When to Avoid a King and Pawn Ending

As a rule, you should never trade down to a king and pawn ending unless you are sure you know how to achieve the result that your are playing for.  If you are playing for a draw, you better be sure that the king and pawn ending is drawn, and you better be sure that it's won if you are playing for a win.  Otherwise, you are better off keeping pieces on the board.

Here is a perfect example from Prospect's match against Barrington.  With rooks on the board, the ending was likely a draw even though White would be down a pawn, but the king and pawn ending with even material was lost for White.

Pos. 1

After 33. Kf4 bxa5 34. Re8+ Kf7 35. Rb8 Rb3, Black is going to find it very difficult to capitalize on his extra pawn.

Pos. 2

The problem for Black is how to get his rook out from in front his b-pawn without losing it once he gets the pawn close to queening as in Pos. 3.
 

Pos. 3

If the White king were on f3, Black could play 1...Rf1+ followed by 2...b1=Q.  If the White king were on f2, Black would have the tricky 1...Rh1! 2.Rxb2 Rh2+! winning the White rook.  However, if the White king stays on g2 or h2, or in front of its pawns on g4 or h4, the Black rook can't move without losing the b-pawn.  That means that the Black king will have to come over to help, which will give the White king a shot at the Black pawns.

Unfortunately, White played 33. Re3?  After 33...Rxe3e+ 34. Kxe3 axb5 35 Kd4 Kf7 36. Kc5 Kf5 37. Kxb5 Kf5, White got his pawn back but his position was dead lost because he could not stop the Black king from getting at his remaining pawns and his king is too far away to get at the Black pawns.

Pos. 4

Even if the Black pawn were a file closer on c5 as in Pos. 5, the position would still be lost for White.

Pos. 5

The problem for White is that it still takes him three moves to get to the Black pawn, which leaves him insufficient time to get back to protect his own pawns. After, 35 Ke4 Kf7 36. Kd5 Kf5 37. Kxc5 Black would just have to be careful to play 37...Ke5 rather than 37...Kf5 (as in Pos. 4) in order to prevent the White king from blocking the Black king's path with 38.Kd4.

Pos. 6

In order to be able to draw this ending, White would need the Black pawn to be both a rank and a file closer on c4 as in Pos. 7.  

Pos. 7

Now the White king has time to capture the Black pawn and to get back to block the Black king from getting to the White pawns.  35 Kd4 Kf7 36. Kxc4 Kf5 37. Ke3.

Pos. 8

Remember:  Rook endings are notoriously drawish.  Don't trade off a well placed rook just to win back a pawn unless you are sure that the resulting king and pawn ending is good for you.

Knights in the Endgame

Knight v. Pawns

A basic idea in an ending with a knight against pawns is that the player with the knight looks for opportunities to force the pawns to move onto squares where they are vulnerable to forks.   Here is an example from a game I played last Saturday in Evanston.  White can draw this position but my opponent only had about a minute left on his clock and those forky things that knights do can be very difficult to visualize when time is running low.

 My opponent played 51.Ka6?? which allowed me to win by driving the e-pawn forward with  51...Nd3! 52. e6 Nc5+ 53. Ka7 Nxe6 and Black had no trouble rounding up the last two pawns.  However, White could still have drawn 51.a4! Ne6 52. b4 Nc7 53. b5+ Kc5 54. Kb7 Ne6 55. Ka6 Nc7+.

Black can do nothing because his king must guard the pawn and his knight has to keep the White king off a6 lest he trade off Black's last pawn by playing a5.

Here's a tricky one from the 1956 Candidates Tournament.  Black has little chance to save his own pawns, but if he can win either the White g-pawn or h-pawn and sacrifice the knight for the other one, his king can blockade the a-pawns.  I stared at it for about an hour recently without coming up with the correct drawing plan for Black, but I don't feel so bad as Efim Geller didn't come up with the right move against Tigran Petrosian either and lost after 51...Nb6 52.a5 Na8.

