Even a single Pawn can be the difference between winning and losing. This simple fact is vital for beginning chess players to understand. The material at your disposal is important — and that means every Pawn is important. Just winning a Pawn can be the edge that allows you to win; and losing a Pawn can be the edge that allows your opponent to win.

That little material advantage — a single Pawn — often comes down to the question of winning the King and Pawn vs. King ending.

Of course, knowing how to defend the ending can be the difference between a loss and a draw — but that will be the subject of a future blog post.

Use your King to fight!

The first simple rule to remember in most King and Pawn endings is this: get your King in front of your Pawn. If you do just that, you’ll win a lot more endgames. (And this rule applies to more than just King and Pawn endings.)

So the first rule is to get your King in front of your Pawn. A corollary to that rule is that you should not move your Pawn until your King is in front of your Pawn. Rather than impulsively pushing your Pawn as quickly as possible, you should advance your Pawn only when the way has been prepared by your King, driving the enemy King back to unfavorable positions.

The critical squares

In order to quickly decide whether you can win a King and Pawn ending, you should know that your Pawn has a critical square — in fact, it has three critical squares. The squares are called “critical” because you can win the game if your King can occupy one of those squares, while you will probably draw the game if you can’t. (Your opponent might blunder, of course; but analysis should never proceed on the hope or belief that your opponent will make a mistake.)

Note that these critical squares are only for the King and Pawn v. King endgame. There are different critical squares for different kinds of King and Pawn endgames.

The critical squares for all the Pawns except the Rook-pawns (i.e., Pawns on the b- through g-files) is the square that is two squares in front of the Pawn and the squares immediately adjacent to that square — unless the Pawn stands on the fifth rank, when the critical squares are moved back one row, directly in front of the Pawn. We’ll cover how to promote the Pawns on the c- through f-files in this article. The Knight-pawns (Pawns on the b- or g-files) and Rook-pawns (Pawns on the a- or h-files) have slightly different rules and procedures. We’ll cover those in a future blog post and video.

Here is a diagram showing the critical squares for a White Pawn on e2.

The Critical Squares for the White Pawn at e2

The d4, e4, and f4 squares are called “critical squares” because if White can occupy any one of them, he is guaranteed to win with best play. On the other hand, if Black can prevent White from occupying any of the critical squares, he is guaranteed a draw with best play. (Black need not occupy the critical squares — he need only prevent White from occupying the critical square in order to draw.)

The ending would proceed something like this.

• 1.Kd2 Ke7
• 2.Ke3 Kf7

Black realizes he can’t prevent White from getting his King to one of the critical squares, so he maneuvers to get the opposition.

• 3.Ke4 Ke6

How Does White Make Progress?

Now White has occupied the critical square, but Black has the opposition. How does White make progress?

• 4.e3!

White to Move and Draw - Black to Move and Lose

Now White has the opposition! Black must give way. (We should note that if it were White’s move in this position, Black would be able to draw the game. As it is, he must allow the White King to advance.)

It is also important to note that when the Pawn moved forward, the critical squares also moved forward. White must keep his King in front of the Pawn! His new objective: get the King to one of the new critical squares on d5, e5, or f5. Black moves:

• 4… Kd6
• 5.Kf5! Ke7
• 6.Ke5 Kd7
• 7.Kf6 Kd6
• 8.e4 Kd7
• 9.e5 Ke8

Now White has to “squeeze” Black off of the promotion square. This is a critical moment, and beginners can go wrong here. 10.e6?? would be a big mistake that throws away the win. Black would play 10…Kf8, and now 11.e7+ Ke8 and now White must choose between 12.Ke6 stalemate and moving the King away so that Black can capture the Pawn. Remember the rule: King in front!

• 10.Ke6 Kd8
• 11.Kf7

The White King in Position to Escort the Pawn to the Promotion Square

From this square, the King protects all the squares leading to the promotion square. The Pawn just marches in.

• 11… Kd7
• 12.e6+ Kd8
• 13.e7+ Kd7
• 14.e8(Q)+ …

And White wins.

In the next installment, we’ll see how to defend this position — to get a draw when you’re Black.

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International Master Davorin Kuljasevic scored five wins and four draws at the 2010 Pula Open in Croatia to become the first Knight Raider to enter the elite ranks of the approximately 1,000 grandmasters worldwide.

The news item says that Kuljasevic is Coratian, and as I couldn’t find him listed on the “top” lists at uschess.org, he has likely played in the U.S. only very recently.

Nevertheless, it’s a great achievement for Kuljasevic, Texas Tech, and the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence.

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I found a really nice free chess database online. It’s 365chess.com.

The site boasts a 3.5-million game database, which is regularly updated. It has several nice search functions The site has a very clean appearance and the interface works very well. Registration is free, though registration is required to search the database.

You can search the database by player names, by a particular board position, or using the opening explorer.

The one down-side is that you must be a “supporter” (i.e., pay for the service) in order to download games as pgn files. The up-side is that the service costs only $10.00 per year. Very inexpensive database!

Overall, the site is very nice and can allow you to do a lot of opening analysis for free.

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When the pawn stands on its home square, you must imagine the square of the pawn as if it were standing on its third rank instead of its second. The reason for this is that the Pawn can move two squares for its initial move. That being the case, the square of the pawn must account for the double move.

For example, if White’s a-pawn stands on a4, the square of the Pawn is drawn with the Pawn standing at the lower-left corner of the square, as in the following diagram.

