In the Munster Chess Union’s Club League, I witnessed how two players fought for more than 5 hours, almost about 90 minutes just in a single rook and knight vs. rook end game to conclude in a draw. Most of the players in the room were convinced that it is a drawn end game. However, the player with the advantage was convinced that he can win that game, because he remembered a Judit Polgar vs. Garry Kasparov game where it was won in the same situation.
The player was not wrong. There was such a game, it was played in Dos Hermanas in 1996, and it was won. The full game can be checked at the end of the article. However, the players in the room was right, too, rook and knight against a rook is only winning under special circumstances, or when serious errors are committed by the defending side. We can learn some lessons from it, for instance, what one shall not be doing in situations like this:
- keeping the king on the side of the board is a bad idea, escape whenever you can.
- going to a corner is even worse, avoid both if that is possible
- use the stalemate patterns to defend your own king
- and limit the movement of the knight or the king is a key for drawing the position.
The problems start emerging on move 64 (see diagram). White played 64. Ra8?! Not sure why not escape the outer frame by simply, e.g 64. Kg4 Rf4+ 65. Kh3 with the intention to escape to G2 square. Without the Black King there will be not checkmate.
Rule No. 1: if you can escape the outer rim, do not hesitate to do so. The king is very unlikely if not impossible to be checkmated in the middle of the board.
Rule No. 4: cut the king out of the play with your rook. Unless the king is in the corner (see Rule 1), there can be no checkmate on the board.
The second position had arisen in move 70 (see diagram). Here, White played 70. Kh5 which is not bad at all, however, the position also can show another pattern which makes it easier to draw. There is a cage for the king if the knight moves to F4 and the Black rook occupies the G-file. So, 70. Rf8+ Nf4 71. Rg8! is a classic stalemate pattern here: the rook cannot be captured. For 71.. Rh1+ 72. Kg5 Rg1 73. Kh4, and we are back… Black can push the king further, but not towards the corner which is a hard no go zone.
Rule No. 3: use stalemate patterns to defend your king.
The final position we would like to discuss here appeared after move 78. While it seems the board is diagonally almost symmetric, it matters a lot which way the rook will go. The King is paralysed here, any king move is wrong. White needs to be assertive to have a fighting chance. Anything else loses like in the actual game.
79. Rf1+ is the right move to keep the king be in check, or to limit the movements of the knight. For 79… Nf5 80. Rf2, and if the king moves somewhere, we just give a check. If the rook moves, the king can be liberated, and basically these are options.
Rule No. 4: keep the king busy by paralysing the knight and preventing the king from setting up a checkmate pattern.
There are other cases when the rook and knight can win against a single rook, but these are rather the exceptions where the defensive rook is on the wrong position close to the king to get forked, or get captured by a discovered attack.
I could not be certain about what happened, but after a long game and couple of hours, anything is possible. We know that when people get tired the memories from the past recalled by association sometimes fade the clear thinking. I am only mentioning this, because Judit Polgar knew the end games very very well, and the position may resembled to an old position, from 1890 (from Berger, 1890 – Theorie und Praxis der Schachendspiele). There, the solution was escaping to the corner.