Understanding Queen Endgames

By Karsten Müller, Yakov Konoval and Vladimir Kramnik

The Daunting Domain of Queen Endgames Explained!

Knowing the abilities and limitations of the powerful queen is very valuable for mastering the secrets of the royal game, and this can be studied best in the endgame.

Queen endgames are very difficult, if only for purely mathematical reasons – the queen is the most mobile peace in chess, and the amount of possible options is incomparably higher than in any other type of endgames.

This book follows a dual philosophy as in the three previous works by the same authors: Understanding Rook Endgames, Understanding Minor Piece Endgames and Understanding Rook vs. Minor Piece Endgames. The 7-piece endings are dealt with in great detail. They are often so complex that pre-tablebase analysis almost always contains errors. Many new discoveries are revealed here.

But to really understand the fight of a queen against a queen or minor pieces with rooks, these theoretical positions are of course not enough. So subchapters on the principles of each material configuration have been added.

All in all, this fantastic book is already on my (very short) “must study” list for chessplayers of different levels, including the top ten! I want to thank the authors for the courage which is required just to start working on such a complex topic, as well as for the very high quality of their work, which will endure for decades to come and will be very useful for many future generations of chessplayers.
– from the Foreword by Vladimir Kramnik,14th World Chess Champion

• Language: English
• Publisher: Russell Enterprises, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781949859324

Karsten Müller

International Grandmaster Karsten Müller is recognized as one of the world’s top endgame experts. He is the author of many books on endgames and chess tactics. He is the author of over a dozen chess books published by Russell Enterprises.

Book preview

Index

Bibliography

Books

Fundamental Chess Endings, Müller and Lamprecht, GAMBIT 2001

How to Play Chess Endgames, Müller and Pajeken, GAMBIT 2008

Understanding Rook Endgames, Müller and Konoval, GAMBIT 2016

Understanding Minor Piece Endgames, Müller and Konoval, Russell Enterprises 2018

Understanding Rook vs. Minor Piece Endgames, Müller and Konoval, Russell Enterprises 2019

Understanding Chess Endgames, John Nunn, GAMBIT 2009

Nunn’s Chess Endings, John Nunn, GAMBIT 2010

Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual, Mark Dvoretsky, Russell Enterprises 2003, 4th ed. 2014

Encyclopedia of Chess Endings (ECE), Chess Informant

DVDs

Chess Endgames 1-14, Müller, ChessBase Fritztrainer, Hamburg 2006-2013

Periodicals and Magazines

Chess Informant

New in Chess Magazine

ChessBase Magazine (CBM)

CBM Blog at ChessBase.com

The Week in Chess

Chess Today

Endgame Corner at ChessCafe.com

Databases and Programs

ChessBase MEGABASE 2019

ChessBase

Let’s Check online database

Harold van der Heijden’s study database

Komodo 12

Konoval’s 5-piece, 6-piece and 7-piece tablebases

Lomonosov 7-piece tablebases

Nalimov’s 5-piece and 6-piece tablebases

Stockfish 9

Syzygy 5-piece, 6-piece and 7-piece tablebases

Introduction

Knowing the abilities and limitations of the queen is very valuable for mastering the secrets of the royal game, and this can be studied best in the endgame. There are already many books dealing with this topic. Why have we added another one to the collection?

Computer technology is advancing and advances endgame theory. Yakov Konoval and Marc Bourzutschky have created 7-piece tablebases and so the definitive verdict on all such positions and optimal lines are known with certainty. Now the 7-piece Lomonosov Tablebases are available online, allowing anyone to evaluate a given position.

However, Marc and Yakov have developed additional software which is able to generate significant additional information, such as long wins, zugzwangs, typical positions and so on. Thanks to this software, there are many new discoveries in this book.

This book follows a dual philosophy as in our three previous works Understanding Rook Endgames, Understanding Minor Piece Endgames and Understanding Rook vs. Minor Piece Endgames. We deal with the 7-piece endings in great detail. They are often so complex that pre-tablebase analysis almost always contains errors. Many new discoveries are revealed here.

