Principles of Chess Endgames | King Activity

hey guys and welcome to a video or rather a series of videos that i'm really really looking forward to making so uh this is going to be a new series of videos on two uh topics within the realm of chess improvement and these are two very broad topics that i think do not get enough coverage um on youtube and on twitch and chess literature and as i'll explain the second issue i have with these topics is that when they are tackled i think that it's not done in a manner that's particularly systematic or conducive to mastery and i'm going to try to take on the very ambitious task of rectifying that and these two topics are principles of the endgame and principles of positional play or just positional positional play positional concepts so over the course of the next couple of months i'm going to make a bunch of these videos on what i believe to be the most important endgame principles and themes and the most important principles and themes within the realm of positional chess so today we're talking about king activity but uh we're going to try to cover as many important concepts as possible we're going to talk about weak squares pawn structure maneuvers all of those nitty gritty impositional chests and end games that you might be fearing or you might think only gms kind of can do i'm going to try to demystify and present in a relatively coherent manner now the big thing that i'm going to be doing and this is really the guiding method behind these videos that rather than focusing on just one example and spending 30 minutes on it i'm going to try to go uh i'm going to try to go for breadth here i'm going to show at the very least four to five examples per video because i believe that much like tactics it's not enough uh to show somebody what a pin is right you then have to give that person five or six examples at a minimum uh so that they can see the various manifestations uh you know and what to look for it's not enough just to explain you also have to drill it down and that's what i'm going to be trying to do with positional chests and with end games i feel like they can be learned in a very similar manner to tactical themes and that is by looking at several examples all at once and uh really getting that pattern recognition in place as early as possible so with that ambitious goal in mind let's begin and today we're going to start with what is perhaps the single most important principle of the end game which is king activity you must keep your king active at all costs in the vast majority of end game positions and uh we are going to take a look at what exactly that even means and we have some fascinating end games ahead of us the last thing i'll say before we jump in uh and i won't be making this uh you know long-winded introduction and subsequent videos on these topics uh but i will be going relatively fast on all of these examples so feel free to pause the video uh you know set this up on your own board again i'm gonna try to fit five examples within 30 minutes so uh there there will be moments within these games where i'm not focusing on interesting stuff just because it's beyond the purview of what we're talking about but that doesn't mean you can't explore things and you can't learn from from these games in ways other than as an illustration of of the topic so so by all means feel free to structure this in the way that is most conducive to your learning and let's start with a classic example that i showed all of my students i feel like everybody should know it because it is perhaps the single most clear illustration of how much king activity changes the landscape of an end game this is a game between uh cuban world champion jose raul capoblanca uh fourth world champion and severely tartar cower who was one of the strongest players of the early 20th century i believe he was uh later given the grand master title by fiji toward the end of his life and uh kappa blanc and tardikar have reached a really interesting endgame material is currently equal five pawns each uh but you might see that white has this protected pass pawn on g5 and of course we will also talk about past pawns in uh in a subsequent video but if you look a little bit more carefully you'll see that there is a bit of a problem white has this incredibly weak pawn on c3 and a weak pawn on a4 and that pawn cannot be defended white's rook although it's on the seventh rank it cannot return to defend this pawn it looks like white's not only going to lose this pawn but the king is going to be tossed back to the second rank and this g pawn alone is not going to decide the game in white's favor because after g6 even the rook can simply capture on g6 and after rook takes c7 rook g7 black is totally fine the position is approximately equal uh what else can white try why could try to hunt for the d5 pawn but that kind of loses focus rook takes c3 king e2 black can defend it with c6 and if white pushes g6 that doesn't do as much as it seems to because after rook g3 the rook is behind the passport at the very least black's position is very comfortable the game should end in a draw but