King & Pawn Endgames Crash Course

what's going on guys welcome to this crash course on king and pawn ending so we're gonna be looking at all of the fundamentals and the basics in end games where there are kings and pawns only this is very common when you're playing against an evenly matched opponent you trade off lots of the pieces throughout the game and you end up in a position like this at the end of the game where there's maybe one or two or a couple of pawns for each side of the board so we're going to be looking at several different examples let's jump right in so in king and pond endings there's one question that needs to be answered and the question is who gets a queen first because most of the time whoever gets the queen first will win the game so in this example is a very basic example but there's a lot of things we can learn from this position white has a pass pawn on the a file he'd like to push it and get a queen here and black has a pass pawn on the h file he's like he would like to push it and get a queen over here and so the question is who gets it first right so if we are white we have to ask ourselves that and this brings us to the first concept that's important to understand and it's the idea of pawn races you're going to see this a lot in king and pawn endings if white starts pushing his pawn it's basically a race between this pawn on a2 and this pawn on h5 and who's going to get the queen first one way you could do it would be i'm going to go here he's going to go here i'm going gonna go here he's gonna go here that's the hard way okay the easy way is to just count how many moves it's gonna take so for example one two three four five moves and i can get a queen how many is gonna take black one two three four moves and black gets a queen so obviously four is less than five so in this example black's gonna get the queen before we will if you don't believe me i don't trust that the counting works let's just check it out for ourselves and see what's gonna happen and sure enough black gets the queen first and he's not only is he putting us in check but he's also controlling the queenie square to where if we get try to get a queen he's just going to capture it alright so back at the starting position the next question would be after we play this move a4 he plays here do we just automatically lose the game is there anything else that we can do if we're white in this position well instead of just continuing to push our pawn because we know we're going to lose what if we change our strategy and we try to stop this guy from becoming a queen well that brings us to the next important concept in king and pawn endings which is pawn versus king races okay so we just looked at races between pawns right where one pawn is racing another pawn you also have situations where the king is trying to catch the pawn before it becomes a queen like in this example our king would like to try to stop his pawn and again you could do it the hard way so i'm going to move here he's going to move here i'm going to move here he's going to move here i'm going to move here you know to see if you can catch it or you can do it the easy way so i want to show you a little trick it's white's move in this position and so if you're wondering if you can catch a pawn the way you can do it is wherever that pawn is at draw a line on the diagonal and then go up and back to where it is and over and back to where it is and make this box in your mind okay just kind of visualize this box and the question is if your king can enter into that box then you can stop the pawn if your king cannot enter into the box then you can't stop the ponto in this case can our king enter into this box well yeah right we could just go there or even here both of those moves would enter into this box and so sure enough if we do it we go here he goes here we go here boom we caught the pawn and if he tries to get a queen we just take it all right so i went back to the starting position again and let's say that after we play a4 black realizes that okay if i try to move my pawn white's gonna be able to capture it and so he says you know what i'm gonna change my strategy i'm gonna come over here and try to capture white's pawn well can he catch the pawn what's the easy way to check well we make the diagonal create the box right so this is the box that we get and can black's king enter into this box well the answer is no right he's one he's one square up too short so he's not going to be able to catch the pawn and we can see that for ourselves he goes there we go here he goes there we go here he's one move too late right and we get the queen and we win the game so that's a very helpful trick that you should remember is whenever you're trying to calculate if the king can catch the pawn you just draw it out on the diagonal create the box and if the king can enter into the box he can catch the pawn if not he can't catch it just to illustrate that concept of the box one more time i've changed black's position of his king and so now if we play a4 we get this box here and check it out this is where the box would be black can step into it and so we know he's going to be able to catch our pawn and sure enough he gets there in time he captures it and takes our queen alright so one last time going back to this position the way that we win as white is we start to push our pawn and then depending on what black does we change our strategy so if he tries to catch our pawn with his king like moving here well we keep moving it forward and we know he can't get into the box right we move here and the box is too small we're gonna win if he changes his strategy and starts pushing the pawn well we know that we can get our king into the box so we move it over right and whenever he pushes the pawn we move our king over and if he ever moves his king over we don't just go eat this up because then we let him get into the box right so we have to keep moving it forward and then if he does this we come over here if he does this we come here right because if we make the mistake of capturing the pawn oops sorry about that if we make the mistake of capturing the pawn guess what we let his king into the box and now it's just a draw right so we have to kind of alternate back and forth by pushing our pawn and capturing with the king over here all right next we're gonna look at a very common position so we're white we have an extra pawn we would like to push it and get a queen the problem is black's king is sitting smack dab in front of our pawn so what do we do well we can't move forward obviously king blocks it we can't move our king forward because black's king is what's in opposition okay opposition is a special term you have to understand in king and pawn endings and it basically means that one king is directly opposing the other king and that's important because we cannot move our king forward because black's