Pretty Won't Earn You Checkmate

Pretty Won't Earn You Checkmate
By Carrie Goldman, Saturday at 3:06 pm

I am sitting in a gym that is packed with waiting families. Moms, dads, sisters, brothers—we are all settled in haphazardly, surrounded by brown bag lunches, newspapers, discarded winter coats and hats and gloves. Practice chess boards are set up on some of the tables, pieces scattered mid-game.

The girls are in the other room, playing yet another round of chess during this all-day girls’ chess tournament for the elementary school students.

Fifteen minutes ago, the pairings went up, and the girls raced over to see who they would be playing. Books were left lying face-down on tables, opened to carefully mark the spots. Parents gave kisses and hugs and good luck wishes, and the girls bounded into the other room.

I am now chatting with V, a mom whose 4th-grade daughter is also competing in the tournament. “The girls’ tournament is one of my favorites,” she commented. And the moms whose daughters are competing are some of my favorites – caring, kind, intelligent, diverse -- beautiful from the core.

In one of the local middle schools, the instructor who runs the chess club has said that, “middle school girls don’t play chess,” because so few girls join his club, and of the girls who do join, most have dropped out by mid-year. Of course, statements like that do not help the situation.

“I wonder if he is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy,” V said, “or if he is just jaded by what has happened.”

I think about all the little girls here today. They have readily chosen to spend their entire Saturday playing games of chess. What will happen to them as they enter middle school to make them pull away from the game?

Less androgeny is acceptable as kids enter sixth grade, and the girls are often shunted into an appearance-driven world of make-up, clothes and fashion. Chess is labeled the territory of boys, and the girls drop by the wayside. There is extreme social pressure not to choose the “wrong” activity.

This morning, Katie donned her Pigtail Pals shirt, the one that says, “Pretty’s got nothing to do with it” on the front. The back of the shirt lists plenty of other characteristics to redefine a girly girl, such as “inquisitive, intelligent, determined, etc.”

For those of you who don’t know the history of this particular shirt, it was created by Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals last year in response to a ridiculous shirt that JCPenney was marketing.

The JCPenney shirt said “I’m too pretty to do my homework, so my brother has to do it for me.” Pigtail Pals lead an outcry against the shirt, and eventually JCPenney pulled it.

I thought the “pretty’s got nothing to do with it shirt” would be a perfect one for Katie to wear today. I don’t know whether she will want to keep playing chess in middle school. But I certainly hope she will remember how she feels today, surrounded by a gaggle of chess-playing girls, laughing and smiling and having fun.

Beauty is found on the chessboard, in a well-played move, in the flash of a gap-toothed grin. Value is found in the strategies the girls use to move their pawns and rooks and horses, and not a single girl came out of the tournament thinking, I won that game because I am pretty.

Pretty won’t earn you checkmate.

Source: http://www.chicagonow.com

Chess is fun

8-year-old Palmdale girl is already chess champion
By Christina Villacorte, Staff Writer
Posted: 12/03/2011 01:00:00 AM PST

Giggling under a pink hat bedazzled with sequins, 8-year-old Gia Peterson scanned the chessboard, wiggled her fingers and declared triumphantly, "Checkmate."

Her opponent, a news photographer, never stood a chance.

The Palmdale second-grader is a national chess champion, dominating the K-3 age group in the prestigious Susan Polgar World Open for Boys and Girls in 2010 and 2011.

She placed third in 2009, her first year of competition.

She's also the youngest in the country to win a high school tournament at age 6.

The previous record-holder was a 7-year-old boy in 1987 - who happens to be her half-brother.

"It doesn't matter how old you are," Gia said on a recent afternoon.

"I can think up to 11 moves in advance."

During the last World Open, held near Chicago in October, she beat a rival whose coaches were both grand masters.

The match lasted no more than half an hour. The year before, Gia took home a grand prize that included a college scholarship.

Her father celebrated the feat.

"Gia has talked about becoming a doctor," said Richard Peterson, a former financial analyst and chess tutor who became disabled in 2003 after sustaining a brain injury when a trailer collapsed on him.

"In no way is chess the goal - it is just a tool for the kids to get to where they really want to go," Peterson added. "It trains their minds, gives them critical thinking skills, and that's something that's simply not taught in school."