it turns out that in this position white is winning with an absolutely brilliant maneuver one of my favorite and game maneuvers capablanca realized that these pawns do not matter the only thing that matters is the fact that after black takes on c3 white's king is going to be tossed back to the second rank and that cannot be allowed capoblanca thought about it and realized the king actually has a pathway toward black side of the position where he can support this crucial pass pawn on g5 capoblanca plays the move king g3 tardo coward takes on c3 and the king turns the corner king h4 the whole point here is that the king is going to walk up through h5 to g6 or through an alternate path that i'm about to reveal and once the king gets into black side of the board it's going to be so much easier to push this pawn white's king rook and pawn are going to overwhelm black stroke because black's king unlike its counterpart is completely cut off along the eighth ring watch what happens tartakower continues to go after white's pawns now king h5 was possible but capoblanca finds an even more efficient way of getting the king straight into the heart of black's position the king diagonally whoops apologies for that the king diagonally crosses its way to f6 target coward can take all the pawns that he wants he does he takes on f4 he can even take the pawn on d4 but as my good friend robert has says it's not about the quantity of the pass pawns it's only about the quality you can have a single pass pawn but that pass pawn decides the game after king f6 you're threatening mate the rook swings over and now checkmate is simply unstoppable we're not even talking about promotion here we're talking about mate so tardikower instead of taking on d4 he goes rookie e4 tries to keep the rook on an open file kappa blanca slides into f6 threatening mate rook g7 check forcing black's king on to an awkward spot now capoblanca simply starts collecting all of black's pawns rook c8 is a maid threat the king collects the pawn on f5 goes back to f6 in order to keep blackstroke passive rooksya made us there and look at how much mileage white is squeezing out of that king after rook at 4 check the king goes on to greener pastures goes on to e5 in order to collect the d5 pawn g7 check another very nice move by jose capoblanca one of the great things about having your king active in the end game is that almost all pawn end games are going to be winning when there is such a disparity in king activity normally if black's king was on b4 or d7 the game would end in a draw but because white's king is so active this end game is an elementary win the simplest way to win simply being to slide the king over to b7 and win all of black's pawns it's like watching lionel messi on the soccer field you feel like the king was on f6 one second and it's on b7 the other target counter can't take the pawn and campablanca completes the job by taking two more of black's pawns and winning by promoting the d-pawn tardicara could have resigned a little bit earlier he resigned here because the d-pawn is entirely unstoppable a relatively simple example but nonetheless this shows the incredible power how much activating your king in almost any type of end game can totally transform the landscape of the position moving on moving on we have the following position from akiba rubenstein's game akiba rubenstein also an early 20th century player uh and one of the greatest endgame players of that generation of that time this is also a relatively famous game now it's black to play white has just played the move rook to c1 offering a rook trade and a quick look reveals that black really cannot refuse that trade because if black goes down to h4 white's rook infiltrates to c7 and all of black's pawns fall so rubenstein takes on c1 and the king takes now you might notice that there is a disparity in the pawn structure black's pawn structure is so much better than whites but in a pawn end game pawn structure might not matter because the position could get locked up and then the game ends in a draw now the advice that you often get in these types of positions is to go toward the center but very importantly what this game reveals is that king activity does not just mean going blindly toward the center of the board in any kind of end game it means very mindfully and very carefully charting the right path for the king the king is capable of great things but you have to know where you're going and why if you go toward the center you're not going to get much done because white's king is right in time to stop the infiltration to c4 and even though white's pawns are weak there's nothing to attack them so instead of going toward the center rubenstein realized that the target square for black's king is on h3 and that is because this pawn on h2 is white's biggest weakness and what happens in the game is that rubenstein makes a b-line straight for that square white's king barely barely manages to reach g1 but it doesn't matter again look at the disparity in king activity that disparity is transformed into a very confident win with a relatively simple but nonetheless