A Long King Walk and a Missed En Passant: Harikrishna Beats Yu Yangyi in 103 Moves

Photo: TheBoburshokh / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Round 5 of the European Chess Club Cup in Budva, Montenegro, had one big match. Novy Bor and Alkaloid had both won all four of their matches. On Wednesday they met, and Novy Bor won 4-2.

Four of the six games were drawn, including both top boards: Nodirbek Yakubboev against Arjun Erigaisi, and Wei Yi against Nihal Sarin. The match was decided by two long wins for Novy Bor. David Anton Guijarro beat Aravindh Chithambaram in 56 moves. And Pentala Harikrishna beat Yu Yangyi in 103 moves.

The Harikrishna game is our game of the day. It has two useful lessons: when to trade pieces in the endgame, and a special pawn capture called en passant.

Try this first.

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Black to move. White is one pawn up. Black can trade rooks, or trade his knight for White's bishop. Which trade keeps the game level?

Analyze this position in the full game

The answer comes later.

The Game: Harikrishna v Yu

Harikrishna had the white pieces. The game began 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4, the Nimzo-Indian Defense. White chose the calm 4.e3, and after 4...O-O 5.Bd3 d5 6.cxd5 exd5 7.Ne2 Re8 8.Bd2 Bd6 9.Rc1 a6 10.Ng3 Nbd7 11.O-O Nf8 12.Nf5 Bxf5 13.Bxf5 Ne6 both sides had their pieces out.

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After 13...Ne6. Both kings are castled. White has two bishops, and Black has two knights. White to move.

Analyze this position in the full game

The middle of the game was a slow fight. On move 21 White traded his light-squared bishop for a knight, and on move 37 his rook took the pawn on a5. That made White one pawn up. But Black's pieces were active, and our engine still rated the game about level.

Then came a long stretch of careful moves. By move 73, each side had one rook, and White had a bishop against Black's knight. White still had the extra pawn.

The trade that mattered

That is the puzzle position at the top. Black had two ways to trade pieces.

Yu chose 73...Rf7, offering to trade rooks. After 74.Rxf7 Kxf7, only the kings, White's bishop, Black's knight and the pawns were left.

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After 74...Kxf7. A bishop against a knight, and White is a pawn up. White to move.

Analyze this position in the full game

Our engine did not like that trade. It wanted 73...Nxd2, giving the knight for White's bishop. After 74.Rxd2, Black would be in a rook ending one pawn down, and our engine rated that ending as level. After the rook trade, it rated White clearly better.

Why? Look at where the pawns are. There are pawns on the queenside and on the kingside. A bishop can sweep from one side of the board to the other in one move. A knight is slow: it needs several jumps to get across. When the pawns are on both sides of the board, the bishop is usually the better piece.

Yu also had very little time. After 73...Rf7 he had 32 seconds left on his clock. In this event, each player gets 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 30 more minutes, plus 30 seconds for every move. Late in a long game, that 30-second bonus is often all a player has.

En passant

Three moves later, Harikrishna pushed his h-pawn two squares: 76.h4.

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After 76.h4. The white pawn jumped two squares, past the black pawn on g4. Black to move.

Analyze this position in the full game

Here is the special rule. When a pawn moves two squares from its starting square and lands right next to an enemy pawn, that enemy pawn can capture it as if it had moved only one square. This is called en passant, which is French for "in passing". It can only be done on the very next move.

So here Black could play 76...gxh3. The g4 pawn would move to h3 and take the white pawn on h4. We checked the list of legal moves in this position, and gxh3 is on it.

Our engine said en passant was Black's best move. White would still be better, but Black would have fewer problems. Yu played 76...Kh5 instead, with 38 seconds left on his clock. The white h-pawn stayed on the board, and our engine's score for White went up by more than three pawns.

The king walk

Now Black's king had a job: it had to watch the white pawn on h4. For many moves, the black king stepped back and forth between g6 and h5.

White's king was free. Harikrishna walked it all the way across the board: 77.Kf1, 78.Ke2, 79.Kd3, 80.Kc3, 81.Kb3 and 82.Ka4.

Then he opened the way with pawn moves. 83.b5 cxb5+ 84.Kxb5 cleared one path. Later, 88.a6 bxa6+ 89.Kxa6 cleared another. The white king marched on to c6. Then 92.h5+ Kxh5 gave away the h-pawn on purpose: the black king took it and ended up even further from the action. White's king went to d7.

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After 93...Kg6. The white king has reached d7, right next to the black pawn on e6. White to move.

Analyze this position in the full game

With 94.Kxe6, White won the e6 pawn. Now the white e-pawn had a clear road to the last row, and the black king was too far away to stop it. After 102.e6 Ne4 103.Bh4, Yu resigned.

The other big matches

SuperChess Romania, the defending champions, also stayed perfect. They played Nitra, another team that had won all four of its matches, and won 5.5-0.5. Their top player, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, drew with Vasyl Ivanchuk, and every other SuperChess player won.

Bayegan Pendik beat Aix-en-Provence 4.5-1.5, with wins by Richard Rapport, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Volodar Murzin. Anish Giri drew his game. Nagykanizsa beat Riehen 5.5-0.5, and Elektroprivreda beat Dunajska Streda 4.5-1.5.

The standings after five rounds

A team gets 2 match points for winning a match and 1 for a draw. After five of the seven rounds:

• SuperChess Romania: 10
• Novy Bor: 10
• Bayegan Pendik: 9
• Nagykanizsa: 9
• Elektroprivreda: 9

Alkaloid lost its first match and has 8 points.

On Thursday, in Round 6, SuperChess Romania play Novy Bor on the top table, the only two teams that have won every match. Nagykanizsa play Pendik on the second table.

What to Learn

• Pick your trades with care. In the puzzle, trading the knight for the bishop kept the game level. Trading the rooks led to a bishop against a knight, and that was much harder.
• A bishop beats a knight when there are pawns on both sides. The bishop can switch sides in one move.
• Know en passant. When a pawn jumps two squares past your pawn, you may take it as if it had moved one. You have to do it on the very next move.
• In the endgame, the king is a fighter. Harikrishna's king walked from g1 to e6 and won the game.

We checked this game with Stockfish 17.1 at depth 18, and the key positions at depth 24, with the six best moves at each one.

The day before, in Round 4, Aydin Suleymanli beat Abdusattorov with a queen sacrifice.