The endgame, however, tends to have different characteristics from the middlegame, and the players have correspondingly different strategic concerns.
In particular, pawns become more important as endgames often revolve around attempting to promote a pawn by advancing it to the eighth rank. The king , which has to be protected in the middlegame owing to the threat of checkmate , becomes a strong piece in the endgame. It can be brought to the center of the board and act as a useful attacking piece. Whereas chess opening theory changes frequently, giving way to middlegame positions that fall in and out of popularity, endgame theory always remains constant.
Many people have composed endgame studies , endgame positions which are solved by finding a win for White when there is no obvious way to win, or a draw when it seems White must lose. Usually in the endgame, the stronger side the one with more material using the standard piece point count system should try to exchange pieces knights , bishops , rooks , and queens , while avoiding the exchange of pawns. This generally makes it easier to convert a material advantage into a won game. The defending side should strive for the opposite.
An endgame is when there are only a few pieces left. There is no strict criterion for when an endgame begins, and different experts have different opinions Fine With the usual system for chess piece relative value , Speelman considers that endgames are positions in which each player has thirteen or fewer points in material not counting the king. Alternatively, an endgame is a position in which the king can be used actively, but there are some famous exceptions to that Speelman Minev characterizes endgames as positions having four or fewer pieces other than kings and pawns Minev Some authors consider endgames to be positions without queens e.
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Fine, , while others consider a position to be an endgame when each player has less than a queen plus rook in material. Flear considers an endgame to be where each player has at most one piece other than kings and pawns and positions with more material where each player has at most two pieces to be "Not Quite an Endgame" NQE , pronounced "nuckie" Flear Alburt and Krogius give three characteristics of an endgame: Mednis and Crouch address the question of what constitutes an endgame negatively.
The game is still in the middlegame if middlegame elements still describe the position. The game is not in the endgame if these apply:. In endgames with pieces and pawns, an extra pawn is a winning advantage in 50 to 60 percent of cases. In general, the player with a material advantage tries to exchange pieces and reach the endgame. There are some exceptions to this: Also when all of the pawns are on the same side of the board, often the stronger side must exchange pawns to try to create a passed pawn. In the endgame, it is usually better for the player with more pawns to avoid many pawn exchanges, because winning chances usually decrease as the number of pawns decreases.
Also, endings with pawns on both sides of the board are much easier to win. A king and pawn endgame with an outside passed pawn should be a far easier win than a middlegame a rook ahead. With the recent growth of computer chess , a development has been the creation of endgame databases which are tables of stored positions calculated by retrograde analysis such a database is called an endgame tablebase. A program which incorporates knowledge from such a database is able to play perfect chess on reaching any position in the database.
Max Euwe and Walter Meiden give these five generalizations:. Many references [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] have sections on basic, elementary, or fundamental checkmating endgames. In general, these are pawnless endgames with one or more pieces checkmating a lone king. Some authors choose to add endgames from the following list or others to arrive at their list of "Basic checkmates":.
In conjunction with its king, a queen or a rook can easily checkmate a lone king, but a single minor piece a bishop or knight cannot. Two bishops plus their king can easily checkmate a lone king, provided that the bishops move on opposite color squares.
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Two or more bishops on the same color cannot checkmate. A bishop and knight plus their king can also checkmate a lone king, although the checkmate procedure is long up to 33 moves with correct play and is difficult for a player who does not know the correct technique. Two knights cannot force checkmate against a lone king see Two knights endgame , but if the weaker side also has material besides the king , checkmate is sometimes possible. Haworth, Guy M c C The procedure can be long and difficult.
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In competition, the fifty-move rule will often result in the game being drawn first. While there is a board position that allows two knights to checkmate a lone king, such requires a careless move by the weaker side to execute. King and pawn endgames involve only kings and pawns on one or both sides.
International Master Cecil Purdy said "Pawn endings are to chess as putting is to golf. Getting a passed pawn is crucial a passed pawn is one which does not have an opposing pawn on its file or on adjacent files on its way to promotion. Nimzovich once said that a passed pawn has a "lust to expand". An outside passed pawn is particularly deadly. The point of this is a decoy — while the defending king is preventing it from queening, the attacking king wins pawns on the other side.
Opposition is an important technique that is used to gain an advantage. When two kings are in opposition, they are on the same file or rank with an empty square separating them. The player having the move loses the opposition. He must move his king and allow the opponent's king to advance. Note however that the opposition is a means to an end, which is penetration into the enemy position. If the attacker can penetrate without the opposition, he should do so. The tactics of triangulation and zugzwang as well as the theory of corresponding squares are often decisive.
