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bigpeta 19-Apr-12, 05:00	Anatomy of an endgame To kick off the use of the forum for shared learning as intended. The following is an elaboration on an earlier post of mine on endgame play. This is the end of a game I recently won. It shows all the basics of endgame play in an easily understood manner. The basics of any endgame are:- 1; make a plan 2: count out the moves to accomplish that plan 3: make use of opposition if required. Making a plan requires deciding upon which type of mating net you want to end up with. ie K&Q vs K - R&K vs K etc. Counting is simple - can you get to your target before your opponent. Opposition is a fancy name for something that sounds complex but is in fact not. Put very simply it means putting your K in such a position so as to prevent your opponents K from getting to a good square. This usually (but not always) means making your opponent go sideways or backwards. If you want to find out more then JRobichess on youtube has some excellent vids. The 1st diagram shows the position within sight of the end. So identifying the 3 basics we have 1: plan - eliminate white's pawns leaving the b-pawn to be promoted. This takes us into a standard K&Q vs K ending. 2: count - white can only attack my a-pawn and needs 5 moves to get there. My 1st target is the pawn on b2 and needs only 4 moves. Thus I know I can take both pawns and leave my b-pawn protected. 3: opposition - I have to prevent white getting to c2 defending his pawns. so moves go Ke5 Ke3 Kd5 Kd3 Kc5 Kc2. (alternatively Ke4 Ke2 Kd4 Kd2 Kc4 Kc2 reaches a similar position) If white attempts to defend the b3-pawn then Kc2 restablishes opposition and he is forced to move away. ================================================= The plan to establish this ending was made several moves before. I have annotated the game from move 48 showing how the plan was made and developed. Diagram shows board at move 48. find annotation here. gameknot.com comments and questions welcome
hogfysshe 12-Jun-13, 19:25	bringing three endgame topics to top of forum bumping 1st of 3 endgame threads.
alex388 13-Jun-13, 14:12	The rook part could have been more difficult. The kings part was easy. Good ending! I left some annotations
archduke_piccolo 04-Jul-13, 05:15	A reminder... The above end game reminds me of one I played nearly 25 years ago in the Cathedral Square in Christchurch. My opponent (White) was a strong player who used to play simuls in the square, but I was strong enough to give him a game one-on-one (he won more than I did, but I took away a few wins, despite the rust). This particular game, though, was from one of DW's simuls. After 51 moves this position arose with White to play: w At this point, White played 52.Kc1? ... This I considered a bad mistake, but in fact White did have a point. He was striving to gain the 'Opposition' by 1...Kd3 2.Kd1 after which things might have got a bit tricky. But after... 52... Ke3! Black seizes the Opposition along a diagonal, after which the game lasted a mere two more moves: 53.Kd1 Kd3 54.Kc1 Ke2 0-1 The d-pawn simply runs home. Now, I was rather intrigued by the position (I didn't record the game at the time - just wrote the whole score from memory after I got home). Couldn't White have done better? I still thought Black should win, but expected a stronger resistance from one of my opponent's calibre, even in a simul. Here's what I found: 52.Ke2! ... Seizing the Opposition position. 52...d3ch 53.Kd2 Kd4 54.Ke1! ... This is where the concept of 'the Opposition' gets a bit tricky. Paradoxically, this move allows Black to take up the Opposition (54...Ke3), yet after 54.Kd1? Ke3 55.Ke1 ..., having the Opposition does White no good at all: 55...d2ch 56.Kd1 Kd3. Now White is caught in a forcing sequence in which he has just one legal move available: 57.b4 cxb4 58.b3 Kc3 59.Ke2 Kc2 and from here the win for Black is simple. 54...Ke3 55.Kd1 d2 56.b4!! ... Can you see what White is driving at? It's no good moving his king, as 56.Kc2 Ke2 and the d-pawn promotes. But White was steering for precisely this position. Here's the scheme: 56...cxb4 57.b3 .... And now 57...Kd3 Stalemate! So what now for Black? He has to give the pawn back: 57... Ke4!! But not 57...Kd4? as 58.Kxd2 and White has the Opposition and should draw. 58.Kxd2 Kd4 The Opposition again: the world is back to normal! White wins: 59.Kc2 Ke3 60.Kc1 Kd3 61.Kb2 Kd2 62.Kb1 Kc3 63.Ka2 Kc2 64.Ka1 Kxb3 etc. So, although the 'Opposition' played such a big part in this end game, there was one particular point at which it was a losing, rather than a winning proposition. The Soviet School of Chess, I gather, had a rather more sophisticated theory of 'Corresponding Squares', but don't ask me for details. I have no idea how it works. A further point I'd like to make: even in simple pawn endings, there is often room for a little tactics and sacrifices.
snowman100 05-Jul-13, 15:29	Blimey! I didn't realise such a n apparently simple looking position could hold such an amount of subleties. I think I've lost quite a few games because of instinctive looking moves in such positions which turned out disasterously.
archduke_piccolo 05-Jul-13, 19:13	You'd be surprised... ... just how much subtlety can reside in even the simplest of positions. Check out this one, from a game between strong Grandmasters in 1972. American readers might recognise it... b Black to play, what result ... and how achieved? Over to you...
