[2] The study of some pawnless endgames goes back centuries by players such as François-André Danican Philidor (1726–1795) and Domenico Lorenzo Ponziani (1719–1796).
On the other hand, many of the details and recent results are due to the construction of endgame tablebases.
For example, the winning move in the position shown is the counterintuitive withdrawal of the queen from the seventh rank to a more central location, 1.
Qf4, so the queen can make checking maneuvers to win the rook with a fork if it moves along the third rank.
Qa7+ forces Black into a second-rank defense (defending king on an edge of the board and the rook on the adjacent rank or file) after 3... Rb7.
If Black is to move in this position, he quickly loses his rook by a fork (or gets checkmated).
[6][7] Nunn describes that with the pieces in the center of the board the queen ought to force the rook towards the Philidor position.
[8] When it is Black's turn to play in the Philidor position, the rook can be won in a few moves.
[9] In this 2001 game[10] between Boris Gelfand and Peter Svidler,[11] the player with the queen should win, but the game was drawn because of the fifty-move rule after Black was unable to find the winning maneuvers to fork and capture the rook.
The same position but with colors reversed occurred in a 2006 game between Alexander Morozevich and Dmitry Jakovenko – it was also drawn.
[14] Browne studied the endgame and, later in the month, played another game from a different starting position.
[74] The position is a theoretical draw but Karpov later blundered in time trouble and resigned on move 84.
However, Black has a winning attack: Speelman gave these conclusions in 1981: Later tablebase analysis confirmed that rook and two minor pieces versus rook and one minor piece is a general win.
He gives a "general result", which he describes as: "derived ... not by looking at statistics for winning percentages, which can be very misleading, but by personally examining the endings concerned.
"[109] In his landmark 1941 book Basic Chess Endings, Reuben Fine inaccurately stated, "Without pawns one must be at least a Rook ahead in order to be able to mate.
The only exceptions to this that hold in all cases are that the double exchange wins and that a Queen cannot successfully defend against four minor pieces.
[111] Fine also stated "There is a basic rule that in endings without pawns one must be at least a rook ahead to be able to win in general.
"[112] This inaccurate statement was repeated in the 2003 edition revised by Grandmaster Pal Benko.
Another type of win with a four-point material advantage is the double exchange – two rooks versus any two minor pieces.
There are some other endgames with four-point material differences that are generally long theoretical wins.
For instance, some of the cases of a queen versus two minor piece are such positions (as mentioned above).
[117] There are some long general theoretical wins with only a two- or three-point material advantage, but the fifty-move rule usually comes into play because of the number of moves required: two bishops versus a knight (66 moves); a queen and bishop versus two rooks (two-point material advantage, can require 84 moves); a rook and bishop versus a bishop on the opposite color and a knight (a two-point material advantage, requires up to 98 moves); and a rook and bishop versus two knights (two-point material advantage, but it requires up to 222 moves).
That assumes perfect play by both sides, which is rarely achieved if the number of moves is large.
Also, generally all of the combinations of pieces that are usually a theoretical draw have some non-trivial positions that are a win for one side.
Similarly, combinations that are generally a win for one side often have non-trivial positions which result in draws.