Gia's siblings - 12-year-old Michail, 10-year-old Dante, and 6-year-old Jayani - also are accomplished players, even though the youngest is still learning how to read and write. They also have a half-brother and a half-sister, both adults who were national champions in their youth.

All four of them won trophies during a scholastic chess tournament in Ridgecrest, Kern County, last month. Their combined record: 19-0.

"Chess is fun," said Dante, a three-time regional champion in his age group, whose signature strategy involves taking over the space in a chessboard until his opponent has nowhere to go.

Dwight Morgan, who has organized children's chess tournaments in Ridgecrest for 40 years, considers the Peterson kids - particularly Gia and Dante - among the best he's seen at their age.

"A couple of tournaments ago, Gia won the high school section and bested boys and girls from ninth grade through 12th grade," he said. "It was quite something to see these tall kids, 13 to 18 years old, holding small trophies while the petite Gia, who was only 8, had the biggest trophy of them all."

"To see a young girl doing so well is really great for the sport as far as encouraging other girls," he added, noting boys have tended to dominate the game.

Gia and Dante are the most competitive in the family. They partnered once and outscored rival teams with four players each.

It was Dante who brought chess back into the household after his father's accident.

"I didn't want to play chess because the pain was just awful," Richard Peterson said. "Whenever I tried to concentrate, it would make my head throb."

Dante, then a kindergartner, pursued his chess passion on his own and eventually "dragged" his mother, Deepika, to local tournaments. Soon, she was taking the rest of the children as well.

"Dante really wanted to go, but I remember when (then preschooler) Gia first sat down to play, she was so scared of all the people around her that she started crying," Deepika said.

The owner of a trophy-making business, Deepika tried to comfort the children if they got upset after a loss by telling them, "If you want a trophy, I'll make you one."

She never actually resorted to creating those consolation prizes though, because the children soon started winning regularly.

They honed their chess skills by reading books, solving problems on an educational CD, and competing online with adults.

Despite all that, the children are well-rounded, getting A's at school and playing tag and other activities with their peers.

Their family room has a huge collection of trophies and medals in one corner. More awards are stored in boxes inside the garage.

Peterson, who began to recover from his brain injury in 2008, hopes those accomplishments will ensure a bright future for the children, though he hopes the game will not be the sole pursuit of their adult lives.

"We want chess to be an avenue to other things," he said.

Source: http://www.dailynews.com

Girl Chess Champ Wows in Reno

Artwork by Mike Magnan

Girl Chess Champ Wows in Reno
By Ava Harmon

Carmen Pemsler’s enthusiasm for chess continues to play itself out in victories all across the country. The 13-yr old Eagle resident has been playing chess since the tender age of six. Her recent outstanding performance at the Western States Open annual tournament in Reno, NV earned her a personal United States Chess Federation rating high and a generous cash prize. Carmen’s tie for second place meant that she had to best some tough adult competitors in round after round. It also put her within striking distance of reaching her immediate goal to make it on the Top 100 list in the entire U.S. for girls her age.

Carmen was introduced to the game by a chess champion himself, Daniel Vellotti, owner of Vellotti’s Chess School. Coach Vellotti says that Carmen was always an outstanding student who was instantly intrigued by the challenge of learning the royal game.

“Carmen is that really rare student whose passion for the game only increases over time.” Vellotti says. “She sets goals for herself and works hard to achieve them.”

This inspiring chess player started out winning local scholastic tournaments and has since advanced to regional and national competitions for adults. Her long-term goal is to become Idaho’s first female grandmaster. Her coach says that this is entirely possible as Carmen has embraced the idea of chess as an international language.

“Carmen has a good grasp of chess as a universal communication tool and a great way to make friends. These qualities will be important for her as she eventually travels around the world in pursuit of her hopes and dreams.”

Her mother, Alise, also supports Carmen’s goals in chess, even though it now means that they must travel around the country to find the best competition. She really enjoys that her daughter has chosen to pursue an unplugged activity.

“Carmen loves to explain her games to me. Each new tournament victory makes Carmen want to work harder the next time. She really comes alive when she plays chess,” says mom.

Besides winning more tournaments, this soft-spoken girl has a deeper wish. She hopes to someday return to her birthplace of Guatemala. She plans to visit the orphanage where she was adopted from at the age of 2, and serve as a source of inspiration for girls still looking to find permanent homes.

“I want to let all the girls know that their dreams can come true someday- just like mine did.”

