and is trying to open a big can of whoopass! But does he have the tin openers for it? 

Instead, clearly better was 11...Bxf3 12. Qe3+ (the point of my last move) ...Qe7 13. Qxf3 O-O-O when Black is slightly ahead.

 











To be fair to Black, this case of practical chess isn't all that bad - it's going to take some very strong cough medicine to blast open the Black position. What would you do here?

I managed to see just about everything here, and soon showed Black what it's like to eat the purple berries.



12. Re1 f5 13. Bg5 Qe6

If ...Qf7 14. Nd2 O-O 15. Nxe4 fxe4 16. Rxe4 and Black has chances to keep that pretty head of his.

 









14. Qxg7 (since now 14. Nd2 fails to Be5! when everything is defended) ...Rg8 15. Qxh7! 

Have I got Margaret Thatcher on the board? Talk about an Iron Lady.

Had White tried to simplify with 15. Qf6? Qxf6 16. Bxf6 Kf7! 17. Rxe4 fxe4 18. Ng5+ Kxf6 19. Nxe4+ Kf5 is a nasty shock that leaves him crippled.

Morphine please.

 











With a Queen perilously placed on h7, things are right on the knife-edge but it's White who's holding the sharp end at his opponent's throat.

15...Qg6

I had a shock in store if he tried to exchange: 15...Qf7? 16. Rxe4+! fxe4 17. Qxe4+ Kd7 18. h4 with a strong attack for the exchange.

 










16. Qxg6 Rxg6 17. h4!

The pin remains absolute, and although Black has the two Bishops it's White's pieces who are swarming about like bees.

17...Kd7 18. Rad1 Rh8??

If Black had played 18...Re8 I intended 19. c4?

Black to move and put the fear of God up White...

 












whereupon Black could strike back, Republic style, with 19...Bxf3 20. gxf3 Rxe1+ 21. Rxe1 Bf4! 22. Kf1 Bxg5 23. hxg5 Rxg5 which would lead to a very difficult Rook ending. There will be a lot of Rook endings featured on this blog very soon, but for now the Rookometer stays at 0.

  
19. Ne5+ Kc8 20. Nxg6 Rg8 21. h5 Kb8

Missing 21. Rxd6 despite the earlier heroics, but I forgave myself this one easily. White now finishes Black off as if he was playing Mortal Kombat.

22. Rd2 Bb4 23. c3 Bc5 24. Rd8+ Rxd8 25. Bxd8 Bd6 26. Be7 Bc2 27. Bxd6 cxd6 

FINISH HIM!

28. f4 Kc7 29. h6 Be4 30. h7 d5 31. h8Q Kb6 32. Qd4+ Kc7 33. c4 dxc4 34. Qxc4 Kb6 35. Ne7 a5 36. Nc8#

It's fitting that the hard-working solid Rook on e1 is still there, harassing the Bishop who has fittingly returned to the scene of his defrocking.

So despite trying to mix it, Black went wrong very simply by disobeying a fundamental law of chess - King Safety. Yes, he put his Queen in the way as well, but had he castled when had the chance, none of this would have happened. That said, I was delighted to so comprehensively outplay someone from such a tense position! Certainly a game I'll always remember.

In the next post you will see a game from the British Championships, but in a twist, it'll be from the 2011 edition in Sheffield. Features will include the début of the Rookometer, a series of eleven consecutive Knight moves, and more ups and downs than a gold-medal winning trampolinist at the Olympics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bouncy bouncy!

Hope Chess

This morning at about 10am, I played a blitz game on Chesscube following a migraine that had lasted me the night. (Don't worry - I slept fine after this.) I get migraines often, and have suffered them for about half my life. So far I've found no correlation between my strength in the aftermath, and the pain itself. I haven't been playing often online recently since it can be quite hard to get good games. Certainly this is no corker but it demonstrates a number of points and made me cheer up at least!

 

Before I show the game though, let me alert you all to one of the fundamental purposes of this blog: If you see me writing crap, tell me!

thearbiter2 (1971) vs nsshetty (1859) - Chesscube game, 21.06.2013

15 minutes each for all moves.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nf3 Nxe4 5. d4 d5 6. Bd3 f5?

A weak move: his Bishop will be made to suffer now or become a static irrelevance.

Black is playing Hope chess!

Black is waiting for us to blindly exchange on e4, because of the recognition that this is a Knight grounded in cement, and expects us to translate that thinking into 'this is a strong piece, my Bishop on d3 is not'. Admittedly, this is the sort of morphing of textbook thought that is very common among players, for many reasons: in my case, this sort of thing often comes about partly because of my Aspergers. It's a curiosity that although I'm wizard with human languages, I can't learn computer languages at all easily. And yet these days at least, or perhaps always, but hidden; I need remarkably specific instruction on things. This may also explain why it took me so long to absorb the dogmatic generalities of a Silman's work as opposed to that of a Soltis: Silman uses broad brush strokes to outline the grand plans and features of a position, without going as much into their interplay except in specific examples. Soltis on the other hand, goes from the bottom up, and I tend from his work to get the message of 'there is an overarching positional structure/battle here, but to maximally wring the neck of the position, do xyz' - perhaps Silman is like Machine Code, Soltis is Assembly haha.