The correct plan is 51... Nc5+! 52. Kf7 Kb7 53. Kxg7 Ne4 54. Kxh7 Nd2!.

Black is threatening to win one of the pawns with 55...Nf1 and none of White's pawn moves are satisfactory.  If 55.g4 Nf3 56.h3 Ng5+.  If 55.h4 Ne4 56.g4 Nf6+.  If 55.h3 Ne4 56.g4 Ng5+.

Knights v. Bishops

An interesting thing about the three round Evanston tournament is that I got two positions in which I had knight, rook, and five pawns with the Black pieces against White's bishop, rook and five pawns.  The results were exactly opposite, however, which may have something to do with the fact that one of my opponents was rated 2200 and the other was rated 1739.

In the first round, I had the kind of position that a knight loves.  White's bishop is confined by the Black knight and his own pawns.  Nevertheless it took some imagination to convert the advantage.   Here I played 32...h4! 33. Rxe5 h3+ 34.Kg3 (If 34.Kg1 Nf3+ wins the rook) 34...Rxf1 and the first position in the post was eventually reached.

In the third round, I had the kind of position that the knight loathes.  Here the bishop has complete freedom of movement and the Black pawns on light squares are easy targets.  After 36.Rd5 b4 37.Ra5 bxa3 38.bxa3, White can pick off the a-pawn at his leisure.

The Kamikaze Rook

Few things in chess are more frustrating than out playing an opponent for an entire game only to come away with a draw due to falling victim to a stalemate trick.  One of the nastiest such tricks is the "kamikaze rook."  A player whose other pieces have no legal moves can sometimes force a draw by checking his opponent until he is forced either to capture the last rook resulting in stalemate or allow a draw by repetition.  It is an easy trick to overlook, particularly if you have not seen it before.

On his last move, Prospect freshman Marc Graff overlooked 52...Rf1# and played 52...c2?!  Wheaton-Warrenville South's junior Robby Badgley alertly uncorked 53. Rxg5+.  If Black captures the rook, it is stalemate because the White king has no legal moves.

The first thought in such a position is for Black to maneuver the White rook onto a square where Black can capture it with one of the pieces that is confining the White king, thereby avoiding stalemate.  Unfortunately, four out of five of the squares are covered twice so moving one piece won't do the trick.  The only square that is only covered once is d1, the only way for the Black pawn on c2 to capture the White rook is for the Black king to go to c1 forcing White to play Rb1+.  Unfortunately, ...cxb1=Q will still be stalemate.


SOLUTION:  Since there is no way for Black to give the White king any breathing room, the only solution is to free one of the White pawns to move.  This is accomplished by forcing the White rook to deliver check from b5 whereupon Black plays ...axb5 and White's a-pawn has a legal move. 53... Kf5 54. Rg5+ Ke4 55. Re5+ Kd3 56.Rd5+ Kc3 57. Rd3+ Kb4 58. Rb3+ Kc5 59. Rb5+ axb5 60. a6 Rf1#.  Unfortunately, Marc could not find this maneuver and the game wound up as a draw.

King, Rook and Rook's Pawn v. King and Rook (Analysis)

Take a crack at the positions before you look at the solutions.

King, Rook and Rook's Pawn vs. King and Rook

Consider the following two positions which were inspired by Robert Moskwa's recent game with the World Under 8 Champion, Awonder Liang. White has just checked the Black king with his rook and Black has the choice of moving away from the White king and pawn with 1...Kd7 or towards them with 1...Kb6. The only difference is that the White rook is on c4 in the first and c3 in the second.  Both positions are theoretical draws if Black makes the correct choice. See if you can figure what the right move is in each case before you look at the analysis in the next post.

Prospect Falls to Fremd (2): Knowing the Score

The result against Fremd could very easily have gone the other way if the players on 4th Board not agreed to a draw.  At the time, Prospect's Ekrem Genc had good winning chances against Fremd's Chang.  Unfortunately, he was running low on time and he lacked confidence in his ability to play the endgame correctly.

