I am pasting a beautiful comment from a subscriber: Thank you for this great summary of basic endgame principles. Here is a point-by-point: - 1. (0:42) How to draw K vs KP: Stand in front of the pawn so you can take opposition if enemy king tries to pass it. - 2. (7:06) The Philidor position: Draw KR vs KRP by placing your R on 6th rank until P moves forward, then drop R to the 1st rank and check the K until the cows come home. - 3. (10:00) Use the rule of the square to decide if a pawn can be stopped by your K. Do not allow the creation of passed pawns that are outside the square! - 4. (12:10) The importance of the pawn breakthrough: Sacrifice one pawn to allow a nearby pawn to become a passed pawn! - 5. (15:07) The importance of the outside passed pawn: Use it as a decoy to draw away the enemy K so your K can feast on their pawns on the other side of the board. - 6. (19:07) Do not let your Rooks become passive in endgames! Do not defend a pawn from the 1st rank if there is any other option which allows a more active R. E.g. Defend from an open file, or use R to counterattack one of their pawns. - 7. (21:24) Do not break the tension between pawns without good reason! Often, by capturing you help to activate enemy pieces. Especially the K. And, in endgames K activity is essential! Improving K activity can be more important than immediately capturing a loose pawn! Make your King the hero of the endgame!
Thank you! I'm honored you thought it was useful enough to pin, beautiful even. ☺ Your videos are really inspiring and give such insight (and i feel that you care about us aspiring chess players)
Thank you for this great summary of basic endgame principles. Here is a point-by-point: - 1. (0:42) How to draw K vs KP: Stand in front of the pawn so you can take opposition if enemy king tries to pass it. - 2. (7:06) The Philidor position: Draw KR vs KRP by placing your R on 6th rank until P moves forward, then drop R to the 1st rank and check the K until the cows come home. - 3. (10:00) Use the rule of the square to decide if a pawn can be stopped by your K. Do not allow the creation of passed pawns that are outside the square! - 4. (12:10) The importance of the pawn breakthrough: Sacrifice one pawn to allow a nearby pawn to become a passed pawn! - 5. (15:07) The importance of the outside passed pawn: Use it as a decoy to draw away the enemy K so your K can feast on their pawns on the other side of the board. - 6. (19:07) Do not let your Rooks become passive in endgames! Do not defend a pawn from the 1st rank if there is any other option which allows a more active R. E.g. Defend from an open file, or use R to counterattack one of their pawns. - 7. (21:24) Do not break the tension between pawns without good reason! Often, by capturing you help to activate enemy pieces. Especially the K. And, in endgames K activity is essential! Improving K activity can be more important than immediately capturing a loose pawn! Make your King the hero of the endgame!
homework spoiler - no engine Black to move. The chess 'crime' appears to be d4. d4 Ke4 dxe3 Bxe3 and both the white king and bishop have central control over the board and the knight. e4+ strategically pins the white e3 pawn from advancing, closing down the diagonal of the bishop to help the white g and h pawns. It also keeps the white king out of the center. It appears to work. However, it opens up another diagonal for the bishop. Example: e4+ Kg3 (black any move) Bb2. Thus, e4+ too is weak and a much more subtle chess 'crime'. Black must keep its pawns on the black diagonal and white has no way to break through. Yet, white threatens to win with the two to one advantage on the queen side. Nc7 a4 Na8 a5 Nc7 later moving the knight to b5 activates the knight. (This was quite challenging; I checked with the computer and sooner rather than later black must move Kf7 to activate the king towards the center. In all other lines black must have near-perfect play.)
Thank you so much for returning back strongly with your comments and analysis!! ...d4 is a crime indeed, good that you spotted it. ...Kf7 is the best defensive plan, as it was a poor piece on g6. We don't want to activate the enemy bishop with ...e4 either.
In Position 5, Dr. Can, white is also completely winning even if it were black's turn. Black's advanced pawn is not connected to another pawn and even though black's king is more advanced, black has no moves. c3+ Kc2 Ka3 Kxc3 and white wins any other black move concedes the initiative back to white.
Another great Dr. Can-do video! Knowing these end game plans will help me win more games! Need to activate the black Knight by pushing a pawn! One the Pony is loose, blacks knight is better than white’s dark squared bishop!
Thank you so much! ...d4 is a blunder as it allows Ke4 (we are not playing checkers :)) The student also played ...d4 in the actual game. The best plan is to improve king with ...Kf7!
