Hello.
Jonathan Tait wrote on 10/20/16 at 09:49:13:
On this theme, I recently had an endgame with king and two knights vs. king and three pawns.
Would be fun to play K+2N vs. K+3P over the board. With such non-natural technique there is much advantage in being abe to work things out in the peace of the home.
RdC wrote on 10/20/16 at 17:40:58:
Where does the defending King head to make the mate as long as possible?
So... I'm thinking... ummm... away from the knight blocking the pawn while not getting trapped on the rim.
For games where the strong side has managed to capture all pawns but a knight-blocked h-pawn or a-pawn (like in reply #4) what seems to happen is that with amazing king-knight teamplay the strong side eventually flanks the weak side king and forces him towards the knight blocking the rim pawn. When the weak side king reaches the general area where the strong side pawn blocking knight starts taking away squares from the weak side king there is little real choice but to dash for freedom. Alas the only route is via the rim of the board where the weak side king is in danger of being trapped. Entrapment is then exactly what happens and at the right time the pawn blocking knight hops in to deliver mate.
RdC wrote on 10/20/16 at 17:40:58:
Is there any hope of a fifty moves sequence without a pawn move or capture?
The endgame is complex so there will always be hope for dragging most endgames of this type past 50 (pawn move or capture free) moves in otb games. In correspondence chess the fifty move rule is, as mentioned, not relevant.
Jonathan Tait wrote on 10/21/16 at 06:54:17:
And in all that it lets the a-pawn beyond the Troitsky Line halfway through. Why isn't it a draw then?
The king is trapped on the rim so there appears to be an effective herding technique because of this (see move 55-78 in reply 4).
Semi-topical:
Can't recall if this has been mentioned on chespub before but Kotronias actually recommended going into the following related endgame in His second Mar del Plata book (p.272):
It took not long for someone to check it with a 7-man tablebase and post the result on the QC blog.
Interestingly (at least how I saw it) was that the mating sequence posted on the QC-blog would have been fouled out due to the 50 move rule like a move or two before mate (as I recall). So there is a chance the line would have held in otb chess but not correspondence
.
Have a nice day.