Drawn Rook Endgames Despite a Two Pawn Advantage

In my post on endgame statistics from the ICCF World Championships, Endgames with Equivalent Piece (and Pawns) I wrote,

What does this table show? Not much, I'm afraid. The counts are too small to draw any real conclusions, but they give a few directions for further investigation.

One of the directions for further investigation is in the section on Rook and Pawn (R+P) endgames. There we find six endgames where one side was two Pawns down, but still managed to achieve a draw. I located the six games, found the point where the specified R+P endgame started, and created the following composite diagram. (The game numbers are relative to the ICCF database I used; WTM/BTM = White/Black to move.)

The players of the six games were as follows (WC01 was the first championship, WC09 the ninth, etc.):-

• No.0023: WC01 Collins - Van Scheltinga
• No.0898: WC09 Porreca - Sanchez
• No.1036: WC10 Sanakoev - Boey
• No.1199: WC12 Krzyszton - Maeder
• No.2378: WC22 Dronov - Kurth
• No.2458: WC23 Almiron - Geenen

For more about the championships, including links to the corresponding PGN, see my page on Correspondence Chess Champions. The most unusual endgame for me is No.2378; the tablebase confirms the draw.