After reading Bill Brock’s post about K and P endgames, I have two confessions to make about endgames:
To save my soul, I couldn’t provide a good explanation of the concept of key squares.
I also doubt that I could mate with K+B+N versus K in the required 50 moves.
That said, when I was an active tournament player, I was considered a pretty strong endgame player and have been a card carrying (actually it’s a certificate) national master more often than not since 1988.
I suspect that I would know the concept of key squares if/when I ran across it during analysis, but it was always something of a fog to me when studying endgame books.
As for the B+N mate, I’ve read several explanations about how to go about doing it, have practiced it from time to time over the years, but am still not confident I could do it over the board. That said, in somewhere around 1,000 tournament games, I’ve never had to execute it or defend it - so maybe it’s not such a big deal.
OK, I’ve gotten that off my chest - other confessions?
I own over 50 chess opening books which range over 99% of ECO, and thanks to a poor memory and ill-defined study plan, I can rarely remember what to play past move 4. Having a Kindle has made the addiction potentially worse, as just a couple days ago I purchased the e-version of Gambiteer because I wanted to look at the Sicilian Wing Gambit. Which I probably will never have the courage to play. I am never happy with my repertoire, constantly changing what I play. I have a bad case of patzer opening obsession.
That felt good. Or is this thread only about endgame confessions? Because I don’t care about the endgame. It’s boring.
I’m not really sure I understand key squares at the level I should, either! By the time we put a couple more pawns on the board (say, K+2 vs K+1), my head is spinning.
But (re KP v K) for a White pawn on c3 (that’s not en prise to the Black king), the key squares are b5, c5, d5. That is, ignoring the en prise proviso, you don’t even have to THINK about where the Black king is: you know it’s won if you can get your king to one of those three squares.
And for a pawn on d5, we know that d6 is a key square (win by default, no thinking required. So too c6 & e6, so too (subject to the en prise proviso) c7, d7, e7.
In the below position, subject to the usual weasel clause, White wins with 1.g5! no matter where the Black king is, as long as the White king is on one of the key squares d6, e6, f6. Black to play draws with 1…g5! (noodling around until Kxg5 is answered by …Kg7)
Confessions? I have massive gaps in my opening repertoire, I am a strategical dunce compared to friends (some of whom are less than 1/3 my age) & a tactical weakie: where to begin…
But relative ignorance is part of the human condition, and there’s not time enough for us to remedy all our lack of knowledge. It’s a game: we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves.
Twice in the past 15 months (Chicago Open, U.S. Open), I’ve seen strong players fail to mate with KBN v K with five-second delay. Jeremy Silman doesn’t even bother to teach the ending in Silman’s Complete Endgame Course: he considers it rare enough.
Several years ago, I saw two games in one round of the high school section of the Massachusetts scholastic individual invitational championship (a ten player section) come down to the B+N mate. (Both players with B+N pulled it off.)
For me, the key is to remember the “quadrant trap” – for example, a white bishop on b5 and a white knight on d5. Those two pieces alone can confine the black king to the six squares a7, a8, b7, b8, c8, and d8. Then, the next trick is to remember how to get to the quadrant trap from another “key position”, such as white king on f6, white knight on f7, white bishop on h7, and black king on f8.
OK, my endgame confession is that I’ve been playing for 25 years now and I still can’t figure out the opposition in K+P vs K unless the kings are directly across from each other. Once you start moving the kings away from the pawn and get into diagonal oppositions from 5 squares away, etc. I’m lost. (Good thing that I rarely get into that endgame; usually I’m beaten well before that!! )
I learned KBN v K from a Pandolfini book for beginners…after having been an expert for some years.
Kids today know all this. A couple weeks ago, some very short person on the other side of puberty told me very authoritatively that the Delatang triangle method (which I know exists, but have no idea how to execute) is far more efficient than the “W method” discussed above.
I’ll admit I haven’t gone through the book. but Fine’s Basic Chess Endings does a pretty good job of explaining stuff. Someone really needs to make a program to teach that book. got a lot of good stuff, but its encyclopedic in its entirety, so anybody going through it is VERY dedicated.
I have gone through some of its K+P endings and other basic mates that are covered in the early parts of the book. That alone is well worth doing. Even if you have no plans to digest the entire book.
The problem with ending books its really hard to find something between “all-in-one” and engame books designed for lower rated chess players that are just wetting thier feet with chess endings. Often authors end up trying to focus on one particual criteria or another. For example king and rook endings. In that respect, you could very well end up with either a library of chess endings you never really studied, or the you’ll go though one or two of the endings you feel are most important… then you’ll have big holes in your ability. Either you’re an ace in what you studied, or fall flat in other endings.
Silman’s Complete Endgame Course is very nice (either as book or as interactive iPad app) in that the material is ordered by the order in which one needs to learn. Still leaves opening & middlegame…
This brings back memories. In one of my first tournaments, in 1970, I was surprised to see a 1700 player (much higher than my rating at the time) fail to mate with B + N. I was so shocked by this that when I got home, I studied this ending intensively until I was sure I could do it. Then, of course, the years went by without facing it - until 1997, when I reached this position:
H. Terrie (2214) - NN (2305)
5/26/1997
I had six minutes left in sudden death (plus the 5 second delay) and managed to win the game with only one slight slip in technique. It took me 37 moves from the diagram position.