Thank you for another great video! And congratulations on your upcoming Chessable course. Looking forward to it. May I offer a suggestion? Maybe you could do a video introducing your different courses, telling us what you aim to accomplish in each one, in which order they should be studied, the ELO range recommended for each course... and perhaps show us a puzzle so we can see what they offer. That video would indeed be useful to me, and that probable means it would be useful to more people. Just an idea! Thank you for all your wonderful contributions.
Thank you so much! I am noting your suggestion. I will soon publish my 10th course, so it could be a nice time to present them all shortly in one video :)
@@Dr.CansClinic My pleasure ;-) Video request: Knight fundamentals. For instance, I bet not many beginners know a knight always attacks a single color (easy to prevent endgame forks)!
Great video! Some I knew, some I definitely learned something. Last puzzle: I want to break up the g-h pawns and keep the king out of my area, so am thinking e4+ to fix their e pawn, then Nc7 to fix their b pawn and prevent Ba3 from infiltrating to the base of my pawn chain. If they ever push either g or h pawn my f pawn & king can stop them. Eventually the knight should be able to capture their other pawns. Originally I was thinking e4+ then f5, but I couldn't find a way to make progress after g5 if their king is on g3 after the check.
Thank you for your participation! ...e4 is not a terrible idea, certainly better than the crime ...d4?? which allowed Ke4! However, ...e4 also makes the opponent's bishop happy as it gains more scope. The pawn chain should be left as such and we should improve the king with ...Kf7! The game is equal after that.
Your exasperation at chess crimes remains pure. For the homework, my patzer brain wants to play e4+ and then put the knight on d3. What an amazing knight! lol. But this completely ignores white's threat of a4, threatening to create a passed pawn. It doesn't look like the knight alone can prevent this. Then I see the king can step into the square of the b4 pawn with f7. That would be my move then, Kf7. Another detail, I notice the point of contact of the pawns will be a light square (b5), and white has a dark-squared bishop, which is convenient for me. I don't think white's pawns on the kingside can make any progress.
This great lesson served as a test for my assumption, that the Movetrainer and spaced repetition are good tools for endgame training. Yes, they are! After drilling e.g. "100 endgames" over and over again, my pattern recognition has improved a lot. I do not fail often in endgame puzzles, but it remains to be seen how it goes in actual games. With your words ringing in my ears, it should go reasonably well at my Chess Elevator level.😁
❤️ Theoretical endgames are good for spaced repetition. In my blunder-check course, I will give you endgame puzzles where you must avoid blundering an unstoppable passed pawn :) I also have vague ideas of creating a course on finding a winning PLAN in the endgame.
Homework: This one I'm really not sure about, both when it comes to what the right move is, and what chess crime your student might have played. I will just give my thoughts. I would probably play Nc7. It brings the knight closer to White's pawn majority and makes it harder for them to create, and push, their passer. But honestly I don't know how to continue after that. Nb5 doesn't seem good due to a4. The thing is, I would technically be able to get that currently garbage knight to the e4 square in 4 moves. But it can't really remove itself from the queenside too much because the knight is a short range piece and has to keep monitoring the pawns since my king is far away. I don't think there's a realistic way to abandon the kingside and bring my king to the queenside even with my pawn wall controlling the center, due to ideas involving g5, h5, h6. I thought about 3 pawn moves and figured they all have their drawbacks. d4 vacates the e4 square for the white king. True, if they take on d4, we activate our knight, but White doesn't have to do that, and if we take on e3 we just activate their bishop. e4, I don't know about. It does kick out their king but I don't know how to continue after that. It ties down my knight to defending the dark squares around the center and the knight might be distracted if White starts pushing their queenside pawns. f5 I don't like either. If they take or push, they help activate my king. But what about just something like Bb2? It's not like I want to take on g4 to activate their king? And if I don't take (Kf5) , they will push their g pawn, deflect my king and chop my e pawn. This is exactly the kind of position where I would most likely do something stupid and lose because I don't really know what to do lol
Thanks for your detailed observations! Good that you found the drawbacks of all those pawn moves! ...d4 chess crime happened in the actual game and White won after Ke4! The simplest move is the best: ...Kf7! the guy simply joins the game and fight against White's queenside majority.
Thanks. This guide is better than most, but really because most endgame tutorials are so very bad that they are close to worthless. This guide succeeds about halfway. Exercises 1-5 make sense to an intermediate player. Exercises 6, 7 and the homework assignment are a teaching failure (in my humble opinion) because there is a big step up n complexity and the complexity is not broken down adequately. They need to be reworked or else deleted. I have no clue how to solve the homework exercise and don't even understand the engine solution. I think we just weren't given the correct building blocks to solve it. No doubt certain gifted people will find all the answers easily but that is due to their own genius... Thanks..