very nice plan rubenstein now realizes that what he needs to do is clear kind of you know it's like when you're walking with an axe and clearing all the trees he will have to get his king over to g3 what does that entail well that means he'll have to trade the pawns on h2 and f2 and he has just the tools to do that because white is totally paralyzed first he goes e5 freezing white spawns now he goes b5 not strictly necessary but he wanted to make sure that white doesn't have any extra moves on the other side boom boom boom all pawns of the fourth ring g4 there goes one pawn okay cone goes e4 trying to mix things up obviously g takes f3 would be very inadvisable always got to be careful rubenstein plays f takes e4 and now he plays h4 and g3 the game is over white is essentially forced to trade both of these pawns and after hg3 hg3 eric cohn resigned because if he takes on g3 then the king takes walks up to f3 takes this pawn and the game is over if white tries uh f3 then black can win either with g2 or with a6 but the move g2 is probably the simplest one f4 it looks like white's broken through and white's promoted but again all because of the king activity this is not to be feared king g3 e6 and now a very typical mating sequence funnily enough black could even troll with a move like a6 even let white promote and if this is in an illustration of the importance of king activity then i don't know what is so once again it's all about charting the right path particularly in pawn end games do not go blindly toward the center try to find the right target square for your king and get the most mileage out of it and speaking of mileage let's take a look at one of my games um from right about 12 years ago against benjamin bach we would neither of us were grandmasters at the time this game was played but i think this is also good illustration of the fact that even in queen end games even when your opponent has uh has an active queen it doesn't matter the king can overpower even the queen in the right kind of situation okay so we have a queen endgame materials equal six pawns apiece but if you look carefully at the pawn structure you might notice two things first is that black has this very weak backward pawn on f6 and it's fixed by the pawn on e4 now that might not matter because white doesn't have any pieces left but that's something to keep in mind the second thing perhaps even more important is that we have the potential to create a pass pawn with h4 and i was very tempted to play h4 here why didn't i do that because after the trade black screen swings back to the blockading post on h6 and white simply cannot make any progress without allowing black to create a pass pawn of his own with f5 so if we go h5 we yield the g5 square black goes f5 and the pass pawns kind of canceled each other out there's going to be perpetual check the king is simply not able to escape the queen's checks and black can even push his pawn if he's so inclined uh if we don't go h5 we go king h3 then the queen can just for example park itself on f4 f5 is threatened if you try queen g4 obviously black will not trade black will simply continue checking white is unable to make progress here so with that without uh eliminated i started to kind of get scared i thought well i've got this advantage i've got this advantage but maybe that can be transformed into anything and then i remembered something i remember that my king actually had legs i don't need to keep it on g2 nor do i need to hurry with the move h4 i can't use my queen to attack f6 because the queen is guarding this very important d2 square we do not want to allow this or rather queen c2 is more accurate we do not want to allow black to take all of my queenside pawns so let's keep the queen on e2 let's make the king work for it boom boom boom boom the king all the way to g6 in four moves there was nothing black could have done to stop it and this makes all the difference i slid it all the way up to g7 and now when i move my queen to the f-file the f-pawn is immediately going to be under attack plus if i ever push my h-bond which happens very soon i call this kind of rolling out the red carpet once the pawn reaches h6 the king will be able to supervise the pawn's progress all the way to promotion which frees up the white queen to do stuff like block checks or cover important squares or attack the f6 pawn or all three of them benjamin tries to desperately prevent me from getting a pass pawn he plays g4 that's an ingenious move queen takes g4 he takes on h2 but it doesn't matter this pawn on f6 is what kills black queen okay i went a4 first uh don't want to give him any any pawns my king on g7 is a perfectly safe and be immune from any checks whatsoever queen d2 queen g6 now white is threatening uh queen f7 and then queen takes f6 so benjamin steps aside of this king of course you don't want to take on f6 and give up g3 so i played g4 and benjamin goes queen g3 one really nice illustration of how important king activity is even in the queen end game would have happened if black played queen f4 so what happens here white can force a queen trade but black can play