This position is winning for White, but it is going to take some work.  After something like 48.b4 Bd2 49.a6, Black can give up his bishop for the a-pawn and b-pawn with 49...Bxb3 50.Rxb3 Rxa6. White's two extra pawns on the other side of the board should be enough to win, but it's going to take a while.  With his king in front of the pawns and his rook checking from the side and from behind, Black could have held out for awhile.  Nonetheless, given that Prospect needed a win to win the match, Ekrem should have kept playing.  On the other hand, the fault does not lie entirely with the player.

A Coaching Failure.

When a match is down to one or two games, IHSA rules allow the coach to give a Communication Card to a tournament steward to give to a player telling him what the score of the match is and the effect that his result will have on determining the outcome of the match.  Unfortunately, this did not occur to me until Ekrem was low on time and I did not know what the correct procedure was for going about it.  As a result, I had to talk to Mr. Barrett about it and before we could get it figured out, the players had agreed to the draw.

Ideally, a player should always try to apprise himself of how the match stands before he agrees to a draw.  IHSA rules also permit a player to have the steward pass a Communication Card to a coach in order to find out how the match stands.  Moreover, a player can initiate a communication regardless of how many games are still being played in the match.  A player can also get up and look at the match score sheet.  However, a player with less than four minutes on his clock cannot reasonably be criticized if he decides that trying to figure out how the match stands is not a wise use of his remaining time.

Mr Barrett and I should have been prepared to communicate the score if the need arose.

Why Game 60 Sucks 

Game 60 is a convenient time control if you want to hold a match after the school day ends without getting the players home so late that they can't have dinner and do their homework.  G60 is also handy if you want to complete a seven round tournament for the state championship in two days.  However, when it comes to developing endgame technique, G60 sucks.  On those rare occasions where both sides play well enough to reach an endgame where the result is in doubt, it is even rarer for either player to have enough time remaining to do the position justice.  On top of that, players are often so low on time that they quit keeping score in the ending making it very difficult to go over the game and learn from mistakes.

One of the best reasons for joining the United States Chess Federation is to get the opportunity to play in some longer time controls.  The Continental Chess Association runs three area events each year, the Chicago Open, the Chicago Class, and the Midwest Class, that use a time control of forty moves in two hours filed by one hour sudden death (40/2, SD/1).  That means that each side has up to three hours to complete the game which usually leaves enough time to devote some thought to the ending.  The Illinois Open, the Illinois Class, and Tim Just's Winter Open use game in ninety minutes with a thirty second increment (G90 inc 30) which means that thirty seconds get added to each players clock on each move.  In a game that goes sixty moves, each side will have two hours.  This doesn't always leave time for deep thought in the ending but at least the thirty seconds per move allows the player to keep score for later review.  Up in Madison at the University of Wisconsin Chess Club, they occasionally run events with a generous 45/2, 25/1, SD/1.

The downside to the USCF events is that the longer time controls tend to be bigger events with larger entry events.  Nevertheless, the key to improvement in all phases of the game is to play slower games.

The Zwischenzug

Despite Ekrem's professed lack of confidence in his endgame skills, he actually found a couple of moves that demonstrate excellent chess thinking.  "Zwischenzug" is a German word meaning "in between move."  It refers to a quiet move that is played in an otherwise forcing sequence.  They are very easy to overlook when calculating variations.  Ekrem found a very nice one on his 36th move.  

The most obvious move here is 36.Rxb5 when Black will find it very difficult to promote his remaing h-pawn.  Running low on time, no one could blame White for playing this move immediately.  However, Ekrem saw that 36...Rxc2 threatened both White's a-pawn and f-pawn.  He also saw that the Black b-pawn wasn't going anywhere so he played the zwischenzug 36.Re5! driving the bishop away from e1.  After 36...Bd2 37.Rxb5 Rxc2, White could play 38.a4 without worrying about his f-pawn.  This is the kind of thinking that produces good endgame play. 


