Chess Endgame Strategy – The Square of the Pawn

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:37:24 +0000

How to tell if the King can catch a Pawn in a race

(Video below the jump.)

Often a game of chess will end with two Kings and one Pawn: King and Pawn vs. King. And very often in those situations, the question is simply this: can the King catch the Pawn?

In the following diagram we have just such a situation … the King would like to catch the Pawn before it reaches the 8th rank to become a Queen, and the Pawn is trying to race to its 8th rank. Who wins? There is a simple rule to decide which side wins these races.

The rule is called the “square of the Pawn.”

The way to quickly decide the race of the Pawn vs. the King is to visualize in your mind a square where the Pawn is at one corner, and the diagonally opposite corner is on the Pawn’s 8th rank (the rank where the Pawn would promote to a Queen).

The square of the Pawn in the diagram we are considering would look like this:

(The square of the Pawn is the blue shaded area in the diagram.) The rule works like this: if the King can move into the square of the Pawn, then the King can catch the Pawn.

So in the diagram, with Black to move, he has only one move that allows him to catch the Pawn: Ke4. (If you don’t understand chess notation, read my article entitled “Chess Notation Part 1” to learn about reading and recording chess moves.)

You can use the square of the Pawn in many situations like this, and it will help you to visualize and evaluate many endgame positions much more easily.

If you want to watch a video with a discussion of the square of the Pawn, check out the video below. Also, see this important caveat about calculating the square of the Pawn when the Pawn stands on its home square!

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Chess Endgame Strategy – King & Queen v King & Pawn

admin — Sun, 24 May 2009 12:33:48 +0000

The importance of chess endgame strategy

It is very common for chess games to come down to an endgame, and very often those endgames amount to a single Pawn or a Pawn for each side (plus the Kings, of course). In order to win more chess games, you must know endgame strategy.

Queen v. Pawn strategy

Take a look at this endgame diagram:

The players each have a simple overall strategy for winning (or drawing) this game. White’s strategy is to capture Black’s pawn. In order to do that, he must do two other things: he must first prevent Black from promoting his Pawn, and he must attack the Pawn with both his King and Queen (the Queen alone can’t safely capture the Pawn as long as Black’s King guards it). In order to do this, White must bring both his King and Queen to bear on the Pawn; both must attack the Pawn at the same time.

Preventing Black from promoting the Pawn can be done by pinning the Pawn and keeping Black busy with checks against his King. Bringing White’s King closer requires that Black have his King in front of his Pawn, physically blocking the Pawn from the promotion square. This will give White a free move (a tempo) to move his King closer to the Pawn. Each time Black’s King sits on the promotion square, White has a free move to bring his own King closer to the action.

Black, on the other hand, wants to promote his Pawn to Queen (which would result in a draw). In order to do that, Black wants to both protect his Pawn from capture while leaving the promotion square open so that if he gets a chance, he can push the pawn to e1.

Black’s strategy is simple; and while White’s strategy is equally simple, executing the strategy requires careful maneuvering.

Here are the moves for finishing this mate. The starting position is in the diagram above. Also listen to the video for my additional comments about the position and White’s techniques for winning the game.

Qf6+ Kg1
Qe5 Kf1
Qf4+ Kg1
Qe3 Kf1
Qf3+ Ke1

White has driven the Black King in front of the Pawn (which Black has resisted as long as possible), preventing Black from promoting and giving White time to bring up his King. Achieving this position is one of White’s intermediate strategic objectives. Watch how White brings about this position several times in order to give his King opportunities to move closer to the action.

Kb7 Kd2
Qf2 Kd1
Qd4+ Kc1
Qe3 Kd1
Qd3+ Ke1
Kc6 Kf2

Avoiding Kf1, which would be moving into a pin and would give White a “free move” to bring the King closer.

Qd2 Kf1
Qf4+ Kg1
Qe3 Kf1
Qf3+ Ke1
Kd5 Kd2
Qf4+ Kd1
Qd4+ Kc1
Qe3 Kd1
Qd3+ Ke1
Ke4 Kf2

Now the White King is close enough to help in both attacking the Black Pawn and delivering checkmate to the Black King. You can’t give checkmate with the Queen alone … the Queen needs some help (from either friendly or enemy pieces) to checkmate the King.

Qf3+ Kg1
Qe2 Kh1
Kf3 Kg1
Qg2# …

This ending works every time against a Knight-pawn or center-pawn (the b-pawn, d-pawn, e-pawn, or g-pawn). The Rook-pawns and Bishop-pawns can be more tricky and sometimes impossible to win. That will be the subject of another post soon.

This chess endgame is very important to know, and it is surprising how few average tournament players know this ending. If you play enough chess, this will come up. You should know this well enough to be able to play it without thinking. Well … at least not thinking too much.

You can find this endgame in Reuben Fine’s masterwork, Basic Chess Endings (look at diagram number 544).