We have also added the important 5- and 6-piece endings a club player should know. But to really understand the fight of a queen against a queen or minor pieces with rooks, these theoretical positions are of course not enough. So we have added subchapters on the principles of each material configuration. Finally, we would like to thank Vladimir Kramnik for his foreword, Guy Haworth for providing examples and analysis, German grandmaster Luis Engel for checking the exercises from a human point of view and Vladimir Makhnychev and Victor Zakharov for giving access to Lomonosov Tablebases.

Karsten Müller and Yakov Konoval

November 2020

Foreword

Before reading this book, I was convinced that there were no new chess subjects left which had not already been covered by one author or another. But this titanic work seems to be the first one analyzing in depth the endgames queen vs. queen and queen vs. other pieces.

Such positions are very difficult to work on, if only for purely mathematical reasons – the queen is the most mobile peace in chess, and the amount of possible options is incomparably higher than in any other type of endgames. Of course, nowadays we have tablebases, but they can only give a clear answer for positions with no more than seven pieces on the board, including both kings. This work contains many more examples on these topics and, most importantly, it provides human explanations which will help you make sense and navigate such positions when they appear on the board in a practical game.

There are many examples from my own games in the book and (to my surprise) most of them were successful. (I have really never studied this subject because of the absence of such books, at least in my youth.) I did find a few surprising discoveries which were new to me and changed my previous assessments of some positions.

For instance, in the first game of my 2004 world championship match with Leko (position 06.17, page 145) we both thought that the exchange of the h-pawns (instead of 44.Qf4? g5 45.Qf6 h6! – the move Peter missed) would lead to a relatively simple draw. However, I was very surprised to learn that in fact Black still has serious winning chances. Or that two rooks and a pawn often do not win against a queen, and even if there is a win, this endgame is very difficult to manage in practical play. And there are others…

If there were this many revelations for an experienced player, I can guarantee that, with careful study of this material, you will greatly expand your chess knowledge.

All in all, this fantastic book is already on my (very short) must study list for chessplayers of different levels, including the top ten! I want to thank the authors for the courage which is required just to start working on such a complex topic, as well as for the very high quality of their work, which will endure for decades to come and will be very useful for many future generations of chessplayers.

Vladimir Kramnik

14th World Chess Champion

November 2020

The History of Creating Seven-Piece Endgame Tablebases

The idea to create chess endgame tablebases (EndGame Table Bases or in abbreviated form EGTB) arose in the late 1970s. Now this idea looks obvious and it is seems strange that EGTBs were not generated earlier. The idea behind such bases is that for a concrete combination of pieces, for example, the king and the queen against the king and the rook, it is possible to generate the complete table which contains evaluation for every concrete position – win in n moves, loss in m moves, draw, impossible positions.

Such table needs to be generated only once by the widely known method of retrograde analysis (the other name – width-first search). The key moment in construction of the table is the size, which strongly depends on the number of chess pieces on the board. With the tables containing three or four pieces, in general, there are no problems, and such EGTBs were created many years ago.

Tables for five pieces are hundreds of megabytes even compressed, but at the modern level of computer development, are constructed easily enough. They too have already been around a long time.

Tables for six pieces occupy, not compressed, on the order of several gigabytes. Here already there are some problems with their construction, mainly with time to generate them and hard drive storage space. Nevertheless, all six-piece tables in the Nalimov format (the most popular now) had been constructed by 2005. It is curious to note that the popular belief that tables with five pieces against a lone king do not exist, is not accurate; they have already been constructed. The six-piece Nalimov tables requires 1200 gigabytes of hard disk space.

The size of seven-piece tables is measured already in terabytes, and in 2005 many experts predicted the impossibility of construction of these tables given the modern level of hardware. The approximate parameters were not specified before 2010. Nevertheless, by the beginning of 2005, the American scientist and programmer Marc Bourzutschky had constructed the first seven-piece table base – a king and four knights against a king and a queen. This ending had been studied by the early 20th century study composer Alexei Troitsky. It is interesting that his assessment that the four knights win has proven to be true.