Basic Endgame Positions


In order to succeed in endings at short time controls, it is necessary to have some of the basic positions down pat such as The Wrong Colored Bishop and Rook Pawn. A lone king can draw against a king, bishop and a-pawn or king, bishop, and h-pawn if the bishop does not control the queening square.

This is the position that White would have had with both rooks and all his pawns gone.  It is a draw because there is no way that Black will ever be able to evict the White king from h1.  The quick reason that Ekrem should have kept playing is that even if he managed to lose all five of his pawns, all White needed to do was trade rooks in order to reach a dead drawn position. 

Prospect v. Hoffman: An Important Drawing Technique

Prospect lost for the first time this season to Hoffman Estates, 46-22. Prospect had winning chances on 4th and 7th Boards and drawing chances on 3rd and 6th, but was unable to convert.

The drawing chances on 6th came in a position similar to this.   If White is to move here, he wins easily with 1.Rd6+.  However, if it's Black's move, he draws with 1...Qc3+ 2.Kb1 Qb3+ 3.Kc1 Qc3+.  White has no way to escape the queen checks as long as Black keeps his queen on the same file as the White queen.  Unfortunately, in the match White played 3...Qa3+? which allowed the White king to get to safety with 4.Kd2.

Prospect v. Palatine: Pieces Before Pawns

Prospect beat Palatine 57-11 in its second match of the season.  Although normally one of the toughest teams in the conference, Palatine lost many of its upper boards from last year to graduation.

It's always nice when a principle I write about in one post is perfectly illustrated in a game from the next match.  In my last post, I stressed the need to improve the position of pieces before pushing pawns in the endgame.  That principle arose again on third board where Palatine's Karan Patel had White against Prospect's Ekrem Genc.  At first glance, it appears that the Black rook can pick off the White pawns at its leisure, however, White can still draw the game with 46.Kf4!  After 46...Rg8 47.Ke5 Rxg7 48.Kd5 Rb7 49.Kc5, the White king has just enough time to protect the b-pawn.  Since the Black king is to far away to help, the game will be drawn after Black is forced to give up his rook to stop the pawn from queening.

In the game, however, White pushed with 46.b6? which leaves the White king with insufficient time to come to the aid of either of the pawns.  White lost after 46...Rg8 47.b7 Rxg7+ 48.Kf4 Rxb7. 

Don't Trade Your Rooks

I become frustrated with players frequently, but I only get angry in rare circumstances. One of those circumstances is when a player voluntarily trades his last piece to reach a lost king and pawn ending. Consider the following position that arose in the MSL Tournament:

Fig. 1

White is dead lost here. There are pawns on both sides of the board and Black has a healthy extra pawn. Since he can obtain a passed pawn any time he wants by ...a6 and ...b5, White has to keep his king on that side of the board to defend. That leaves the Black king free to run over to the other side of the Board and pick off White's g-pawn and h-pawn. If Black's extra pawn was doubled or backward, White might have a chance, but Black's extra pawn is healthy so the position is hopeless for White. If all the pawns were on one side of the board, White might be able to trade down to a drawn king and pawn verses king ending, but with pawns on both sides, that's not going to happen.

With a couple of rooks on the board, White chances are much improved.

Fig. 2

Black should be able to win this ending with his extra pawn and better pawn structure, but it is not a lock. At some point, Black will want to attack the White pawns with his rook, but if he is not careful, he will find his own pawns falling as well. Such endings are often drawn as a result of all the pawns getting traded off. Unfortunately, White played 1.d4 cxd4 2.Rxd4 Rxd4 3.Kxd4 and reached the dead lost position in Figure 1.

Here is another dead drawn position from the MSL Tournament:

Fig. 3

Black has more space and a more mobile king, but the White rook can prevent his king from ever getting close enough to the White pawns. All White has to do is put his rook on the 8th rank and keep the Black king cutoff.

About the best that Black can hope for is to reach a position like the following:

Fig. 4

Unfortunately, Black still can't take the f-pawn because he will lose his rook. 1...Rxf3 2.Ra2+ Ke3 3.Ra3+ Ke2 4.Rxf3.