When asked why a modern teenager would devote so much time to playing a game over a thousand years old, Carmen gives an answer that anyone could understand.

“Chess is fun, and it makes me happy.”

Congratulations to Carmen and her coach Daniel Vellotti!

Teach them Math, Science, and Chess

Maybe Teach Them Math, Science and Chess
By JAMES WARREN
New York Times
Published: October 15, 2011

The 120 elementary school children sat so quietly and intently that you might have assumed this was a mass detention period.

But it was chess, not confinement, in an Oak Brook hotel ballroom on Columbus Day. And the lessons learned might assist school leaders everywhere, including those attempting a systemwide resuscitation for Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s very disciplined, if impatient, mayor.

“My dream is to get in front of education decision makers and convince them to make chess part of the curriculum for K through second grade,” said Susan Polgar, the star of the show. “That’s when thinking patterns and habits are formed. It should be mandatory, like physical education.”

Ms. Polgar, 42, was a Hungarian chess prodigy taught by her psychologist father after she stumbled on chess pieces in a closet at home. At age 4, she stunned Budapest by winning the 11-and-under category in the city championships, sitting on phone books and pillows to reach across the board.

She was the first woman to become a grandmaster and the first to qualify, in 1996, for what was still known as the Men’s World Championship. She was one of the three highest-ranked female players for more than two decades, traveling the world and winding up fluent in seven languages.

I’d made my way to the Susan Polgar Foundation’s World Open Championship for Boys and Girls with an ulterior motive: to explore why boys dominate every class or tournament to which chess-ignorant me has taken my 7-year-old son.

“It’s interesting,” said Ms. Polgar. “Socially, I think, they’re not supported enough, so in general girls drop out of chess by fourth and fifth grades,” she said as 5-to-9-year-olds competed nearby.

When she was a girl, “it was very much ingrained that women were not able to play,” Ms. Polgar said. “A lot of experts and elite players believed that we were not physically able to do it, our brain was not big enough or that we couldn’t keep quiet long enough.”

She became an advocate for girls, especially through the Susan Polgar Foundation, which she founded while living in New York. She’s now in Lubbock, Tex., with her husband and their two children, where she runs the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence at Texas Tech University.

The foundation supports chess for boys and girls, but especially girls, and sponsors events nationwide. The institute lures young players, with the university offering scholarships and excelling in college tournaments.

Ms. Polgar’s mantra is that chess teaches discipline, analytical thinking, time management, focus and patience — skills that can be useful throughout life. She cites countries, like Armenia, where chess is either a mandatory part of school curriculums, especially in the early elementary years, or strongly encouraged.

It cuts across socioeconomic divides, exemplified by impressive performances of high-poverty students in Brownsville, Tex., who have whipped privileged Manhattan rivals — “kids who get individual lessons from grandmasters,” she said — and shown how “a boost in self-confidence can change lives.”

Indeed, there is no shortage of hedge fund managers and corporate leaders who are chess players, some of whom link the habits of mind learned at chess with their success. As we fret about China’s economic success, we might note that it’s a growing chess force, including four female world champions in 20 years.

Last week’s tournament in Oak Brook brought children from all over the country; perhaps 70 percent were boys. Many of the children were Asian-Americans, including Ashley Ceohas, 6, of Wilmette, the child of a Chinese-American mother who smilingly swore to me that she was “not a Tiger mom!” as her daughter segued from a chess match to drawing a crowd as she played a nearby piano beautifully.

“She’s aware of there being more boy players,” said her mother, Yijia Ceohas. “But we tell her anything boys can do, girls can do better. And she knows that Susan Polgar’s dad said geniuses are not born but made through hard work.”

My investigation into the gender divide led me to Shiva Maharaj, a private investor who teaches the game throughout the Chicago area, including a free Saturday morning session that my son has attended at the Edgebrook Library on the Northwest Side.

Mr. Maharaj had students competing in Oak Brook and cited an American Girl mentality of parents, referring to the store that sells high-priced dolls and accessories. He sees the parents succumbing to cultural stereotypes of daughters being pretty rather than intellectually empowered.

I’ve watched him teach diverse groups of children, mostly boys, and effectively insist they sit up straight, concentrate, take time to assess problems critically and learn to deal with losing. He offers seemingly creative solutions to challenges faced on the board.