Anyways, if White takes on e4, the following will happen:

1) Thunderclouds will appear instantly and start to make a lot of noise and rain.
2) Black will let out a Bowserian (is it Bowserian? Or would it be Bowsery?) Gwa Ha Ha, and grin at us.
3) Black would play fxe4. This last part is critically important.

I noticed a long time ago (for what it's worth) that whenever a computer is looking my game over, it often indicates the opposite pawn recapture to the one I play, if given the choice. I'm confident fxe4 is correct though. It installs a powerful candidate passed pawn, and opens the f-file for Black to make use of. He can also threaten the fracturing ...e3 at some point in the future.

By contrast, if I keep the Bishop, I will be able to:
 

1) Threaten to open the position with a timely c4
2) Save it for a happy endgame where Black will have the worst Bishop in the universe trapped on the other side.
 

So, what SHOULD White do? Well if you're keeping your thought processes open, you'll remember that we agreed Black's Knight on e4 is strong. So exchanging it in a vacuum (by this I mean in a way that avoids positional imbalance transfer, so don't go to your local Santander) would help us statically. Nbd2 also gives us the chance to threaten a deeper installation of a Knight on e5, when Black's now weakened Kingside may be vulnerable to assaults.

Remember - Black's primary sin has been a STATIC sin. Forbidding transformers, or any robots in disguise (looking at you Borislav Ivanov), it will be impossible for Black to undo this shabby knitting.

7. Nbd2 Qd6

Qd6 makes very little sense. I can't understand it even after I slept unless he's trying solely to dissuade c4 and is fearful.

To deconstruct this, remember that often in a Petroff, an early c4 can be met by giving a Bb4 check and quickly seizing some power with ...c5 in the vein of the Tarrasch. Here no such option is available, although c4 itself won't come for a while yet, not least because Black would be able to respond Be6.

If instead he takes the Knight, I have a lead in development. 7...Nxd2 8. Bxd2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many people would stop here and say 'this is a lead in development' and start to play flowing open chess. Many others, me from a few years ago included, might look and be worried about the idea of 8...Qe7+ because there might be a pattern-ingrained reflex to automatically bosh out  9. Qe2 Qxe2+ 10. Bxe2 Bd6

 

when although White has the lead in development, he isn't attacking much. This would be an error of thinking. White can still open up, and more importantly, Black still has the worst Bishop in the universe, so as long as you deal with that theme, you'll be fine.

 

 8. O-O Be7 9. Ne5 Nc6? 10. Bb5 O-O 11. Bxc6 bxc6

 

 

 

Nc6 is just a positional error, after already doing nothing to stop White's natural Ne5 plan. If Black instead plays 10...Bd7 11. Nxd7 Qxd7 12. Nf3 then he is already under pressure.

If we remember our philosophy of having a target, we can see that Black's light-squared Bishop is still weak - what can it do down an empty diagonal? c5 Is now a potential weakness so we take some time to clamp down on it.

12. Nb3 Ba6 

Instead of this, Black should try 12...c5 13. Nxc5 Nxc5 14. dxc5 Qxc5 15. Nd3 when he has gone some way to unraveling his troubles.

13. Re1 c5 14. Nxc5 Nxc5? 15. dxc5 Qxc5 16. Nd7 Qd6 17. Nxf8 Rxf8

 

Smoke has cleared, White has a Rook for a Bishop. So he needs to open lines straight away. The one annoying feature of this position is Black's threat of ...Bf6. So why not just stop it?

18. Bf4!

A stunner. When I'm doing well in a game I can find this sort of move. He's trapped: if he takes I win a pawn, if he doesn't I seize another doughnut.

18...Qd7 (avoiding 18...Qxf4 19. Qxd5+ Kh8 20. Rxe7) 19. Be5 Bb7 20. c4 d4 21. Qxd4 Qc6 22. Qd5+ Qxd5 23. cxd5 Bxd5 24. Bxg7 Rf7

More cröonchy stars for the Bishop. Black cannot afford the swap of one of his pair.

25. Be5 c5 26. Red1 Be6 27. Rd2 Kf8 28. b3 Ke8 29. Rc1 f4 30. Bd6 Bxd6 31. Rxd6 Ke7 32. Ra6 Kf6 33. Re1 Re7

And now it's time for everybody's favourite motif, liquidation!

34. Rexe6+ Rxe6 35. Rxe6+ Kxe6

Welcome to Pawn Ending!

It's White to move, and you're a pawn up with no weak points. I'll leave this as an exercise for those of you willing to tackle it. Take as long as you need, move pieces on a board if it helps. I've always been fairly fluent in pawn endings such as these so I'll play it out later against Houdini and post you the result in a couple of days. In the game itself, I easily Queened but ran out of time just before delivering mate. If that's how someone wants to claim a win, let him!

Any questions or comments will be appreciated - do bear in mind this isn't the highest quality game but I've played over 1500 games online so there will be some better stuff soon ;)