The Philidor Position
In the last blogpost, we visited The Lucena Position, which is a way to force a draw when the your king is blocking the pawn’s promotion square. The Philidor Position, however, is a method of drawing when the opponent king is blocking the promotion square. Let’s take a look at a position.
White is winning in this position in terms of material, but the game is actually a dead draw, given that black plays the right move in this position. Take a second and try to figure out the move for black. Take note that the above position is from black’s perspective, so the black king is on the 8th rank.
If you said Rh6, excellent job! The idea behind Rh6 is to prevent the white king from getting closer to the black king. With each advancement of the white king towards the black king, black’s space gets more limited, and the white rook lurking on the b-file could slide into checkmate.
After Rh6, white has a few candidate moves.
We’ll take a look at Rb8+ first. If Rb8+, the black king can simply move up to e7. If Rb7+, the black king can move back to e8, inviting a draw by repetition.
A second possibility is Rb7 after Rh6. Rb7 looks dangerous since it cuts off the black king and seems to be a move preparing for the right moment to pounce. But in reality, Rb7 does nothing since black can simply move his rook. But remember, we played Rh6 to prevent the white king from intruding further, so we must glide along that rank. So, a possible move is Rh6. This will lead to a draw since white cannot force a checkmate.
A third possibility after Rh6 is e6. After e6, black has a key idea. Try finding what the idea is and what move would accomplish that idea.
Rh2! The idea behind this is that if the white king advances to d6 next move, Rd2+ will send him scurrying back. If white tries Rb8+ or Rb7, we will follow the same concepts as if it was played before e6.
So, one possible variation after Rh2 is Kd6, Rd2+, Ke5, Re2+, Kd5, Rd2+, Kc5. But now, black can play Ke7, and if white tries to hold onto the pawn with Re8, black can play Rc2+ and continue checking since if the white king goes to the 4th rank, the black rook will swoop to the 6th rank and gobble the white pawn down the next move.
An interesting and educative game that encounters The Philidor position can be seen below which is between Rudolf Pleininger and Renato Neyer in a 1996 game in Switzerland.
Author: Saharsh Satheesh