For the homework position, I would try to activate my king by going f5. My opponent wants to go a4 and then b5 to create a passed pawn, so when they go a4 I should go Nc7 to stop it
Thanks for leaving a comment! King activation is the correct solution, but ...Kf7 is better as it keeps the pawn chain in fact (...f5 would make the opponent's bishop happy by leaving e5 weak). Also they don't need to capture on f5.
The homework: We need to stop the a and b pawns, but Nc7 doesn't look good because a4 will freeze the knight. d4 exd4 Nxd4 is more active, but they don't need to take. My conclusion is Kf7 and the king runs to the ab files to stop them. The knight should be enough to watch the gh files.
I am pasting a beautiful comment from a subscriber:
Thank you for this great summary of basic endgame principles. Here is a point-by-point:
- 1. (0:42) How to draw K vs KP:
Stand in front of the pawn so you can take opposition if enemy king tries to pass it.
- 2. (7:06) The Philidor position:
Draw KR vs KRP by placing your R on 6th rank until P moves forward,
then drop R to the 1st rank and check the K until the cows come home.
- 3. (10:00) Use the rule of the square to decide if a pawn can be stopped by your K.
Do not allow the creation of passed pawns that are outside the square!
- 4. (12:10) The importance of the pawn breakthrough:
Sacrifice one pawn to allow a nearby pawn to become a passed pawn!
- 5. (15:07) The importance of the outside passed pawn:
Use it as a decoy to draw away the enemy K so your K can feast on their pawns on the other side of the board.
- 6. (19:07) Do not let your Rooks become passive in endgames! Do not defend a pawn from the 1st rank if there is any other option which allows a more active R. E.g. Defend from an open file, or use R to counterattack one of their pawns.
- 7. (21:24) Do not break the tension between pawns without good reason! Often, by capturing you help to activate enemy pieces. Especially the K. And, in endgames K activity is essential! Improving K activity can be more important than immediately capturing a loose pawn! Make your King the hero of the endgame!
Thank you! I'm honored you thought it was useful enough to pin, beautiful even. ☺
Your videos are really inspiring and give such insight (and i feel that you care about us aspiring chess players)
@@FredPlanatia Without care, I would not start this :)
Thank you for this great summary of basic endgame principles. Here is a point-by-point:
- 1. (0:42) How to draw K vs KP:
Stand in front of the pawn so you can take opposition if enemy king tries to pass it.
- 2. (7:06) The Philidor position:
Draw KR vs KRP by placing your R on 6th rank until P moves forward,
then drop R to the 1st rank and check the K until the cows come home.
- 3. (10:00) Use the rule of the square to decide if a pawn can be stopped by your K.
Do not allow the creation of passed pawns that are outside the square!
- 4. (12:10) The importance of the pawn breakthrough:
Sacrifice one pawn to allow a nearby pawn to become a passed pawn!
- 5. (15:07) The importance of the outside passed pawn:
Use it as a decoy to draw away the enemy K so your K can feast on their pawns on the other side of the board.
- 6. (19:07) Do not let your Rooks become passive in endgames! Do not defend a pawn from the 1st rank if there is any other option which allows a more active R. E.g. Defend from an open file, or use R to counterattack one of their pawns.
- 7. (21:24) Do not break the tension between pawns without good reason! Often, by capturing you help to activate enemy pieces. Especially the K. And, in endgames K activity is essential! Improving K activity can be more important than immediately capturing a loose pawn! Make your King the hero of the endgame!
This is amazing, I may pin your comment!
homework spoiler - no engine
Black to move. The chess 'crime' appears to be d4. d4 Ke4 dxe3 Bxe3 and both the white king and bishop have central control over the board and the knight.
e4+ strategically pins the white e3 pawn from advancing, closing down the diagonal of the bishop to help the white g and h pawns. It also keeps the white king out of the center. It appears to work. However, it opens up another diagonal for the bishop. Example: e4+ Kg3 (black any move) Bb2. Thus, e4+ too is weak and a much more subtle chess 'crime'. Black must keep its pawns on the black diagonal and white has no way to break through.
Yet, white threatens to win with the two to one advantage on the queen side.
Nc7 a4 Na8 a5 Nc7 later moving the knight to b5 activates the knight.
