Learning the Lucena position

This blog post isn't intended to be instructional. If you can get some instructional value out of it then good for you, but that's not what it's about. It's about the process of chess instruction and why learning chess is so difficult.

At some point in their chess development players learn the Lucena position, which looks like this:

It's an endgame position where White wins against best defense. The idea behind learning it is that once you know how to win it, if you're a pawn up in a rook endgame as White you can steer the game toward this position, while if you're a pawn down you know you have to avoid it.

The winning technique is not intuitive and is quite memorable: first White pushes the Black king further away from the pawn; then executes a rook lift to the fourth rank; then moves his king out of the way of the pawn and avoids checks from the Black rook until finally finding shelter behind his own rook and promoting the pawn. The technique is sometimes called "building a bridge."

When you first learn it you practice it a couple of times and it seems pretty simple. You think you've got it, and that you know the Lucena endgame position and can win with no trouble.

Don't be too sure. If Black doesn't move precisely the way White expects, disaster can easily occur. Here's a good example:

Black's king approaches the White rook, disrupting the process and in the confusion White blows it. Yes, White blundered, but my point is that blunders like this often occur when you're trying to execute a specific technique and the opponent doesn't cooperate by playing the moves you expect. This is what is meant by the phrase "a little learning is a dangerous thing." White thought he knew how to win the Lucena position, but as soon as the opponent played something unexpected White panicked and blundered an easy win.

A related issue is that small changes in the initial position can make a big difference. Take this position, the same as the first except moved over a couple of files and with the Black rook not attacking the pawn:

White can still win this position, as long as it's White to move. If it's Black to move, then Black draws easily by checking with ... Ra8+ and just repeatedly checking from the a-file. If the White king ever attempts to approach the Black rook then Black can play his rook to the e-file and capture the pawn. If White thinks he knows the Lucena position then he might well steer the game to this position on Black's move, thinking "this is a Lucena position and I know that's a win for White." Wrong!

There are lots of other examples showing why simply knowing the basic winning technique isn't enough. In real games your opponent never plays the moves you expect him to, and you have to be able to adjust. That's one reason why learning chess is so difficult. Some people even argue that it's counterproductive for weaker players to study the Lucena or other specific positions because they get hung up on trying to remember the technique rather than actually think about what they're doing, consequently blundering, much as a beginner player will play the same series of opening moves without regard to what his opponent plays in response.

I don't agree with that philosophy, but I understand it. It is a danger, and a little learning really can be a dangerous thing. In general knowledge is helpful, even if that knowledge is incomplete and unfocused. As a player you have to be aware that you can never stop playing chess. There is no auto-pilot. The game never wins itself. Having a won position is not the same as having won. You can't relax, ever.