Karsten Müller: Understanding the Vancura draw

Understanding the Vančura draw

In the ending rook + pawn vs rook there are certain positions that every tournament chess player should know. For instance the Philidor draw, also known as the third rank defense, or the Lucena position, in which White's king is in front of his pawn, which in turn is on the b to g files, and the black king is cut off on a file – a win for the side with the pawn.

Lesser known is the Vancura Position, which is essentially rook and rook's pawn versus a rook where the pawn is not beyond its sixth rank, and the stronger side's rook is in front of the pawn. This ending was studied by Josef Vančura, a Czech study composer who lived at the turn of the last century and died at the age of 23 in 1921. His analysis of the KRP vs KR was published posthumously in 1924 and has belonged to the standard repertoire of strong chess players ever since.

In the Vancura Position Black's rook keeps attacking the pawn from the side, while keeping the black king on near the corner on the opposite side of the board, so that White cannot sacrifice the pawn and then skewer Black's king and rook on the seventh rank (see move two in the first example below). But on to the specifics: who can better explain them than our endgame specialist Dr Karsten Müller.

The Vugar Gashimov Memorial tournament was held in Shamkir, Azerbaijan, in April this year. It featured World Champion Magnus Carlsen (2881), Fabiano Caruana (2783), Sergey Karjakin (2772), Hikaru Nakamura (2772), and the two Azeri players Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (2760) and Teimour Radjabov (2713). In round four there was a memorable encounter, which at the time our GM reporter Alejandro Ramirez described as follows:

Radjabov, Teimour ½-½ Nakamura, Hikaru
Nakamura again played a solid Slav, but used a different variation than he did against Carlsen in round two. Radjabov got some advantage, as his pawn structure was superior in the resulting endgame. However the position was very hard to breach, and eventually Nakamura traded off into a drawn rook endgame, despite being down a pawn.

Teimour held a slight edge the entire game, but nothing more

Passive and long defense gave Nakamura a draw; not his usual style

But what exactly happened? Again we hand over to Karsten Müller for a full explanation:

In round nine of the recently finished Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis we had another vivid example of the Vancura strategy in action. In his round report GM Alejandro Ramirez wrote:

Carlsen, Magnus ½-½ Aronian, Levon
The World Champion obtained some comfortable pressure in the opening, and slowly but surely it seemed as if that pressure was increasing - especially with some strange and weakening moves by Aronian. However the Armenian's play wasn't senseless at all, somehow he obtained counterplay and the position was not easy to play for either side.

Carlsen almost won like his old self, but he let it slip at the last moment

A mistake left Aronian in a difficult rook endgame that required an incredible amount of precision. Carlsen reached a winning position but blundered it all away with the move 46.h6?? instead of 46.Kc2! With this error Aronian was able to beautifully show the Vancura Defense and obtained a draw out of seemingly nowhere. Many spectators without access to tablebases were confused online as the engines keep saying this position is a win, but it most certainly was not.

Carlsen tried for dozens of moves after the game was clearly drawn

Aronian's rook endgame was hard to evalute, but a win was there

Karsten Müller shows us exactly how Aronian was able to secure the draw:

Karsten Müller in ChessBase Magazine

Do you like these lessons? There are plenty more by internationally renowned endgame expert Dr Karsten Müller in ChessBase Magazine, where you will also find openings articles and surveys, tactics, and of course annotations by the world's top grandmasters.

Click to go to the ChessBase Magazine page

Apart from his regular columns and video lectures in ChessBase Magazine there is a whole series of training DVDs by Karsten Müller, which are bestsellers in the ChessBase Shop.