On the heels of the impressive inaugural Chicago Ideas Week, here’s a free idea for its energetic, ambitious promoters: a panel next year on “American Education: Should We Make a Move to Chess?”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com

Chess' greatest challenge: girls

Chess' greatest challenge: girls
The Virginian-Pilot

© October 2, 2011

By Lisa Suhay

In the world of chess, boys are always in, but U.S. Chess Federation numbers confirm girls are out the minute they hit the teens. Where is Heidi Klum when girls need her most? We need the fashion-forward players as model minds to keep girls in the game of chess rather than dropping out in droves as they reach puberty.

In fact, overall, chess is crying out for a fashion edit.

Of the 700 million chess players worldwide, 45 million are Americans. Half of those are children. Next Saturday, National Chess Day, will be a sad reminder that teen girls are losing an opportunity for a life map to critical thinking and scholarships.

We don't have to lose girl players to the Terrible Ts: Twitter, Twilight and tween angst. We can change the approach for girls and decrease their hasty exit.

Not surprisingly, of the 1,100 International Grandmasters in the world, only two dozen are women. The United States has only one - Susan Polgar, who is Hungarian-born and naturalized. Only 1 percent of the U.S. Chess Federation's adult membership is female.

Despite the fact that Heidi Klum, Christina Ricci, Sandra Bullock, Salma Hayak and Madonna all play, the stereotypical public image of chess is still one of stuffy exclusivity, populated by disheveled, older men with seriously quirky natures.

As an official IOC Olympic sport, chess makes curling look sexy.

It's a team sport. In high school, a student can letter in chess. As Norfolk's new superintendent of schools, Richard Bentley, embarks on the creation of a state chess league that will make that possible for students here, statistics show we will see those letters mainly on boys' jackets.

But after attending the five-day Susan Polgar Foundation Girls' Invitational in Lubbock, Texas, and staying in the dorms with the girls, I now have a better handle on how to help our girls here.

In five sleepless nights as I sat in the hallways packed with boards, clocks and girls ages five to 18, breathing in the scent of nail polish remover, I learned a lot about little girls who can tear you up on the 64 squares while painting their toenails ice blue, listening to an iPod, texting, singing, giggling, gossiping and munching apple chips.

It is both a humbling and mildly terrifying experience to have an adorable 6-year-old girl multitask and checkmate you into oblivion. Which I suspect is the reason behind the programs by the American Association of University Women, the Carnegie Center and others to get girls into science, technology, engineering and math. Ladies, we need to talk. Let's do coffee across a chess board and I think we can fix all our problems.

Even at the tournament, the girls were relaxed, happy and exchanging little tokens of esteem, very unlike the mixed boy/girl tournaments I have seen over the years where you can cut the gender anxiety and head-games with a battle ax.

If chess is going to be redesigned to be more girl-friendly, as experts like Dr. Alexey Root have suggested, it should start with non-rated girls' tournaments. Rating tournaments merely encourages a toddlers-in-tiaras-worthy conflict of superior and inferior labels. Girls don't need more labels. They're already coping with body-image hate, acne and boys.

To keep girls in, we need to focus on the game. To bring more boys and girls from our state into the game and build their critical-thinking skills, focus and life strategies, a group of community partners has formed, including: the NPS' superintendent, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk State and Old Dominion universities, teachers, parents, The Virginian-Pilot and the Carnegie Math and Science Initiative for Girls. The group is called the Norfolk Initiative for Chess Excellence. That means we are N.I.C.E.

When people come to Norfolk, we will teach them to play the N.I.C.E. way, starting March 2-3 at Virginia's first-ever all-girl state chess championship. All Virginia girls ages 5-18 can enter for free, rated or unrated, and play for scholarships. And we will give a free chess-in-education seminar for teachers while the girls play.

We are going to send fun, free, unrated, rewarding chess down the runway and see how it scores.

Guest columnist Lisa Suhay runs a free community partnership - Norfolk Initiative for Chess Excellence (N.I.C.E.) in Virginia. Email: Lsuhays2@cox.net.

Source: http://hamptonroads.com

'I'm Always the Only Girl'

‘I'm Always the Only Girl'
By Katie Beth Ryan
Valley News Staff Writer

In the 1993 film Searching For Bobby Fischer, a young chess prodigy watches his gift for the game develop as he squares off against a group of streetwise chess hustlers in New York's Washington Square Park.

