Alexandra Kosteniuk three rooks vs queen

[Kevin Bonham]

During the Womens World Champs commentary yesterday Kosteniuk referred to having played a game this year in which she promoted to rook and had three rooks against a queen. So I went looking for this game and eventually found it.

[Event "Russian Team Championship (Women)"]
[Site "Sochi RUS"]
[Date "2018.05.07"]
[EventDate "2018.05.01"]
[Round "6.1"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Dinara Dordzhieva"]
[Black "Alexandra Kosteniuk"]
[ECO "D02"]
[WhiteElo "2301"]
[BlackElo "2555"]
[PlyCount "234"]

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[antichrist]

it would have been a braver call and more interesting if she had promoted to a knight - if you want to have fun have real fun.

[Kevin Bonham]

it would have been a braver call and more interesting if she had promoted to a knight - if you want to have fun have real fun.

But that doesn't create the fun value of having three of a piece on the board and it being the best move.

(Promotion to rook, bishop and knight all mate by force whereas promotion to queen only draws.)

[antichrist]

But that doesn't create the fun value of having three of a piece on the board and it being the best move.

(Promotion to rook, bishop and knight all mate by force whereas promotion to queen only draws.)

I get your point but the game would have more "famous" if had pro/demoted to a knight. How often do we see that, that would make a chess trivia question.

[Kevin Bonham]

I get your point but the game would have more "famous" if had pro/demoted to a knight. How often do we see that, that would make a chess trivia question.

Not true. Promotion to a knight as the best move is more common than promotion to rook or bishop as the best move. Indeed Kosteniuk was talking about her game because there was a line in Ju-Lagno game 3 where promoting to a knight would have been the best move because it was check (what Kosteniuk didn't realise is that it still would have lost!)

Tim Krabbe wrote an article about non-trivial cases where promotion to rook or bishop was the best move because they were so rare:

https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/minor.htm

(Trivial cases are, for instance, KP vs K where promotion to rook is mate in 2 but promotion to queen is stalemate).

[Jesper Norgaard]

I made a little collection of underpromotions in my games back in 2009
http://www.chesschat.org/showthread....l=1#post250336

Apart from the forced checkmate by underpromoting to a knight, I also included another game where three black rooks were obtained just like in the Kosteniuk game. Alas it was for artistic value, not out of necessity. The knight promotion was the only winning move, the rook promotion was not.