Also in 2005, the Russian programmer Yakov Konoval had written a program to quickly generate the six-piece tablebases economically for PCs. The international collaboration of Marc and Yakov for the creation and the analysis of seven-piece databases has begun at the middle of 2005. Yakov developed the generator, and Marc – the program for verification of the constructed base (it guarantees almost absolute correctness of the tablebases) and a number of utilities for extraction of the information from the tablebases.

At present, work on the generator and the program for verifying bases has been completed. They are very efficient and it is possible to construct, with their help, all seven-piece bases. By the end of 2018, all seven-piece bases had been constructed by Marc on standard home computers with total size about 80 Terabytes. The calculation time for one seven-piece base fluctuates from several hours to one month, and the sizes of the bases generated are in the approximate range of one to 300 gigabytes.

Tablebases use the DTC measurement – distance to conversion (i.e., captures and/or promotions of a pawn) unlike the Nalimov tablebases, which use the DTM measurement – distance to mate. Basically the measurement type is insignificant as the win with the tablebase will be reached using any measurement. The standard belief that the win with the DTM-base is faster, is at least debatable – a game usually does not proceed to mate. For example, in the ending the king and a queen against the king, the opponent, most likely, will resign. Karsten Müller believes that the DTM metric is often easier for human understanding as in the DTC metric, there might be hidden deep wins after the first conversion, e.g., in a resulting six-piece ending. But of course both metrics can have their advantages in certain specific positions: (D)

1.e7 is the normal human move and best according to the DTC metric.

1.Kc6 which is shortest in DTM-metric looks odd to the human eye.

00.01A DTC is better

00.01B DTM is better

The next position is mate in two and conversion in one:

1.Rg1! is DTM optimal and the human move.

1.Qg7+! is odd, but DTC optimal.

00.01C Kholmov – Vasiukov

USSR 1971

The difference between DTC and DTM can also be relevant regarding the 50-move rule: (D)

In the game Black won after some further moves. This position shows an important difference between DTC and DTM. The DTC optimal line also wins with the 50-move rule, while the DTM line does not. So DTC first:

91…Qc1+!! 92.Kf5 Qd2!! 93.Be4 Ne3+! 94.Ke6 Qc3!! 95.Qd8 Kb2 96.Bg6 Nc4! 97.Qh4 b3! 98.Qf2+ Qd2! 99.Qf6+ Ka2! 100.Kf7 b2! 101.Qe6 Kb3! 102.Kg8 Qd6 103.Qf7 Qe5! 104.Qd7 Kc3! 105.Qc8 Qd4! 106.Kh7 Kd2! 107.Qf5 Ne5! 108.Qc2+ Ke3! 109.Qb3+ Kf4! 110.Bb1 Ng4! 111.Qc2 Ke3! 112.Kg8 Ne5! 113.Qb3+ Kf2 114.Qc2+ Ke1! 115.Kh7 Ng4! 116.Qf5 Nf6+! 117.Kg6 Nd7! 118.Qc2 Qe5! 119.Qd3 Qe6+! 120.Kg5 Qe7+! 121.Kh6 Qh4+! 122.Kg7 Qg5+! 123.Kh8 Qe5+! 124.Kh7 Nf6+! 125.Kg6 Nd5! 126.Kh7 Nc3! 127.Bc2 Ne2! 128.Qd1+ Kf2 129.Qd8 Nf4! 130.Qh4+ Ke2! 131.Qh2+ Ke1 132.Qg1+ Kd2! 133.Bb1 Kc3! 134.Kg8 Ne6! 135.Kf7 Ng5+! 136.Kg6 Nf3! 137.Qh1 Qf4 138.Kg7 Kb4! 139.Bg6 Qd4+! 140.Kg8 Ne5! 141.Bb1 Qg4+! 142.Kh8 Nf3! 143.Qf1 Qc8+! 144.Kg7 Qc7+! 145.Kh8 Qh2+! 146.Bh7 Qf4 147.Kg7 Qc7+ 148.Kh8 Qc3+! 149.Kg8 Qc4+! 0-1