Were there such a group of aggressive players nearby, 13-year-old Janna Borg of Norwich would probably jump at the chance to join them. But, “you don't have places like that in Hanover,” Janna's mother, Dominica, said. The next best thing is the Hanover Chess Club games, held on Saturday mornings at the Howe Library in Hanover. Janna Borg is a regular fixture.

On a Saturday morning last month, it was just Borg and 5-year-old Michael Ding Jia playing against one another while their parents watched. Borg's young opponent was having a hard time sitting still and concentrating -- two attributes he'll need if he wants to continue growing as a player.

Aware that Michael was both less attentive and experienced than she, Borg saw this game as a teaching opportunity. When she saw Michael make risky moves, she gave him tips. “The only safe place for you to move your queen is here,” she said, pointing to an empty spot on the board. “I'm not sure you want to lose your queen.”

She also reminded him of the basic rules of the game. “I'm afraid black can't go first,” she said, after she and Michael switched sides on the board. “It's against the rules.” And even after Michael decided that he’d had enough, Borg told him, “Thanks for the game,” anyway.

First introduced to chess in the second grade by her older sister Faraday, Janna Borg stunned everyone in her family when she won third place in a chess tournament at Richmond Middle School less than a year later. Now, having just begun the eighth grade at Richmond last week, she's a regular not only at the Howe pickup games on Saturdays, but also at the Vermont State Scholastic Chess Championships, where she placed first in the fourth-grade division in 2008; earlier this year, she placed ninth in the middle school competition.

Chess is something of a Borg family pastime. Janna credits her father Scott for teaching her how to strategize when playing, and Faraday Borg organized The Sharon Academy's chess team, which won the high school state championship this year.

Chess offers players a chance to strategize and keeps them on their toes, which is what Janna Borg appreciates about the game. “There are so many possibilities,” she said. “It's a lot more complex than other games, say, like, checkers. And with each move, a lot more opportunities open up to move more places, and the games are never really quite the same.”

For the chess wary out there, Borg also offers encouragement. “Once you get the hang of it,” she said, “it's not really as hard as it would seem. And it's a whole lot less boring.”

If Borg has grown as a player these past years, there has been one constant: her opposition, which has almost always been male. When she goes to compete, “I'm always the only girl,” she said, with a tone of resigned acceptance.

This past July brought a welcome change in competition. Janna was nominated by Mike Stridsberg, who organizes the Vermont State Scholastic tournaments, to represent the state at the Susan Polgar Foundation Girls Invitational, held this year in Lubbock, Texas. The girls-only tournament is led by Susan Polgar, the first woman to earn the Grandmaster title in chess through tournament play. Over the course of a week, the girls attending had the opportunity to learn from Polgar, a world champion in chess many times over, and practice their skills against other girls in a tournament.

Playing chess against boys has never fazed Borg in the years she's been playing. But attending the Polgar Invitational allowed her to see that she's not alone among girls in her passion for the game. “It was just really nice to have it not be odd that I played chess and I was a girl, because it was all girls, and they were all really good. It was special,” she said.

One girl under the age of 19 from each state is invited to take part, and Borg was one of 46 girls who attended the invitational this year, out of a pool of 3,000 female chess players nationwide.

“It's really a very big accomplishment for somebody to even get here, regardless of the result once they get here, because they have earned the right to compete for their state and the national title,” Polgar said in an interview this week from Lubbock, where she coaches the chess team at Texas Tech University.

Polgar is no stranger to the gender discrimination in the chess world. In 1986, she became the first woman to qualify for the Men's World Chess Championship, but was barred from playing; the World Chess Federation later relaxed its rules to allow women to compete. Chess has traditionally been viewed as a man's game, Polgar said, “just like playing cars is viewed as such, or playing with dolls is seen as a girls’ thing.” She founded the Susan Polgar Foundation in 2002, and has made it her mission to promote chess play among girls and women.

“I really hope they got inspired,” she said of the invitational's participants, “that being a girl is not a handicap when you play chess, that they made friends, that they made connections, and that they'll understand that just because of the peer pressure or the lack of opportunities in some cases, they shouldn't give up, and chess is for girls as well.”

At the state-level chess competitions in Vermont, Stridsberg has observed a number of girls compete in the lower elementary grades, but their numbers decrease in the upper elementary and secondary divisions. He estimates that for every eight to 10 boys in a chess competition, there's one girl, a ratio that puzzles him.