the very clever move king e7 and if you look carefully you'll see that the point is that white cannot take on f4 black gets an unstoppable pass pawn but you might also see the black is essentially in zugzwa the queen can't move otherwise you lose f6 they can't get move because you lose f6 black only has two moves at his disposal and that is to push the pawn up to c6 and then up to c5 all white has to do is wait it out king g6 c6 king g7 c5 king g6 and finally black is in zug's wang and black takes the queen we play g takes f5 this is king activity at its finest black has to step aside and give up f6 and lose so after g4 benjamin went queen g3 queen f5 check king takes f6 and that's it i've won the pawn and the rest is very easy we simply promote the spawn every square along the g file is protected and at this point notice that i don't really care about my queen side pawns anymore i have judged that my pawn is sufficiently far advanced that we can essentially give up all three of these pawns because we are so close to promoting queen a2 queen e6 cutting off the queen's control of the promotion square and now the king hides on f8 and then queen f5 if he went queen c5 check after king 8 there are simply no more check so benjamin checks me from the other side king f8 if queen d8 check look at this king f7 and the queen very nicely covers all of the potential checking squares we now four queen f5 last attempt by benjamin to pin my pawn and after king f7 finally black is out of checks promotion is unstoppable just one little funny detail a little bit outside the scope of what we're talking about benjamin made a couple more moves in this position i went queen d5 check and he resigned but can you spot a really really cute tactic there was actually a mate in two and it was quite a beautiful one there was the move queen c6 check which i saw but i was afraid to play it i didn't want to spoil the game i thought maybe i'm hallucinating but turned out i wasn't this is indeed checkmate so that existed but i decided to win the game in more mundane fashion notice the king ends the game on g7 it started the game on g2 it went all the way up and that did the trick okay now so far we've looked at pretty much balanced uh balanced end games but let's take a look at how king activity can actually help you turn around a completely lost position sometimes going into a lost endgame is the only way to save yourself from a checkmating attack so i played this game about 10 years ago against the grandmaster hungarian gm super fogorashi who played a phenomenal middle game he was crushing me and i was forced to give up a piece and get the game into what seems like a completely hopeless end game white is literally up a full night i don't even have a pawn for it and to to make matters worse white has this uh protected outside past pawn so even a pawn end game even if i gives up the night is still going to be lost i was thinking about resigning here but then i decided i'll try one last little crazy idea and that crazy idea involves trying to run the king up the board as quickly as possible and use my past d-pawn to create last-ditch counter-play watch what happens king d6 okay he brings his knight back out of the dead i played rook takes h3 at least taking a single pawn after 98 check came the important cross servants i think a lot of people's instinct here would be to drop back to d7 in order not to give up the e6 ball which you have to understand particularly when you're down material is that king activity is so much more important than clinging to a single pawn not always but in this case it is after king d7 knight g7 white wins the pawn anyway and the king is uh sort of stuck in the doldrums so i figured all right sparta king c5 knight c7 king c4 i don't care knight takes c6 and now i get to play d4 and something interesting happens my opponent took a really long time here and he couldn't come up with a move he got into severe time pressure eventually he plays the very inaccurate move rookie 4 which is tempting the best move by the way would have been this pretty interesting maneuver rook d1 forcing me to push the pawn and now back to e1 the whole point is that this pawn on d3 stops the king from coming to d3 and if black tries rook h2 white gives a check and after king d5 another check and the beautiful point of this is after king c4 white actually has checked it on c5 so king activity comes back to bite black but this is not easy to spot particularly given that i think my opponent had already relaxed after rookie 4 he had completely forgotten that my rook can start checking him rook h1 rook h2 he covers with the rook and i come back to uh h1 and now i'm threatening to move my rook to b1 and white's not careful then black's gonna start having winning chances once i win this pawn on b2 it's all because my king restricts white's king and stops it from coming to d3 my opponent having thought for a long time almost ran out of time and kind of panicked he decided to repeat moves but again it turns out that he could have essentially reverted to the other line and played king c1 and after d3 white has this really