(This was quite challenging; I checked with the computer and sooner rather than later black must move Kf7 to activate the king towards the center. In all other lines black must have near-perfect play.)
Thank you so much for returning back strongly with your comments and analysis!! ...d4 is a crime indeed, good that you spotted it. ...Kf7 is the best defensive plan, as it was a poor piece on g6. We don't want to activate the enemy bishop with ...e4 either.
@@Dr.CansClinic An excellent training position. You should definitely consider using it often.
Amazing Video as always, i knew most of the concepts already. But i still enjoyed to be reminded of important endgame ideas.
Glad to hear it! Thanks a lot for leaving a comment.
In Position 5, Dr. Can, white is also completely winning even if it were black's turn. Black's advanced pawn is not connected to another pawn and even though black's king is more advanced, black has no moves. c3+ Kc2 Ka3 Kxc3 and white wins any other black move concedes the initiative back to white.
Absolutely, thanks for mentioning this. Also, it has been ages since you left a comment. Hope all is well :)
@@Dr.CansClinic You are too kind. Thank you.
GREAT video on key instructional videos! Thank you Dr Can! I love endgames, so these are always some of my favorite chess videos.
Glad you like them! Thank you for interacting and leaving a comment!
Another great Dr. Can-do video! Knowing these end game plans will help me win more games! Need to activate the black Knight by pushing a pawn! One the Pony is loose, blacks knight is better than white’s dark squared bishop!
Thank you so much! ...d4 is a blunder as it allows Ke4 (we are not playing checkers :)) The student also played ...d4 in the actual game. The best plan is to improve king with ...Kf7!
Thank you for another great video! And congratulations on your upcoming Chessable course. Looking forward to it. May I offer a suggestion? Maybe you could do a video introducing your different courses, telling us what you aim to accomplish in each one, in which order they should be studied, the ELO range recommended for each course... and perhaps show us a puzzle so we can see what they offer. That video would indeed be useful to me, and that probable means it would be useful to more people. Just an idea! Thank you for all your wonderful contributions.
Thank you so much! I am noting your suggestion. I will soon publish my 10th course, so it could be a nice time to present them all shortly in one video :)
Very instructive video, haven't visited you in a while, I will try to catch up what I missed.
Welcome back! Thank you for leaving a comment. I believe many things happened after you left :)
Great stuff as always, thanks!!!
My pleasure! Thanks for leaving a comment.
@@Dr.CansClinic My pleasure ;-) Video request: Knight fundamentals. For instance, I bet not many beginners know a knight always attacks a single color (easy to prevent endgame forks)!
@@Kenjitsuka Here we goo! ruclips.net/video/NqfpUZYNJx8/видео.html
Great video! Some I knew, some I definitely learned something. Last puzzle: I want to break up the g-h pawns and keep the king out of my area, so am thinking e4+ to fix their e pawn, then Nc7 to fix their b pawn and prevent Ba3 from infiltrating to the base of my pawn chain. If they ever push either g or h pawn my f pawn & king can stop them. Eventually the knight should be able to capture their other pawns.
Originally I was thinking e4+ then f5, but I couldn't find a way to make progress after g5 if their king is on g3 after the check.
Thank you for your participation! ...e4 is not a terrible idea, certainly better than the crime ...d4?? which allowed Ke4! However, ...e4 also makes the opponent's bishop happy as it gains more scope. The pawn chain should be left as such and we should improve the king with ...Kf7! The game is equal after that.
Nice session keep it up thanks
Thank you so much for leaving a comment.
Your exasperation at chess crimes remains pure. For the homework, my patzer brain wants to play e4+ and then put the knight on d3. What an amazing knight! lol. But this completely ignores white's threat of a4, threatening to create a passed pawn. It doesn't look like the knight alone can prevent this. Then I see the king can step into the square of the b4 pawn with f7. That would be my move then, Kf7. Another detail, I notice the point of contact of the pawns will be a light square (b5), and white has a dark-squared bishop, which is convenient for me. I don't think white's pawns on the kingside can make any progress.
Thank you so much! ...Kf7! is the principled and correct move. It was a buried piece on g6. It will fight against White's queenside pawns.
This great lesson served as a test for my assumption, that the Movetrainer and spaced repetition are good tools for endgame training. Yes, they are! After drilling e.g. "100 endgames" over and over again, my pattern recognition has improved a lot. I do not fail often in endgame puzzles, but it remains to be seen how it goes in actual games. With your words ringing in my ears, it should go reasonably well at my Chess Elevator level.😁
❤️ Theoretical endgames are good for spaced repetition. In my blunder-check course, I will give you endgame puzzles where you must avoid blundering an unstoppable passed pawn :) I also have vague ideas of creating a course on finding a winning PLAN in the endgame.
