Monthly Archives: September 2010

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:

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Practicing checkmate patterns

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?

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