cool maneuver with rookie 4 and rookie 5 again but he simply missed it it fell out of his field of vision you don't usually look for checkmates in the end game and in this way of course it involves some luck but i was able to salvage this create this end game down tonight against the gm it's all because i decided as a desperate attempt to activate my king and not to keep it passive on d7 to try to cling to my pawns and as our final example i want to take a look at my all-time favorite example the first one the capoblanca game is my favorite illustration of the importance of king activity but this last game is my favorite application of uh the rule that you have to keep your kang as active as possible in the end game this is an absolute treat okay i don't know why it fast forwards until the end of the game but don't worry no spoilers were revealed now this game was shown to me by my coach left sahis uh grandmaster who was playing white against a mark hebden uh english grandmaster and this was the world junior championship in the 1980s so neither of these players was a gm at the time this game was played sakis has played an excellent game as you can see he is up upon he's got a protected and extra passer on b4 and what's more he's got complete and total domination over all sides of the board black is entirely paralyzed now if we make a random move for white you can see the black is just unable to move the queen can't move because of queen f6 check the rook can't move because you drop f7 either with the queen of the bishop blacks basically only thing that he could do is just go back and forth from a7 to b6 uh the king can't even move because again you'll drop f7 but the frustrating thing is that it's not enough to get this church you actually have to win and winning is hard because we have opposite colored bishops and this b pawn isn't able to reach b6 this is a dark square and black has control over it okay now are there any tactics bishop takes f7 was considered by psyches and if rook takes f7 there's a check on g6 unfortunately black takes the queen and there are no discoveries no available discoveries here for white so he thought and thought and thought maybe maybe go c4 but then you yield this really nice outpost for the bishop eventually has came up with uh really i don't think i'm overstating the case by saying that it's one of the most brilliant uh end game ideas that i have seen because it's not the end game yet the queens are still on the board i would still classify this as a middle game but what size realizes is that one of the weapons at white's disposal is a queen trade and the way that white can orchestrate a queen trade potentially is to play the move bishop c6 and then to play the move queen to d7 now the problem with forcing a queen trait prematurely and this is sort of me imitating what sahis is thinking is that even in an end game black is quickly going to get the rook to the open file white stroke on f3 is no longer applying significant pressure on the f pawn and black has excellent drawing chances but what if in this situation the white king magically teleported its way over let's say to c6 well that would make all the difference right because black's pawns would collapse but white doesn't have time to get it there the king doesn't fly and after rook a8 king e2 you're not even close to being in time the king has to remain and defend these pawns okay so is there any solution to this problem well the solution as hopefully you have kind of by now thought about is to first bring the king over to the queen side and then to trade queens literally king f1 king e2 king d3 at this point hebden probably thought sahis was gonna stop there but no king c4 okay now here black white has to be a little bit careful if you go up to b5 you might get a nasty check on b6 so his kind of reaches the checkpoint in the video game he drops it back to b3 again why does threatening queen f6 jack so the queen must return to e7 first size fixes the pawn structure note these moves we've seen them a couple of times today we've seen rubenstein play b5 sometimes fixing your opponent's pawns is a good idea taking care of your future self you never know when it might be a good idea to prevent black from playing g4 and now it's back to business king c4 and now white has time for king b5 this is crazy and what's crazy about this is there's no check on b7 hebden gives check on e8 now black also had a very tempting check rook v8 check and here you see an amazing line the king walks all the way up to a6 and after rook b6 king a5 it turns out that there are no more checks and black cannot defend the pawn on f7 the king does it all so hepton goes queenie a track but now we resort back to the old idea bishop c6 queen d8 king first drops back to c4 and now it's time for queen d7 which we've already discussed and the dream has come true after the queen trade the king walks right up to d5 and overwhelms black's defense it's just amazing hebden tries to trade on his own terms he goes queen e6 check popsicle says thank you very much he trades everything and again king activity decides the day because the