On the other hand, just this year I cluelessly allowed a low rated child to sacrifice a piece against me to leave me with RP + wrong color bishop. I had completely forgotten that such a thing was possible … Oh well, the good the bad and the ugly. It’s all fun.
A key square is nothing but a square you have to reach with your K, in a K+P ending, in order to win. If White’s pawn is on c6, the key squares with him to move are b7, c7, d7, b8, c8, d8.
Much more difficult is the idea of a “corresponding square.” All the endgame books mention them. They highlight them in various positions, but do not provide an algorithm of any kind. No rhyme or reason.
There’s only one really serious threat with N+B mates: when the defender is on the side of the board and runs away. You can always get him back by moving your B to somewhere in the middle of the board, and putting your N on the same color square as the B near the defending K. This creates a wall that the defender can’t penetrate, he goes back to the edge, you cut him off, and mate him.
I thought you were going to provide some really wicked confession, like that copy of Fritz you had implanted in your eyewear.
Forgive me, Father Lombardy, for I have sinned. It’s been 25 years since my last chess confession.
I haven’t opened maybe 80% of the chess books I’ve bought. Still waiting for osmosis to carry the day.
I have managed, as White, not to win from positions like this, with White to move… (this example is an extremely recent sin)
I know what the Philidor and Lucena positions represent. Just don’t ask me to set one up without a copy of “Just the Facts!” handy.
Twenty years ago, John Fedorowicz stood in an Arby’s in Dearborn, Michigan, and told me that he knew maybe 1.5 openings. Somewhere along the line, that exact number became a goal for me. I still haven’t reached it.
I just found out Sunday that K+R v. K+N is usually a draw (thankfully, it came up during the postmortem to someone else’s game).
I’m quite certain I couldn’t mate with K+B+N v. K if I had to. Fortunately, I am usually lost before then, so it’s a non-issue.
That’s all I have…for this week. I am playing a tournament Saturday, though, so I’m sure I will have more confessions Sunday.
Wow . . . 1.Qxf6+ Qxf6 2.Bxf6+ Kf8 3.Nd6 sure looks logical - isn’t white going to be a rook up for basically nothing? I’m not sure I’ve ever managed to not win a position that crushing, but give me time and I’ll think of one.
Well, the line I saw at first was 1 Qxf6+ Qxf6 2 Bxf6+ Kg8 3 Ne7+, followed shortly by going up at least an additional exchange, as Black still has loose stuff at d7 and e5 even after I convert to a full rook advantage. Had the time control been G/30, I would have played that immediately. BUT…I thought I could get more out of the position, so I turned my attention to that, knowing I had the above line in my pocket.
I thought I might be able to win the queen and still have a strong mating attack. Unfortunately, the problem with 1 Rd6?? is 1 … Nfxe4, and Black apparently survives with his extra pawn intact. At least I was able to draw the game. Sure felt like a loss, though…a really great opening I played (for once) was completely wasted.
I believe way back in the 1980’s, I had reached time control. Back in those days, we had to reset the clocks, and I believe while I was resetting the clock, I very nicely mentioned to my opponent that he had missed a forced mate in 3 against me. He then proceeded to botch the endgame, and in the post mortem, I pointed it out to him, and my opponent very politely criticized my lack of tournament etiquette as that statement during the resetting of the clocks obviously upset him, and realize that the comment criticizing his play was uncalled for. A year or so later, this opponent got his revenge against me, but at the same token, definitely learned something.
You pretty much have to do corresponding squares by induction; start with obvious ones like the opposition that would enable you to win directly, and then work backwards. Unfortunately, the only way I can actually keep track of it all is by writing down numbers on the chessboard, which I gather is illegal.
I’ve shored up the holes in my opening and endgame knowledge a lot over the last year or two, largely through spaced repetition. I think the basic endgame I’m most embarrassed to be hopeless in is K+R+RP vs K+R.
I hate boring positions. When I was rated over 2300, I used to win a lot of positional, technical games. Most of them were pretty boring. As I got older, I grew more impatient and began pressing too much. My rating slowly sank to the the floor. I realized that I would have to change and become more dynamic in order to keep up with the modern computer driven style of play. So I studied more tactics and games of dynamic players in order and to play in a riskier, more global style. My rating has not gone up, but I play more high quality games with"thematic" wins and dashing attacks. I win more tournaments than I did back then. On the flip side, every once in a while bad form, lack of inspiration, or just a bad but “interesting” idea causes things to go agley, and I end up losing games that end up in the boring positions I hate.
One of the things that I have noticed with older players is that they do not want to change. They keep the same style of play, same openings, and same way of analyzing. Change is hard, but if you don’t stay on top of things, you end up losing your motivation to play.
By the time we put a couple more pawns on the board (say, K+2 vs K+1), my head is spinning.
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