king is controlling all those squares which means we have to either move to the side or back those are our only options so if we move to the side black can get a draw in this position every time by going straight back and when we try to bring our king up he just brings his king over again achieving opposition and so we either have to move our king back or to the side or we can try to push our pawn forward but what's gonna happen is he's gonna move his king over we're gonna move our king over and this is a stalemate right his king's not in check but he can't move anywhere it's a stalemate it's a tie game not what we wanted we can't we can't win and that being said if we back up a second if black doesn't know what he's doing he actually can lose this position by making the wrong move so instead of going straight back if he goes on the diagonal that's a crucial mistake and the reason is because he allows us to get opposition right we bring our king forward gain the opposition and now it's black who has to make a choice on which side does he want to go to and even if he goes here to try to block the pawn now we can push it forward and the position is different it's not a stalemate anymore black actually does have a place to go he has to move there and it allows us to bring our king up control this square and we can escort our pawn for the queen now this is an important position as well because if you can ever get your king controlling the queening square okay so this is called the queening square because it's the square where the pawn has to go to become a queen if you can ever get your king controlling it that's really good because what can black do he can't do anything he can't move there because your king is controlling it and once you next move get your queen he can't take it because it's defended by your king so that is the goal when you only have a lone pawn you have to try to control the queening square and if you're able to accomplish that you're going to be able to win all right now that brings us to our next example where we're going to build off what we just learned so same kind of situation where white has one extra pawn and he would like to get a queen and again black's king is kind of in the way blockading him from doing that but the difference now is that white's king is in front of his pawn and before and the other position if you remember white's king was behind the pawn okay so here we're behind the pawn and then back to this example we're in front of the pawn okay so that's an important difference now this position actually it's a win for white if it's blacks move and it's a draw if it's white's move and the reason that's that's changes is because if it's white's move it means that white has the opposition that means black has to either step to the side or retreat backwards and if he steps to the side he allows white's king to gain control of the the file right so that he can escort his pawn forward and so let's say black goes here well now we can push our pawn and black's in trouble and if we go back let's say instead of trying to come forward he just tried to stay in front of the pawn right blockading it that way well again we gain the opposition and we continue to do this until we force him to decide again and keep gaining control of those squares right and he can keep doing this and we're going to keep getting the opposition and eventually we get to this position and guess what he has to go to the side and boom he can't go back in anymore he can't block the pawn anymore because there's no more aboard ready has to come up push our pawn he can try to do this but again we just go here and we're escorting the pawn all the way right he goes here push the pawn he goes here and what's the move this is important we gain the opposition with our king if you push the pawn forward that is a huge mistake and now we give it back to black and this is the same position we looked at earlier which is a draw okay so you do not want to do that don't make the mistake of pushing the pawn forward you have to keep the king in front and always gain opposition on his king when you can and now again we force him to the side and remember we control the queening square and we just escort our pawn forward for the win he goes here we go here he goes here we go here and we get the queen and by the way a queen and a king against the king is a win for white if you don't know how to do that i have another video i'll link it in the description below that shows you the process go watch that to make sure you understand that but this should always be a win for white once you're able to get the queen all right now we're going to learn a new concept called triangulation and this is a fancy word that just means you're losing a tempo okay and if that doesn't make sense just hang in with me after you see this example it all makes sense so very similar position that we just looked at we've got this pawn we'd like to become a queen his king is blocking us it should be a draw if that was all that was happening but we've got some extra pawns over here and that changes things now if it was black's turn in this position if you remember from the previous example going back would be his best chance and then when we bring our king up he would come over and if we tried to push this forward we would end up getting a stalemate but in this case we wouldn't do that we would just take this and we would end up winning because now we have two pawns completely different situation we would be able to get at least one of these to become a queen and win okay so if it was black's turn let me go back let's pawn back here if it was black's turn he would have to move away somewhere because we have the opposition we could come in and take the pawn but what if it's our turn what if it's white's turn right now well we can't go there because this king is controlling the square well let's just move over here and see what happens right what's he going to do he's going to go back and when we go over he's going to go up and if we try to push our king forward he's going to gain the opposition and if we go here he's going to go over and guess what it's a stalemate so how do we make progress if it's our turn well this is where triangulation comes into the picture the way it works is like this instead of just moving our king back and forth which doesn't accomplish anything we move our king back and then we hop back to these squares before we jump back up at the right moment so this is what it looks like in practice we move our king over he's going to go straight back and last time we saw we can't just go back to where we came from where we get the exact same position so this time what we're going to do is we're going to just bring our king back and the idea is that now black doesn't want to come here because boom we would get the opposition and essentially accomplish what we wanted to