king's gonna walk up to a6 and then white will either promote the pawn or win all of black's pawns in the center and on the king side after forcing the king uh to walk over to the queen side watch how this unfolds we don't care about the f2 pawn that pawn doesn't matter uh absolutely take it first psa has played c4 just stopping any kind of d5 shenanigans and now king b7 you do not allow black's king to reach c7 then it would be a draw he pushes the pawn to b6 now it might seem a little bit difficult to get this king out of the way because if you go to a7 you're just going to end up being pinned but all that psy has had to do is move the bishop back and now the threat of king c6 is totally devastating if black continues shuffling the king goes up to c6 and if black goes king e7 then at the very least you can just go b7 king c7 and then you can promote winning the bishop so hebden tries the last ditch attempt d5 saejis takes it and it's very clear that he easily stops the pawn with a bishop on b5 and that's indeed what happens d6 e3 bishop b5 bishop f6 and now a classic case of two pass spawns kind of overwhelming the defenses bishop a6 check in whichever direction you go you either allow the king to infiltrate or you allow the pawn to promote if king d8 and b7 and if king b8 then psychist goes king d7 again notice that the king is leading you don't want to go d7 here because then it's going to be hard to cover the d8 square so you lead with your king you walk it up to e8 and then you'll be able to promote the d-pawn have done resigned in this position just a tour de force the king does it all in this game absolute heroic so even with the queens on the board if you are anticipating a queen trade i'm not saying bring your king from e1 to a7 uh and then get checkmated there you gotta be very careful about doing that but notice how even preparing for an endgame can involve bringing the king to the right side of the board so to summarize we took a look at five examples where king activity decided the game all right in the first one that's the capablanca game we understood that it's not even about the quantity of past pawns it's about the quality and in order to see the pass pawn through to promotion king activity is often the missing link it's often worth literally three or more pawns that's what capoblanca showed in the second game we understood that king activity isn't just about bringing the king to the center but well sometimes it is but what you have to do is chart the right path for the king you have to understand where the king actually does the most work and we saw that akiba rubenstein understood that the king belongs on h3 here which allows these king side pawns to march forward and crash their white's defenses in my game against benjamin bach we saw the king activity is important even with queens on the board and it can be that missing link because it can relieve the queen of some duties that it simply cannot manage i walked my king all the way to g7 helping me create the possibility of a past pawn and putting pressure on f6 then we saw an example where i yes i was really lucky but i managed to save an end game a full piece down by activating my king at all costs and creating sudden counterplay against white's passive king and finally the position we just saw we saw left sides bringing the king to the queen side into black territory literally in the middle game because he understood that an end game was coming and in that endgame he would need his king to be active so uh hopefully you know even before you watch the video you probably understood that king activity was important but i hope that these examples really sort of bring out uh the just absolute irreplaceability of the king in the end game so remember to use the king wisely again don't get checkmated that's possible in the end game but i would say that the guiding principle that is true across all end games whether it's a pawn end game or a queen end game even if there are three or four pieces on the board is that your king has to be in the right place because the fewer pieces there are the less you can afford to have one of your pieces just kind of lounging on a beach that's what the king does most of the game but the moment you sense that an end game is near it's time to start thinking about the king and what it can do that's our first most important endgame principle and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Daniel Naroditsky

Views: 54,442

Rating: 4.9748111 out of 5

Keywords: gothom, levi, IM, tactics, puzzle, agadmator, penguinz0, MoistCr1tikal, magnus, carlsen, chess, tetris, chessbrah, hikaru, nakamura, grandmaster, eric hansen, daniel, naroditsky, speed, blitz, funny, rapid, match, chesscom, twitch, checkmate, strategy, calculation, top, best chess channel, Tournament, money, bet, famous, pogchamps, pog, champs, lesson, teaching, super-grandmaster, master, commentary, chess videos, chess instruction, naka, speedrun, speedchess, fide, event, Hikaru adoption, bullet, entertainment, star wars

Id: mhUoe2JBxco

Length: 29min 22sec (1762 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021