Chess Teaching post

Online Nalimov Endgame Tablebases

If you are looking for a place to study some difficult endgames the following may be of interest to you.








White to move
Position after move 0
0 half-moves after last pawn advance or capture
Using the applet on the Knowledge4IT site all of the currently published Nalimov Tablebases can be queried online (incl. 6-men databases). On this Web Query page you are able to check some of these sometimes very difficult endgames.

By checking this tablebases we see that the given position, which arose after 66 moves in the game between Stellan Brynell (2501) and Mihail Krasenkow (2651) in the 4th round of the Corus Chess Tournament 2007 (C), turns out to be a mate in 41 problem.

The specific endgame is rather remarkable because in contradiction to the endgame without the pawn Black’s additional pawn will be the reason that White is able to win the game.

Both players turned out to be rather unfamiliar with this kind of endplay and the game ended in a draw. White played 67.Ne4! after which Black continued with 67…Kg7?! and now we have a mate in 25 problem. Instead of the appropriate move 68.Nd6, White played 68.Kf5?! after which 41 moves are needed again.

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