Thanks. A nice resume of important endgame points.
Glad it was helpful! Thanks for leaving a comment!
Yeah great lesson. Thanks)
Thank you so much for leaving a kind comment :)
Wow this was good. Didn't know half of these patterns. Thanks doc🎉
Happy to help! Thanks for leaving a comment.
learning process newer ends , great video
Newer ends, older ends, current ends... This cycle never ends...
Keep on learning. Thanks for the comment.
Homework: This one I'm really not sure about, both when it comes to what the right move is, and what chess crime your student might have played. I will just give my thoughts.
I would probably play Nc7. It brings the knight closer to White's pawn majority and makes it harder for them to create, and push, their passer. But honestly I don't know how to continue after that. Nb5 doesn't seem good due to a4.
The thing is, I would technically be able to get that currently garbage knight to the e4 square in 4 moves. But it can't really remove itself from the queenside too much because the knight is a short range piece and has to keep monitoring the pawns since my king is far away.
I don't think there's a realistic way to abandon the kingside and bring my king to the queenside even with my pawn wall controlling the center, due to ideas involving g5, h5, h6.
I thought about 3 pawn moves and figured they all have their drawbacks. d4 vacates the e4 square for the white king. True, if they take on d4, we activate our knight, but White doesn't have to do that, and if we take on e3 we just activate their bishop.
e4, I don't know about. It does kick out their king but I don't know how to continue after that. It ties down my knight to defending the dark squares around the center and the knight might be distracted if White starts pushing their queenside pawns.
f5 I don't like either. If they take or push, they help activate my king. But what about just something like Bb2? It's not like I want to take on g4 to activate their king? And if I don't take (Kf5) , they will push their g pawn, deflect my king and chop my e pawn.
This is exactly the kind of position where I would most likely do something stupid and lose because I don't really know what to do lol
Thanks for your detailed observations! Good that you found the drawbacks of all those pawn moves! ...d4 chess crime happened in the actual game and White won after Ke4! The simplest move is the best: ...Kf7! the guy simply joins the game and fight against White's queenside majority.
Nice Review!
Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for interacting.
Thanks. This guide is better than most, but really because most endgame tutorials are so very bad that they are close to worthless.
This guide succeeds about halfway. Exercises 1-5 make sense to an intermediate player.
Exercises 6, 7 and the homework assignment are a teaching failure (in my humble opinion) because there is a big step up n complexity and the complexity is not broken down adequately. They need to be reworked or else deleted.
I have no clue how to solve the homework exercise and don't even understand the engine solution. I think we just weren't given the correct building blocks to solve it.
No doubt certain gifted people will find all the answers easily but that is due to their own genius...
Thanks..
Great video, for position 6 I'm definitely guilty of the RC8 chess crime 🙂
Thank you! Good thing is that once you truly understand it as a chess crime, there is a possibility for a change! :)
Half of my endgames involve me thinking something along the lines of "I know Rc8 is garbage but I'm gonna do it anyway" lol
@@greatdanelegend7001 Listen to the misery of your rook, some empathy please! :)
For the homework position, I would try to activate my king by going f5. My opponent wants to go a4 and then b5 to create a passed pawn, so when they go a4 I should go Nc7 to stop it
Thanks for leaving a comment! King activation is the correct solution, but ...Kf7 is better as it keeps the pawn chain in fact (...f5 would make the opponent's bishop happy by leaving e5 weak). Also they don't need to capture on f5.
10:37 If White King is on h2 then it would be draw as White would also be able to promote!
The black king would stop the c-pawn, so White cannot promote :)
Magnus famously didn't know the rule of the square.
Presumably he just worked it out" the long way" every time.
Thanks Doc.
He also once said he does not know the key squares in pawn endgames. He just sees 'resigns'!
The homework:
We need to stop the a and b pawns, but Nc7 doesn't look good because a4 will freeze the knight.
d4 exd4 Nxd4 is more active, but they don't need to take.
My conclusion is Kf7 and the king runs to the ab files to stop them.
The knight should be enough to watch the gh files.
Excellent observations! ...Kf7! is the best move. ...d4 is a crime as it allows Ke4.
I've won some games already because of this video! :) Ty
Congratulations!! Glad that this video helped!
Second. Love these videos.
Love this comment. Thanks for interacting!
First
🙏 Hope you liked it!