So the position in Figure 3 should be drawn and the players in fact agreed to a draw after a couple more moves. Those moves were 1. Re1 Kd5 2. Rf1 Kd4 3. Rf2 Rd1+ 4.Rf1 Rxf1+ 5. Kxf1 Ke3 6. Kg2 1/2-1/2. Although the players agreed to a draw and the material is even, White is now dead lost.

Fig. 5

All Black needs to do is play 6...Ke2 and the White king must give way 7.Kh2 Kxf3. 8.Kg1 Kg3 9.Kh1 Kxh3 and all the White pawns fall.

It is never a good idea to trade off your last piece if the resulting king and pawn ending is a loser. You almost always have better chances of making a comeback with pieces on the board, even if those chances are only marginally better. With rooks, however, the chances are often dramatically better with Rooks. If you add a pair of knights to the position in Fig. 5, White's hopes would improve, but Black still would have excellent winning chances. However, if you add a pair of rooks, Black's hopes evaporate and the position is dead drawn.

Here's the lesson to remember: If your only reasonable hope is a draw, unless you can clearly see how you will get it in the king and pawn ending, keep the rooks on the board.

Wrong Colored Bishop and Rook Pawn

The Rule of the Square is absolutely essential endgame knowledge, but there are many other handy tricks that are worth knowing as well. One of them is the problem of the wrong colored bishop and rook pawn.


This position is a dead draw because White cannot force the Black king out of the corner. In endings with a bishop and an a-pawn or h-pawn, if the bishop moves on the same color as the queening square, the game is an easy win. If the queen moves on the opposite color, it is a draw (assuming that the defending king can reach the corner).

This can be an important drawing resource. A player who is down by a piece and a pawn may be able to draw if he can arrange the right exchanges. A player who is down by two pawns may sometimes achieve a draw by sacrificing his last piece for a pawn.

This was the position that Mike Momsen had against Fremd's Meyyappan Ramu on 5th Board. If Black grabs the pawn with 46...Qxb4, his drawing chances increase significantly because White has the wrong colored bishop for the h-pawn. If Black can manage to trade any one of his four remaining pawn for the White g-pawn, a queen trade would lead to a dead draw. Instead, Black played 46...Qe5+ and continued to put up stiff resistance leading White to eventually make a generous draw offer which Black happily accepted.

Defending an Inferior Position

One thing that pleased me greatly was the way that Mike Monsen on 5th Board and Nick Martin on 4th Board hung tough while down material. Too often, players who fall behind look for cheap traps to turn the game around quickly. When the trap doesn't work, their position falls apart quickly. Mike and Nick did it the right way. They maintained solid pawn structures and avoided giving their opponents any easy targets.

Defending an inferior position can be dreary work, but the goal is a simple one, stop your opponent from making progress on his next move. If you can do this for several moves, your opponent may start to wonder whether his advantage is as big as he thought it was or he may start to feel like his advantage is slipping away. He may start playing for a draw instead of a win or he may take unnecessary risks and blunder. For Mike it was the former. For Nick it was the latter.

The Rule of the Square

Prospect moved to 6-2 yesterday without a hard fought win over Fremd which was much closer than the 57-11 score indicated. After an hour an a half of play, each team had one win, Prospect was in trouble on two boards, and the other four boards were tense games that could have gone either way.

A vital question in any king and pawn ending is whether a king can catch a pawn before it queens. Of course it is possible to simply calculate out the moves, but the quickest way to figure it out is to apply the Rule of the Square. Take the distance from the pawn to the end of the board and draw an imaginary square extending towards the defending king. If the king can move into the square on his move, he can catch the pawn. If he cannot move into the square, he cannot catch it.

On 3rd Board, Fremd's Mihir Awati reached this position as Black with seven seconds left on his clock against Caleb Royce. The Rule of the Square would have told him that his king would have reached the White pawn before it queened, but he was unable to calculate out the moves quickly enough and he lost on time. It was a very tough loss as Mihir had played very well in time pressure for many moves to reach this position. On the other hand Caleb had also missed a chance to win using the Rule of the Square a couple moves earlier with twelve minutes left on his clock.

