Karpov on Rook Ending "Exploitation Technique"

Karpov on Rook Ending "Exploitation Technique"

While preparing for the USATS (that's "US Amateur Team Championship, South" for our esteemed International readers!) I came across this game in the notes to another game in "Beating the Grunfeld" by GM Anatoly Karpov. While his emphasis was on the opening, it is the rook ending that really stands out to me. This ending is well worth studying (in my opinion) for three reasons:

1) Superior rook activity;
2) Patience in the suppression of counterplay; and
3) Superior and effective kingside pawn play.

For those looking for easy-to-follow themes, I recommend paying attention to Karpov's active king- and if you really want to keep it simple, just follow his g-pawn from start to finish!

Karpov has light notes in the game, but at move 27 he writes "...for twenty moves we have been very close to a draw, but White has nonetheless extracted everything possible from the position; exchanging most of the pieces, he has obtained a superior rook ending. The remainder of the game provides a good illustration of 'exploitation technique' ".

When I originally decided to post this game, I had decided that I was going to add an exclamation marks to 29. g4! and 33. g5!, as I thought it was a very critical idea to the whole ending. Once I found the game in chessbase, I was happy to see that GM Ftacnik had annotated the game, and at moves 29 and 33 he had already added the "!" for me!


You can play through the game by clicking here!