English Chess Forum

I would nominate 25. Re3 slightly losing control of the E file as the losing move

_________________
Cheers
Carl Hibbard

I meant 46(or possibly even 47) b5 actually Christopher! I don't think that move saves White near the end of the game, as my King is too good by then is it not?

I was only going by what Roger said in his original post! ("Even at this late stage 52 b5 would keep White in the game.")

I missed Kc2 until about five seconds after I played Rxg5. It's a bit like playing a move for solid positional reasons and then noticing a knight fork. In the "normal" version of the position without the c pawns you are able to check the king away before intercepting with Re1.

As Keith suggests, playing b5 at that stage is a drawing attempt which might still fail, but it would prolong the game and time could have become an issue.

(edit)
Having explored the position a bit further, 52 b5 does seem to lose to long forcing lines. On the other hand both 50 b5 and 51 b5 have their merits. How Black captures on b5 can make a difference. The defensive idea is to reach a position where White is playing against passed b and d pawns but with a Rook on the seventh and a pawn on h7 as well. Something like this

[FEN "8/3R3P/8/8/3pk3/1p6/7r/1K6"] [SetUp "1"] *

(/edit)

So did you consider the White move b5 at any point between move 46 and 50? Or is this all with computer-aided hindsight? James (Coleman) mentioned the idea earlier in the thread of exchanging off rooks, and you mention b5 again there. Did you consider this (the Rd3 idea) in the game, or only later?

This is all computer aided hindsight, testing whether the judgement that the position was level at move 40 is correct. If I considered Rd3 at all, I would have miscalculated the King and pawn ending to have rejected it. At least one of my problems was that I wasn't sure of Keith's plan. I thought his idea might be to stay solid in the centre and nab my g pawn, as opposed to breaking through in the centre with d pawn and King. As the idea of taking on c5 and supporting it with b4 is a plan against the Caro that I may try again, then having some idea what to do when the b4 c5 pawn structure appears in endings is important.