On the other hand, DTM line would lead to a draw because of the 50 move rule:

1…Qc1+ 2.Kf5 Qd2 3.Be4 Ne3+ 4.Ke6 Qc3 5.Qd8 Kb2 6.Bg6 b3 7.Kf7 Qe5 8.Kg8 Kc3 9.Kh7 Nc4 10.Qd7 Qh2+ 11.Kg7 Qg3 12.Qc6 b2 The last pawn move.

13.Kh8 Qg5 14.Kh7 Qe5 15.Qc8 Qe7+ 16.Kg8 Qg5 17.Kh7 Qh4+ 18.Kg7 Qd4+ 19.Kh7 Kd2 20.Qc7 Ne5 21.Qc2+ Ke3 22.Qb3+ Kf4 23.Bb1 Ng4 24.Qc2 Ke3 25.Kg8 Ne5 26.Qb3+ Ke2 27.Qc2+ Ke1 28.Kh7 Ng4 29.Qf5 Nf6+ 30.Kg7 Nd7+ 31.Kh7 Qd5 32.Qc2 Qh5+ 33.Kg7 Qg5+ 34.Kf7 Qf6+ 35.Ke8 Qd4 36.Ke7 Nf6 37.Ke6 Nd5 38.Qc6 Ne3 39.Qf3 Kd2 40.Qf2+ Kc3 41.Kf7 Nd5 42.Qe1+ Qd2 43.Qh1 Kc4 44.Kg7 Qg5+ 45.Kh8 Qe5+ 46.Kh7 Kc5 47.Qh3 Kd6 48.Qa3+ Ke6 49.Qh3+ Ke7 50.Qh4+ Qf6 51.Qe1+ Kf7 52.Qg3 Qe7 53.Qg6+ Kf8+ 54.Kh6 Qh4+ 55.Qh5 Qf4+ 56.Qg5 Qc1 57.Kh5 Qd1+ 58.Kh6 Qh1+ 59.Qh5 Qc1+ 60.Qg5 Nf6 61.Bd3 Kf7 62.Bg6+ Ke6 and a draw according to the 50-move rule.

63.Bd3 Nd5 64.Be4 Qxg5+ 65.Kxg5 Ke5 66.Bd3 Kd4 67.Bc2 Nb4 68.Bb1 Ke3 69.Kf5 Kd2 70.Ke5 Kc1 71.Be4 Nc2 72.Bf3 b1Q 73.Bh1 Qb4 74.Bg2 Qd4+ 75.Ke6 Qg4+ 76.Kd6 Qxg2 77.Ke6 Qg5 78.Kd6 Nd4 79.Kd7 Qe5 80.Kd8 Qd6+ 81.Kc8 Qe7 82.Kb8 Nb5 83.Ka8 Qa7# 0-1

00.01D Underpromotions – 50-move rule, History table

Like in the Nalimov tablebases, in our bases, the en passant capture is considered, but the possibility of castling is not considered. We also do not consider the rule of 50 moves; see below. At the end of 2006, we started construction of the seven-piece endings with pawns.

All three-seven piece endings from Understanding Rook Endgames were verified by Mark Bourzutschky and Yakov Konoval’s tablebases with all promotions. For Understanding Minor Piece Endgames we used seven-piece tablebases with only queen promotions, and then verified them with Lomonosov’s tablebases with all promotions. By the end of 2018, Marc Bourzutschky and Yakov Konoval had finished all their seven-piece tablebases with all promotions and we used these tablebases for this book.