Unlike most positions, king and pawn endgames can usually be analyzed to a definite conclusion, given enough skill and time. An error in a king and pawn endgame almost always turns a win into a draw or a draw into a loss — there is little chance for recovery. Accuracy is most important in these endgames.
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There are three fundamental ideas in these endgames: This is one of the most basic endgames. If the attacking king can prevent that, the king will assist the pawn in being promoted to a queen or rook, and checkmate can be achieved. A rook pawn is an exception because the king may not be able to get out of the way of its pawn. The other pawns are also exceptions see diagram far right. Knight and pawn endgames feature clever manoeuvring by the knights to capture opponent pawns.
While a knight is poor at chasing a passed pawn, it is the ideal piece to block a passed pawn. Knights cannot lose a tempo , so knight and pawn endgames have much in common with king and pawn endgames. This is generally a draw since the knight can be sacrificed for the pawn, however, the king and knight must be covering squares in the pawn's path. If the pawn reaches the seventh rank and is supported by its king and knight, it usually promotes and wins. In this position, White to move wins: Black to move draws starting with Bishop and pawn endgames come in two distinctly different variants.
If the opposing bishops go on the same color of square, the mobility of the bishops is a crucial factor. A bad bishop is one that is hemmed in by pawns of its own color, and has the burden of defending them. The adjacent diagram, from Molnar—Nagy, Hungary , illustrates the concepts of good bishop versus bad bishop, opposition, zugzwang , and outside passed pawn. White wins with 1. Two rules given by Luigi Centurini in the 19th century apply:. The position in the second diagram shows a winning position for White, although it requires accurate play. Often he has only one or two moves that avoid a losing position.
Black was unable to make any progress and the game was drawn on move 83 Nunn Endings with bishops of opposite color , meaning that one bishop works on the light squares, the other one working on dark squares, are notorious for their drawish character. Many players in a poor position have saved themselves from a loss by trading down to such an endgame.
They are often drawn even when one side has a two-pawn advantage, since the weaker side can create a blockade on the squares which his bishop operates on. The weaker side should often try to make his bishop bad by placing his pawns on the same color of his bishop in order to defend his remaining pawns, thereby creating an impregnable fortress.
Current theory is that bishops are better than knights about 60 percent of the time in the endgame. The more symmetrical the pawn structure , the better it is for the knight. This is a draw if the defending king is in front of the pawn or sufficiently close. The defending king can occupy a square in front of the pawn of the opposite color as the bishop and cannot be driven away.
This is a draw if the defending king is in front of the pawn or sufficiently near. The bishop is kept on a diagonal that the pawn must cross and the knight cannot both block the bishop and drive the defending king away. Rook and pawn endgames are often drawn in spite of one side having an extra pawn. In some cases, two extra pawns are not enough to win.
An extra pawn is harder to convert to a win in a rook and pawn endgame than any other type of endgame except a bishop endgame with bishops on opposite colors. Rook endings are probably the deepest and most well studied endgames. They are a common type of endgame in practice, occurring in about 10 percent of all games including ones that do not reach an endgame Emms These endgames occur frequently because rooks are often the last pieces to be exchanged.
The ability to play these endgames well is a major factor distinguishing masters from amateurs Nunn When both sides have two rooks and pawns, the stronger side usually has more winning chances than if each had only one rook Emms An important winning position in the rook and pawn versus rook endgame is the so-called Lucena position. If the side with the pawn can reach the Lucena position, he wins. However, there are several important drawing techniques such as the Philidor position , the back rank defense rook on the first rank, for rook pawns and knight pawns only , the frontal defense , and the short side defense.
A general rule is that if the weaker side's king can get to the queening square of the pawn, the game is a draw and otherwise it is a win, but there are many exceptions. The rook and pawn versus rook is the most common of the "piece and pawn versus piece" endgames Nunn The most difficult case of a rook and pawn versus a rook occurs when the attacking rook is one file over from the pawn and the defending king is cut off on the other side.
Siegbert Tarrasch gave the following rules for this case:. For a player defending against a pawn on the fifth or even sixth ranks to obtain a draw, even after his king has been forced off the queening square, the following conditions must obtain: The file on which the pawn stands divides the board into two unequal parts.
The defending rook must stand in the longer part and give checks from the flank at the greatest possible distance from the attacking king. Nothing less than a distance of three files makes it possible for the rook to keep on giving check. Otherwise it would ultimately be attacked by the king.
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