accomplish so he's going to have to move to the side and now we wait again we go over here and the point is by doing that we essentially changed the tempo of the position so now again he doesn't want to go there or boom we get opposition so he's got to go back and now we can bring our king back to here and it's the same exact position except it's black's turn and the reason that's good for us is because now if he comes up boom we get the opposition if he doesn't come up and he goes over here guess what boom we still get the opposition and now boom boom boom it's not a stalemate we come up here and we get a queen so if that's a little confusing let me go back and recap it one more time we had this position it was our turn okay we moved here he moves here i want you to pay close attention look at where the pieces are it was our turn now right these pawns are here king is on the white square pawns on the white square he's on the white square and it's our turn but after the triangulation maneuver where we went back he went here we went here he went here we went here king's on the white square pawns on the white square he's on the white square everything is the same except whose turn is it now it's black's turn so all that maneuvering lost to move and gets us into a winning position so that's triangulation if that didn't make sense go back back and watch it one or two more times and it'll probably click try it out for yourself but very important concept comes in handy in situations like this where you need to kind of lose a move all right so we've covered a lot of the fundamentals now i want to just show you a couple of example positions that look a little bit more like what you would find in a normal chess game so here's a position that at first glance looks relatively equal both players have two pawns on each side but it's white's move and white has to make a decision and the decision is does he go for these pawns or does he go here and try to stop you know black's king and the way that you want to approach these positions is very similar back remember when we talked about pawn races and how you just counted the moves almost like you know one two three four five moves and one two uh three four moves whatever it was same exact concept applies here so but the way you do it is if i go here clearly i'm gonna be able to capture the pawns before his king can catch them so what is he gonna do well he's gonna come over here and start taking my pawns so the way you do it is you count one two three and then i'm gonna start pushing this forward so four five six seven eight moves and i should have a queen and now let's count for him one two three four five six seven eight nine moves okay so i'm ahead i'm gonna get my queen first and if you don't believe me let's see if that's true so i go here he goes here captures here captures goes here i push captures i push he pushes push pushes i push he pushes boom we get the queen first he's not there yet and we we win the game because we have a chance to you know we could just use our queen like come over here stop this game over okay so same concept as with the pawn races even in slightly more complex situations you just want to count the moves to figure out you know are you going to win or not all right now here's another position and it's almost identical to the previous position we've got two pawns on this side we've got two pawns on this side the only thing that's different is that i have advanced these pawns forward and the king a couple of spaces right so before it was back here now it's up here and if we do the same exercise you'll notice it's very different so one two three four five six seven eight moves and let's check for black one two three four five six moves so if we do the same thing we're gonna lose so in this case that should be a clue that okay this is not the right move to play in this position i have to go back here and try to prevent his king from coming in it's my only chance right because we counted and we know for sure that's just a guaranteed loss so again counting is very very important right figuring out who's going to win the pawn race or in this case it's like a king capture and then a pawn race but who's going to win right and all you have to do is count that's the easy way to do it if you try to calculate every move it's going to be very difficult all right so the final example i want to leave you with and this is very very useful very practical and you can use this in a lot of your games is it almost looks pretty even so five pawns for black five pawns for white but the big difference and the big advantage that white has is he can play a4 and after black trades white can use this pawn as a decoy a decoy and this is very important in king and paw endings if you can ever get a pass pawn to use as a decoy to keep your opponent's king occupied then it frees up your king to go and take all the other pawns right if there's like a clump of pawns on one side of the board and you can get one pass pawn on the other side of the board like in this case that usually means you're gonna win right because what black can't come over here and like defend these pawns you're just gonna go get a queen he's gotta either keep his king here to babysit this pawn or try to go capture it and as soon as he does guess what boom you're going over here you're taking all these and you're going to win and so in this example you know black doesn't really have any good moves like let's say he goes here you just bring your king over and take these he's gonna go there he's gonna capture it you're gonna go here and he's too he's too late right you're just gonna take probably this one come over here take this one take this one and guess what boom game over okay so very useful using a pass pawn as a decoy keep that in mind that's going to be how you win a lot of king and pawn endings we looked at a lot of sort of more complicated examples but at the end of the day if you can just make a decoy run your king over to the other side of the board take all the pawns and get a queen that's the easy way to win okay so i hope that helped you guys um let me know if you have questions put them in the comments i'll try to answer those but as always thanks so much for watching stay sharp play smart and take care [Music] you

Channel: Chess Vibes

Views: 93,176

Keywords: nelson lopez chess, endgames, chess endgames, chess endgame, king and pawn, kings and pawns, king and pawn endgame, king and pawn endgames, king + pawn endgame, king + pawn endgames, king & pawn endgames, king and pawn fundamentals, kind and pawn endgame basics, basic king and pawn endgames, basic king and pawn endgame principles, beginner chess endgames, beginner chess crash course, chess endgame crash course, king and pawn endings, king and pawn chess endings, chess ending

Id: dr5sA-IzEmM

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021