Now some words about records and the rule of 50 moves. Before the construction of seven-piece bases, the longest known win in the endings was a win in 243 moves (before conversion) in the ending R+N vs. 2Ns, found by Lewis Stiller in 1991. Later it was established that the record to mate in this class of the endings would be 262 moves. It was further established that in the seven-piece endings there are longer wins. The win in 290 moves in the ending 2Rs+N vs. 2Rs became the first of them. And there are more.

In May 2006, the position with a win in 517 moves was found in the ending a Q+N vs. R+B+N. In general, in many pawnless endings, more than 50 moves before conversion are necessary for a win, which was already known for a number of six-piece and even five-piece endings, including an ending such as Q+R vs. Q. In this situation the rule of 50 moves, in Yakov Konoval’s opinion, demands clarification, as it apparently defies the logic of a chess struggle.

Note that in chess composition, i.e., studies and problems, this rule it is not taken into consideration at all. Of course it is easy to find positions where this rule is taken in account, but in some absolutely drawn positions, it is possible to play more than 500 moves.

Karsten Müller thinks that for a human over-the-board play, the 50-move rule should remain, as human play is not perfect anyway.

There were two interesting results which had been achieved by in 2009. The first was the construction of several eight-piece bases without pawns in which one side has two dark-square and two light-square bishops. The most interesting of them is the tablebase 4Bs vs. 2Rs. It appeared that generally four bishops win, and more than 50 moves are necessary to win.

The second result is the use of the idea about the limited promotions for finding of positions in which two or even three underpromotions into different pieces are necessary for a win. This approach was suggested by well known mathematician and chess composer Noam Elkies and was implemented by Marc and Yakov. Thus the computer acts in a role of the composer of chess studies, while the human needs only to analyze the found positions and to decide, whether are they actual studies or not, possibly adding additional moves.

In fact, two studies by computer (12.01 and 12.02) were already published and according to experts in chess composition (Oleg Pervakov and others) they are good enough.

In 2012 the team from the Moscow State University (Vladimir Makhnychev and Victor Zakharov) constructed seven-piece EGTBs using the supercomputer Lomonosov in the DTM format. Now their EGTBs are available online (for an honorarium) and it is possible to verify online any seven-piece position (except six pieces versus a lone king).

However, in our book, we use many utilities developed by Marc Bourzutschky and Yakov Konoval which allow the discovery of many interesting positions automatically from different chess bases.

Some main events in the history of creating chess endgame tablebases:

In 1965, Richard Bellman proposed the creation of a database to solve chess and checkers endgames using retrograde analysis. Instead of analyzing forward from the position currently on the board, the database would analyze backward from positions in which one player was checkmated or stalemated. Thus, a chess computer would no longer need to analyze endgame positions during the game, because they were solved beforehand. It would no longer make mistakes because the tablebase always played the best possible move.

In 1970, Thomas Strohlein published a doctoral thesis with analysis of the following classes of endgame: KQ vs. K, KR vs. K, KP vs. K, KQ vs. KR, KR vs. KB, and KR vs. KN.

In 1977 Thompson’s KQ vs. KR database was used in a match versus grandmaster Walter Browne. Ken Thompson and others helped extend tablebases to cover all four- and five-piece endgames, including in particular KBB vs. KN, KQP vs. KQ, and KRP vs. KR.

Lewis Stiller published a thesis with research on some six-piece tablebase endgames in 1995. More recent contributors have included the following: Eugene Nalimov, after whom the popular Nalimov tablebases are named; Eiko Bleicher, who adapted the tablebase concept to a program called Freezer; Guy Haworth, an academic at the University of Reading, who has been published extensively in the ICGA Journal and elsewhere; Marc Bourzutschky and Yakov Konoval, who have collaborated to analyze endgames with seven pieces on the board; Peter Karrer, who constructed a specialized seven-piece tablebase (KQPP vs. KQP) for the endgame of the Kasparov versus the World online match; Vladimir Makhnychev and Victor Zakharov from Moscow State University, who completed 4+3 DTM-tablebases (525 endings including KPPP vs. KPP) in July 2012.

