One of my readers, Phil, has asked this question: Can i win with a knight and king against a king?
The short answer is, “no.”
The long answer is a little more interesting, and has a surprise in it. First, let’s look at what happens when you try to checkmate a lone King with a King and Knight.
With the new year, I thought it was time to make some much-needed changes to Chess Strategies Blog.
It will take a few days to implement all the changes, so please be patient if something is missing or you don’t find everything you are looking for. I’ll be working on the site for the first week of January, so be sure to come back soon to see the completed site.
And I hope to be making more great material available during 2012 … new videos, new content on the blog, and maybe some other new stuff as well.
Plus, I’m working on a great new chess e-book specifically addressed to beginning and intermediate chess players. If you’re interested in being notified when the book is completed, just drop me an email at my contact page.
Thanks for your interest … and come back soon!
The dictionary defines “desperado” as “a bold or violent criminal.” Whether the “desperado” Rook be a criminal or a hero depends on whether it’s your Rook or your opponent’s. Regardless, we will see him acting bold and violent in today’s lesson.
We have probably all heard the advice about passed Pawns: “Passed Pawns must be pushed.” But this is not always the case!
Many times, inexperienced players will heedlessly push their passed Pawn, completely oblivious to the opponent’s defensive resources. They may have read Irving Chernev’s classic book for beginning chess players, “Logical Chess: Move by Move.” (It’s the first book I read with any understanding – every move for every game is explained.) He said (several times, if I recall correctly), “passed pawns must be pushed.”
That is true, but not always true, and not true of King and Pawn v. King endings. For these endings, it’s more important to push the King! Max Euwe said this:
If you’ve played much chess at all, you have probably gotten to the point where you understand that being a piece down (or even a couple of pawns down) means you’re probably going to lose. Unless there is some strong edge or the possibility of an attack, being significantly down in material means you’re going to lose. And you resign.
And your opponents feel the same way. You win a Knight; opponent resigns.
Or you get to an endgame with a good passed pawn. Winning ending; opponent resigns. You Queen a Pawn; opponent resigns.
And so it goes. Most games played with long time controls end with either very simple mates (Queen and King against King) or one of the players resigns in an obviously losing position. (Unless, that is, the game ends in a draw.)
In any case, relatively few games end with checkmate or the impending threat of checkmate.
So how is the average player to get practice with checkmate patterns when the opponent always resigns long before checkmate?
One solution is just to get a book with checkmate patterns (such as Reinfeld’s book 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate). But that isn’t quite the same as practicing against an opponent.
The solution to the problem of practicing checkmates against a live, resisting opponent, is to play speed chess. Preferably 5-minute games or shorter.
A much higher percentage of fast time-control games end in checkmate than longer games do. The reason is because of the time control. With a short time control, your opponent knows that though you may be a Knight ahead, turning that Knight into a win might be difficult — it might not be obvious what to do to win with that extra Knight, and you end up losing on time. A lot of speed chess games end with one of the players losing on time, but a lot of them end with checkmate. The reason is because players are less likely to resign when behind by a Pawn or even a piece. The possibility of winning (or drawing) the game because the opponent’s time runs out keeps players playing in positions that they would otherwise resign.
The way to use this to your advantage is to take advantage of the increased possibility of studying interesting mating patterns. If you play even a few speed games, you will likely have one or more games end in checkmate. After the game, review the game, especially the checkmate, and see if you can learn anything about the pattern. Is there a better way to do it? Did the opponent have a defense he overlooked? Then review the mating pattern a few days later.
You could even make a database of checkmate patterns from your own games. I find this to be very helpful for review.
This article is about how to draw a chess game when your opponent has a King and Pawn, and you have only your King to defend with. You can watch the video below; or you can read the article below the video.
Just a little news item today. I was privileged to be able to publish an article as a guest author at mychessblog.com. The article is entitled “Endgame Lessons From Game Twelve of the 2010 Anand-Topalov Match.”
Check it out! 
Even a single Pawn can be the difference between winning and losing. This simple fact is vital for beginning chess players to understand. The material at your disposal is important — and that means every Pawn is important. Just winning a Pawn can be the edge that allows you to win; and losing a Pawn can be the edge that allows your opponent to win.
That little material advantage — a single Pawn — often comes down to the question of winning the King and Pawn vs. King ending.
Of course, knowing how to defend the ending can be the difference between a loss and a draw — but that will be the subject of a future blog post.
The first simple rule to remember in most King and Pawn endings is this: get your King in front of your Pawn. If you do just that, you’ll win a lot more endgames. (And this rule applies to more than just King and Pawn endings.)
Here’s an item from newswise.com about a Texas Tech student, who is the world’s newest chess Grandmaster.
International Master Davorin Kuljasevic scored five wins and four draws at the 2010 Pula Open in Croatia to become the first Knight Raider to enter the elite ranks of the approximately 1,000 grandmasters worldwide.
The news item says that Kuljasevic is Coratian, and as I couldn’t find him listed on the “top” lists at uschess.org, he has likely played in the U.S. only very recently.
Nevertheless, it’s a great achievement for Kuljasevic, Texas Tech, and the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence.
I found a really nice free chess database online. It’s 365chess.com.
The site boasts a 3.5-million game database, which is regularly updated. It has several nice search functions The site has a very clean appearance and the interface works very well. Registration is free, though registration is required to search the database.
You can search the database by player names, by a particular board position, or using the opening explorer.
The one down-side is that you must be a “supporter” (i.e., pay for the service) in order to download games as pgn files. The up-side is that the service costs only $10.00 per year. Very inexpensive database!
Overall, the site is very nice and can allow you to do a lot of opening analysis for free.