“I've always seen chess as the great equalizer,” he said. “It doesn't matter how tall you are or how strong you are. It's just you and another person and a chess board.”

Before attending the Polgar Invitational, Janna had encountered some chauvinism when she'd go to chess tournaments. Any doubts that her competitors may have had about her abilities, however, were soon put to rest.

“When I first started playing in tournaments, I noticed that the guys were kind of surprised when I sat down in front of them. They were kind of looking at me with the ‘maybe you're in the wrong room' kind of look,” she said.

“And sometimes, I would lose, and it'd be no big deal. They expect to win against the girl. But if I won, well, the look …” Janna paused, and grinned, “was priceless.”

Source: http://www.vnews.com

Special game analysis

There were many fighting and exciting games is the Round 3 of the World Cup. Sergey Shipov annotates the most interesting fragments.

The main sensation occurred at the first table. Despite all the achievements of Judit Polgar, people still tend to underestimate her. Which, of course, benefits her at the board...

J. Polgar — S. Karjakin

If the Black’s bishop arrives to b7, White’s hopes are gone, so she needs to hurry.

20.e6! Bxe6 21.Bxc7

The White’s bishop breaks to the queenside pawns. In order to defend Black need to solve a tricky study. Sergey did not succeed.

21...f6?

Insufficient is 21...Bd7 22.Bb8 Bc6 23.Nc3 (23.Re1 Kd8 24.Bxa7 Kc7) 23...Bxf3 24.gxf3 a6 25.Nd5 Bd8 26.Bc7!

The only solution is to bring the h8-rook to the 6^th rank: 21...Rh6! 22.Bb8 a6 23.Ba7 Bd8 24.Nc3 Bd7 25.Nd5 Re6 with equality.

22.Bb8 a6 23.Ba7

I did not understand why the opponents ignored the following simple line: 23.Bc7!? b5 24.Nxc5! with the idea 24…Bxc5? 25.Rd8+, and Black loses an exchange.

23...Bd8 24.Nc3!

Here Karjakin began to think again, but it was already too late.

24...Kf7

Black probably miscalculated the following line: 24...Ne7 25.Na4 Nc8, missing an unexpected blow 26.Bxb6! Nxb6 27.Nxb6 Bxb6 28.Rd6 with a healthy extra pawn for White.

25.Na4 b5 26.Nxc5 Bc8

The magic of the bishop pair could create an impression that Black survives even without a pawn, but Polgar can cast the anti-spell.

27.cxb5 axb5 28.a4!

Simple and strong.

28...bxa4 29.bxa4 Re8 30.Rb1 g5?!

The last inaccuracy. More stubborn is 30...Re2!, and White cannot win by straightforward means: 31.Rb8 Nd6 32.Bb6 (32.Nxh4?! Re1+ 33.Kh2 Bc7!) 32...Bxb6 33.Rxb6 Ne4 34.Nxe4 Rxe4 35.a5 Ra4 — the a5-pawn is stopped.

31.Bb6! Be7 32.a5 Bxc5 33.Bxc5

The opposite-colored bishops don’t affect the evaluation here because of the passed pawn.

33...Re6 34.Rb6 Ng7

Or 34...Rxb6 35.Bxb6 Ke6 36.Bd8!

35.Be3 Nf5 36.Rb8 Re8

Here is a nice line: 36...Nxe3 37.Rxc8 Nd5 38.Rc5 Nf4 39.Rxg5! fxg5 40.Nxg5+ Ke7 41.Nxe6 Nxe6 42.a6 Nc7 43.a7 Kd7 44.g4, and White wins.

37.Ra8 Bb7

Black probably loses after 37...Bd7 38.Rxe8 (38.Ra7!?) 38...Kxe8 39.a6 Nxe3 40.fxe3 as well.

38.Ra7 Re7 39.Bc5 Rd7 40.a6 Bc6 41.Rxd7+ Bxd7

Black easily survives, if we remove the knights from the board, but it is not going to happen.

42.Nd2! Ke6 43.Nc4 Bc6 44.Nb6 Nd6 45.Bxd6 Kxd6 46.a7 Kc7 47.a8Q Bxa8 48.Nxa8+ Kb7 49.f4!

And the king collects Black’s pawns. Black resigns.

More analysis here.