The tablebases are named Lomonosov tablebases. The next set of 5+2 DTM-tablebases (350 endings including KPPPP vs. KP) was completed in August 2012. The high speed of generating the tablebases was a result of using a supercomputer named Lomonosov. The size of all tablebases up to the seven-piece is about 140 TB. The tablebases of all endgames with up to six pieces are available as a free download, and may also be queried using web interfaces (see the external links below).

The Nalimov tablebase requires more than one terabyte of storage space. See the following URL for more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_tablebase#Tables.

Marc Bourzutschky and Yakov Konoval also have generated some unusual tablebases for non-standard boards and non-standard pieces. The most interesting results from these tablebases are (a) the ending Q vs. R is drawn for a 16x16 board; (b) the ending R vs. B is won on a 6x6 board; and (c) the ending KAN vs. KBNN (A means archbishop = B+N) is indeed a very deep ending, with a maximum DTC of 568 moves (maximum DTM for usual seven-piece tablebases, created by the Lomonosov team, is only 549 moves).

00.01E Longest wins – Conventions

The use of tablebases allows us to find very complex wins, including wins of maximum length for the given type of ending. We give some record positions in our book for different endings. The annotation conventions are different. A !! is the only winning move and ! is the only move with minimum DTC value, but not the only move to win; zz means a position of mutual zugzwang.

1…Kg7 2.Nh5+!! The only move to win.

2…Kg8 3.Qg3+!! Kf7 4.Qg7+!! Ke6 5.Qf6+!! Kd7 6.Qf7+! Not the only move to win, but the only move with minimum DTC value.

6…Kd8 7.Qf8+! Kd7 8.Nf6+! Ke6 9.Nd5!! Qb2+ 10.Kc7!! Qd4 11.Qe8+!! Kf5 12.Kd6!! Kg4 13.Qg6+!! Kf3 14.c5!! Qh8 15.Qf7+! Ke4 16.Qe7+! Kf5 17.c6! Qh6+ 18.Kc7! Qh8 19.Qf7+! Ke4 20.Nf6+!! Ke3 21.Kd6!! Kd4 22.Nd7!! Qh6+ 23.Kc7!! Qe3 24.Kb8!! Ke4 25.Kc8! Qc3 26.Qg6+!! Kd5 27.Kb7!! Kd4 28.Qd6+!! Ke3 29.Kc8!! Qh8+ 30.Kc7!! Qh7 31.Qh2! zz. A position of mutual zugzwang.

31…Qf5 32.Qg3+!! Ke2 33.Kd8! Qh7 34.Nc5! Qh8+ 35.Kc7! Qh7+ 36.Kb6! Qf5 37.Qc3 Bg4 38.Qb4! Bh3 39.Qc4+! Kf3 40.Qc3+! Kg4 41.Nd3! Kg5 42.Qg7+!! Kh5 43.Qd4! Kh6 44.Nf4! Bg4 45.Nd5!! Qf3 46.Nf6! Bh3 47.Qh4+! Kg7 48.Qg5+!! Kf7 49.Qg8+!! Ke7 50.Qe8+!! Kd6 51.Ne4+!! Kd5 52.Nc5!! Kc4 53.Qe1!! Qf4 54.Qe2+!! Kd5 55.Qh5+!! Qf5 56.Qd1+!! Ke5 57.Qa1+! Kf4 58.c7! Ke3 59.Qg1+!! Ke2 60.Qh2+!! Ke3 61.Nb3! Qg6+ 62.Ka7!! Qf5 63.Qd2+! Ke4 64.Qd4+! Kf3 65.Nd2+!! Ke2 66.Nc4!! Qe6 67.Qc3 Bf5 68.Qd2+! Kf3 69.Qd4! Ke2 70.Nb6! Qc6 71.Nd5!! Bd7 72.Kb8!! Qb5+ 73.Nb6! Bh3 74.Qe4+!! Kd2 75.Kb7!! Bf5 76.Qf3!! zz

