CEN: Understanding Rook vs Minor Piece Endgames

This is a response to 'Understanding Rook vs Minor Piece Endgames' by Mueller and Konoval, the third volume in their 'Understanding ...' series. It provides a selection of positions for comment and instruction. The supplementary material provides the full set of maxDTC(onversion) positions which are in the URME domain, together with DTC-optimal play from those positions

Rook versus Bishop

The focus here is on the influence of the endgame KRPKBP on endgames featuring duels between rook and bishop. We take advantage of the range of endgame tablebases and tools now available to ratify and extend previous analyses of five examples, including the conclusion of the justly famous 1979 Rio Interzonal game, Timman-Velimirović. The tablebases show that they can help us understand the hidden depths of the chess endgame, that the path to the draw here is narrower than expected, that chess engines without tablebases still do not find all the wins, and that there are further surprises in store when more pawns are added