Key Square - Any Key Square By Any Route

Any Key Square By Any Route

Jan Drtina, 1908
a b c d e f g h
8 8
7 7
6 6
5 5
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
a b c d e f g h
White gets to a winning position by getting to the key square at b5

With a king and pawn versus a lone king, it is important to get the attacking king to any key square and the path to a key square is not always direct. For instance, in the diagram on the right, the key squares for the white king are b5, c5, and d5. Black can prevent the white king from reaching a key square directly, e.g.:

1. Kd2 Ke7
2. Kd3 Kd7
3. Kc4 Kc6 (taking the opposition).

However the white king can reach a key square (b5) by going on the other side of the pawn:

1. Kc2! Ke7
2. Kb3 Kd6
3. Kb4 Kc6
4. Kc4 (opposition, and Black is in zugzwang) Kd6
5. Kb5

or

4... Kb6
5. Kd5

and the white king has occupied a key square and has a winning position (Müller & Lamprecht 2007:20).

Read more about this topic:  Key Square

Famous quotes containing the words key, square and/or route:

    “At the last, tenderly,
    From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,
    From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
    Let me be wafted.

    Let me glide noiselessly forth;
    With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
    Set ope the doors O soul.”
    —Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

    “Houses haunt me.
    That last house!
    How it sat like a square box!”
    —Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    “By a route obscure and lonely,
    Haunted by ill angels only,
    Where an eidolon, named Night,
    On a black throne reigns upright,
    I have reached these lands but newly
    From an ultimate dim Thule—
    From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
    Out of space—out of time.”
    —Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)