76…Qd3 77.Qf4+!! Kc3 78.Na4+!! Kc2 79.Qh2+ Kc1 80.Qb2+! Kd1 81.Nc3+ Ke1 82.Kb8!! zz

82…Kf1 83.Qb4! Kf2 84.Qc5+!! Kg2 85.Ka7!! Kf3 86.Kb7!! zz

86…Bd7 87.Nd5! Qe4 88.Qc3+! Ke2 89.Qb2+ Kd1 90.Qa2! Kc1 91.Qa3+! Kd2 92.Qb3! Be6 93.Kb6!! Kc1 94.Qc3+ Kd1 95.Qc5! Kd2 96.Qb5! Qe5 97.Qb4+!! Kc2 98.Qc5+! Kd2 99.Qf2+! Kc1 100.Qg1+ Kc2 101.Qg2+! Kb1 102.Kc6! Bc8 103.Qg8! Qf5 104.Qg1+!! Ka2 105.Qa7+! Kb1 106.Qb6+! Ka2 107.Qa5+! Kb1 108.Qe1+! Kb2 109.Qc3+! Ka2 110.Qd2+! Ka1 111.Nb4! Qe4+ 112.Kd6!! Qe6+ 113.Kc5 Qe5+ 114.Kb6!! Qb2 115.Qd1+! Qb1 116.Qd4+! Qb2 117.Qh4! Bh3 118.Qe1+! Qb1 119.Qd2! Qb2 120.Qd1+! Qb1 121.Qd4+! Qb2 122.Qg1+! Qb1 123.Qc5! Kb2 124.Qe3! Bc8 125.Ka7!! Qd1 126.Kb8! Bd7 127.Qe5+! Ka3 128.Na6! Qb3+ 129.Ka7!! Bc8 130.Nc5!! Qc4 131.Kb6! Ka2 132.Kc6! Qg4 133.Qd5+! Kb1 134.Qd3+! Kc1 135.Kb5! Qf4 136.Qd8! Qg4 137.Kb6 Qb4+ 138.Kc6!! Qg4 139.Kb5! Qf5 140.Kb6! Kc2 141.Qh8! Kb1 142.Qg8! Qh3 143.Qe8! Kc1 144.Qe1+! Kc2 145.Qe2+! Kb1 146.Qe4+! Kc1 147.Ka7! Qc3 148.Qh1+! Kc2 149.Qh7+! Kd1 150.Qb1+! Ke2 151.Qe4+! Qe3 152.Qc2+! Kf3 153.Qd1+! Kf2 154.Qd5! Ke1 155.Kb8! Bh3 156.Kb7! Ke2 157.Qa2+! Kd1 158.Qb1+! Ke2 159.Qc2+! Kf3 160.Qd1+! Kf2 161.Qh5! Kf1 162.Kb6! Bc8 163.Qh8! Bh3 164.Qf6+! Ke2 165.Kc6! Bc8 166.Kd6! Kd1 167.Qa1+! Kc2 168.Qa2+! Kc1 169.Qc4+! Kd2 170.Ne4+! Ke1 171.Qb4+ Ke2 172.Qb2+! Ke1 173.Qe5! Qd3+ 174.Ke7! Qd7+ 175.Kf8! Kf1 176.Qe7! Qd4 177.Kf7! Qd3 178.Ke8! Bh3 179.Qf6+! Ke2 180.Qe5! Qd7+ 181.Kf8 Qc8+ 182.Kg7 Qd7+ 183.Kg6 Qd3 184.Kf6! Qf3+ 185.Ke7!! Qa3+ 186.Nc5+! Kf3 187.Qd6! Qb4 188.Nd7! Qe1+ 189.Kd8! Qh4+ 190.Qf6+! Kg3 191.Qxh4+ 1-0

Chapter 1

Queen versus Pawn

This chapter is relatively short as the queen is usually far superior and wins easily even