Fortress (chess)

In chess, the fortress is an endgame drawing technique in which the side behind in material sets up a zone of protection around their king that cannot be penetrated by the opponent. This only works when the opponent does not have a passed pawn or cannot create one, unless that pawn can be stopped (e.g. see the opposite-colored bishops example). An elementary fortress is a theoretically drawn (i.e. a book draw) position with reduced material in which a passive defense will maintain the draw (Müller & Pajeken 2008:183).

Fortresses commonly have four characteristics:

Fortresses pose a problem for computer chess: computers fail to recognize fortress-type positions and are unable to achieve the win against them despite claiming a winning advantage (Guid & Bratko 2012:35).

Perhaps the most common type of fortress, often seen in endgames with only a few pieces on the board, is where the defending king is able to take refuge in a corner of the board and cannot be chased away or checkmated by the superior side. These two diagrams furnish two classic examples. In both cases, Black simply shuffles his king between a8 and the available square adjacent to a8 (a7, b7, or b8, depending on the position of the white king and pawn). White has no way to dislodge Black's king, and can do no better than a draw by stalemate or some other means.

Note that the bishop and wrong rook pawn ending (i.e. where the pawn is a rook pawn whose promotion square is the color opposite to that of the bishop) at right is a draw even if the pawn is on the seventh rank or further back on the a-file. Heading for a bishop and wrong rook pawn ending is a fairly common drawing resource available to the inferior side (Müller & Pajeken 2008:183).

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