snowman100 07-Jul-13, 03:05	Blabk to play 1....F5 looks the normal candidate move and if White plays b4 black can't yet play Kb7 or White King stops blacks pawn so black plays . No scrub all that White still stops the pawn. Blacks first move must be Kd5 to stop the White King arresting the Black pawn. (1....Kc5 no good as it loses a tempo to b4+). So then after race for Queens Black Queens first and after White Queens Black plays a1+ picking up White Queen next move. Thats how I'd play it.
archduke_piccolo 07-Jul-13, 04:26	!! Bingo - well done, snowman100! This was from a game between L. Ljubojevic and W.S.Browne in 1972. The grandmaster got it wrong! He played 1...f5 to which White responded 2.Kb4 and the point was split there and then. But, as Tim points out, 1...Kd5! would have won. 2.b4 ... This does look as though White has a head start, doesn't it? So how does Black win, then? 2...f5 3.b5 f4 4.b6 Kc6! Black not only gains a vital tempo, but decoys the White King onto a crucial square. Why is it crucial? Check out the relationship between where the King has to move to if his pawn wished to continue advancing, and the queening square of black's pawn. 5.Kh6 b3 6.b7 f2! 7.b8=Q ... It's no good under-promoting to a Knight, even with check - that won't stop the f-pawn. 7... f1=Q, check! 8.Ka5 Qa1ch This motif forcing the opponent into a skewer situation is one of those end game patterns well worth committing to memory as part of your technique. GM Browne knew this motif: he just didn't see that it could arise from the diagram position. 9.Kb4 Qb1ch 10.Kc4 Qxb8 and wins. Suppose White tried to reel in the f-pawn betimes? That is, suppose 1...Kd5 2.Kb4 ... Then, not 2...f5??, but ... 2...Kd4! 3.Kh5 f5 4.b4 f4 5.b5 Kc5! 6.b6 Kc6! 7.Ka6 f3 ...as before.
archduke_piccolo 13-Jul-13, 16:16	Judgement calls... There are times during the course of the game in which you have to make a judgement call, whether to take this path or that. Often it is the case in end games, whether or not to transform the game, by an exchange, into a different kind of ending. Here is an example of the thing I mean, in which my opponent (Black) made, for such a strong opponent, an astonishingly bad call. Here's the situation, after Black's 33rd move. w Earlier in the game I had sacrificed the exchange for attack, but this was the most I got from it: 34..Ne6 ... This will win back the exchange, at any rate! 34....Rxe6 35.dxe6 Qe7 36.Re1 Qxe6 37.f4 Re8 There was very little chance of exploiting the half-pin on the e-file. The GK machine, by the way, assesses this position as stone cold even: 0.00. 38.fxe5 Qxe5 Black could have left it as a Q + R endgame, but judges (correctly) that the rook ending kept things simpler, and still even. White's reply is, of course, forced. 39.Qxe5 Rxe5?? But this was an amazing misjudgment. After 39.dxe5, the game would have petered out to a draw sooner rather than later. But I knew at once the pawn ending was quite lost for Black. The Gk engine calls it correctly that the move was wrong, but understates the case at +0.75. 40.Rxe5! dxe5 41.Kf2 g5 I would have been inclined to leave this pawn alone, I think, and bring the King up sharpish. 42.Kf3 Kf7 Already the GK engine's assessment was veering sharply in White's favour: +2.08. 43.Ke4 Kf6?! A slight inaccuracy: ...Ke6 was an improvement. It's a tempo thing. But it wouldn't have made much difference: 43...Ke6 44.g3! Kf6 45.h4 and the game would have followed much the same course as the text. 44.g3! ... Not, repeat, NOT, 44.g4. The reason is that g4 would be placing White's K-side pawns in the position in which 1 Black pawn is holding up the 2 White ones. One should avoid this, unless one has a very good reason. 44... c6 Partly a waiting move, but it also keeps the WK out of d5. 45.h4 ... Now White can force the creation of a passed pawn. Observe that Black's passed pawn, isolated as it is, has been of little use to its owner. 45...g4 Exchanging would have left White with a passer on the extreme flank, which would have drawn the BK away from the centre, allowing White to capture the e-pawn, then get in amongst the Q-side pawns. That is the advantage of the 'remoter' passed pawn. Black's pawn advance instead of exchanging makes little difference. 46.h5 Kg5 The GK engine calls for ...c5, but it makes no odds. 47.Kxe5 Kxh5 48.Kd6... To those who might have been expecting 48.Kf5 Kh6 49.Kxg4 Kg6, yes, that also wins. But I figured that as the BK would have the opposition at my 50th move, I was better off with the simpler line. It will take 6 moves for the BK to clear a path for his g-pawn. A lot can happen in 6 moves. 48...b5 A clever delaying tactic, but it really won't do. 49.c5! ... b Black still requires 9 moves to promote his g-pawn, White just 5 for his c-pawn. 'Nuff said. Black resigned. 1-0
porcho 14-Jul-13, 16:37	Deleted by porcho on 14-Jul-13, 16:48.

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