Some Endgame Lessons

Prospect split with the Groves last week, losing a tough match to undefeated Buffalo Grove 42.5-25.5 on Tuesday and beating Elk Grove on Thursday 56.5-11.5. With some better endgame play, the Buffalo Grove match could have been much closer.

Endgame Lesson #1: King and Rook v. King and Pawn


The following position (more or less) occurred on 4th Board with Nick Martin playing white against Buffalo Grove's Matt Wiewel.

This should be a fairly easy win for White. Black will be compelled to give up his for White's d-pawn and White's king and rook should be able to round up the remaining Black pawns easily. However, it is possible to go wrong, so it is worthwhile considering an even more basic position.



The only way for White to win here is with 1.Rb5 cutting off the Black king from supporting the pawn. 1...f3 2.Rb3 f2 3.Rf3 f1=Q 4.Rxf1 and hopefully White knows how to mate with a king and rook. It is vital that White cut off the Black king immediately because the game is drawn if Black's king and pawn are another square farther down the board.


Now 1.Rb4 doesn't do the trick. After 1...f2, White is forced to play 2.Rb1 Kb4 3. Rf1 Kb3 and the game is drawn because White will be forced to trade his rook for the Black pawn.

Returning to the position from Martin-Wiewel, the easiest way for White to avoid a position where his rook might have trouble coping with the Black king and pawns is to get the White king into the action. Unfortunately, White tried to win the game without his king. 1.Ke8?! Heading the wrong direction. After 1.Ke6 Ra8 2.d8=Q Rxd8 3.Rxd8, the White king would have been two squares closer to the action than it was in the game after 1...Ra8+ 2.d8=Q Rxd8+ 3. Kxd8 Kf6. Still if White gets his king moving the win should be fairly easy. 4.Rf2?! Still on the wrong track. 4...Kf5 5.h3??. This was White's last chance, he still could have won with 5.Ke7 g4 6. Kd6 f3 7.Kd5 Kf4 8. Kd4 g3 9.hxg3+ Kxg3 10.Kf3. Now the win is no longer there after 5...g4 6.hxg4 Kxg4


The White king is too far away. The rook is a wonderfully powerful piece, but it cannot handle the combined king and pawn by itself. If it cannot cut off the king before the pawn has advanced too far, the rook must have the king's help to cope.

Endgame Lesson #2: Defending Rook and Pawns v. Rook and Pawns.

There is an old aphorism in chess that goes "All rook endings are drawn." This is obviously not true, but rook endings often offer unexpected drawing possibilities. Before considering the ending that arose between Michael Monsen and Matt Wiewel on 5th Board in the Buffalo Grove match, let's start with another basic position.


This position is drawn as long as White toggles his king between g2 and h2 because the Black rook is stuck in front of its own pawn. If White plays 1.Kg3, Black wins with 1...Rg1+ 2.Kf2 a1=Q. If White plays 1.Kf2, Black wins with 1...Rh2 2.Rxa2 Rh2+ 3.Kg3 Rxa2. However, after 1.Kh2, the Black rook cannot escape without dropping the pawn. If Black tries to bring his king over to help, the White rook will check it away.


Black has an extra pawn, but as in the previous diagram, his rook is defending the pawn from in front and the Black king is in no position to relieve the rook of its defensive chores. White panicked with 43.Rd3?? and was helpless against Black's extra pawn after the exchange of rooks . However, if White could have gotten his rook behind Black's passed pawn, I think he should have had pretty good drawing chances. 43. Rd5! looks very solid. After 45...a4 Ra5, it is hard to see how Black is going to improve his position as his king is tied to the defense of the f-pawn and the rook is tied to the a-pawn. If Black should try to bring his king over to support the a-pawn, White can bring his king over to defend and leave the rook to defend pawns on the other side.