When the Pawn stands on a4

But if the a-pawn stands on a2, the square of the Pawn is drawn as if the Pawn stands on a3.

Square of the Pawn on a2

Knowing the rule for the square of the Pawn is extremely useful in calculating endgames, but you must keep in mind the possibility that a Pawn on its original starting square has the possibility of moving two squares for its first move.

Technorati Tags: chess endgame strategy, chess strategy, square of the pawn

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Most chess books devoted to teaching beginners how to play chess and many basic endgame books (such as Reuben Fine’s Basic Chess Endings or Pandolfini’s Endgame Course) will show how to execute this checkmate. I recommend studying the examples in one of those books, as well as learning the example I give here.

As with most of the simple checkmates, the first important goal is getting your King to the center of the board. The two Bishops can checkmate the opponent only with the help of their own King!

Second, the Bishops should work together.

Notice how, in this diagram, the two Bishops placed next to each other prevent the enemy King from attacking them. The Bishops guard four squares directly in front of them, thus preventing the King from immediately attacking either one of them. In fact, the Bishops have the enemy King completely imprisoned, and the White King can now stroll up to the scene to aid in further confining the opponent.

Third, the Bishops working together can deprive the enemy king of squares, forcing him to the edge of the board and then to the corner, where he can be checkmated. In order to checkmate with two Bishops against a King, the King must be driven into a corner.

From the following position, White can checkmate Black in 16 moves. The first objective is to get the King and both Bishops in the center of the board. This will automatically confine Black to one section of the board, bounded by White’s Bishops.

1.Kc3 Ke5
2.Kc4+ Kf5
3.Kd5 …

King in the center! Notice that the two Bishops, working from a distance and from opposite corners, completely dominate the center squares. (Look at the position after 2.Kc4+ to see the strong work the Bishops can do in kicking the enemy King out of the center.)

3… Kf4
4.Be4 Ke3
5.Be5 …

Step 2 -- Bishops in the Center

Both Bishops in the center! Notice that 5.Bd4 (instead of Be5) would have allowed Black to stay nearer the center of the board with 5…Kf4. Since we’re trying to drive Black away from the center and toward a corner, Be5 would have wasted a move.

5… Kd2
6.Kd4 Ke1
7.Ke3 Kd1

Step 3 - Advance the King

Now the Bishops will cooperate to deprive the enemy King of escape squares along the edge of the board, one square at a time. We’ll use the Bishops to take away squares from the left side, and use our King to guard squares on the right side (the flank nearest the corner of the board). Watch how the Bishops “roll up” the King.

8.Bb2 Ke1
9.Bc2 Kf1
10.Kf3 Ke1
11.Bc3+ Kf1
12.Bd3+ Kg1

Step 4 - King guards right flank, Bishops roll up left flank

Now our King has to cover the escape squares on the right side.

13.Kg3 Kh1
14.Bb2 …

This is just a tempo move. If 14.Bd4 to take away another square from the enemy King, it turns out we’ve taken away too many squares! It’s stalemate; a draw. So waste a move, taking care to make sure Black’s King doesn’t escape the net!

14… Kg1
15.Bd4+ Kh1
16.Be4#

Checkmate!

Checkmate. This mate won’t come up very often, if ever, in your games; but it’s a useful exercise to see how the Bishops can cooperate to hem in enemy pieces.

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In fact, he had made the move to give the three-fold repetition when his flag fell. He claimed the draw and I claimed a win.

How should the point be awarded?

If you have the official rules of chess, you can probably make a reasonable answer to the question … and perhaps vindicate my claim for a win!

If you would like to play tournament chess, you should learn the official rules of chess.

Official Rules of Chess

If you’re just starting out and haven’t played a lot of chess, you will first want to review my articles and videos on the rules of chess for the absolute beginner. But when you decide you want to play a little more seriously, play a few tournaments to get the feel for it; and to see if you really want to stick with it. If you decide you do want to play tournament chess in even a half-way serious manner, you really should read the official rules and keep a copy with you at every tournament. The official rules should go in your travel bag with your clock, set, and board!

Get the official rules of chess and enjoy a fun-filled tournament career!

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In his review of Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind, Kasparov makes several interesting observations about the affect computers have had on humans who play chess.

Kasparov recently wrote a review of Chess Metaphors for the New York Review of Books (see link below), and in it he says some interesting things about his view of computers conquering chess.

The Chess Master and the Computer – The New York Review of Books

The number of legal chess positions is 1040, the number of different possible games, 10120. Authors have attempted various ways to convey this immensity, usually based on one of the few fields to regularly employ such exponents, astronomy. In his book Chess Metaphors, Diego Rasskin-Gutman points out that a player looking eight moves ahead is already presented with as many possible games as there are stars in the galaxy. Another staple, a variation of which is also used by Rasskin-Gutman, is to say there are more possible chess games than the number of atoms in the universe. All of these comparisons impress upon the casual observer why brute-force computer calculation can’t solve this ancient board game. They are also handy, and I am not above doing this myself, for impressing people with how complicated chess is, if only in a largely irrelevant mathematical way.

* * *

There have been many unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the rapid proliferation of powerful chess software. Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it’s no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top- level opponent at home instead of need ing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies. I am in fact coaching one of them this year, nineteen-year-old Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, where relatively little chess is played.

If you’re interested in the entire review, click the link above.

If you’re interested in the book Kasparov reviewed, you can get it at Amazon.com by clicking the following link (I will make a small commission):

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(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?

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 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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To show you the Queen’s great power, I will first show you a feature of the other pieces that they have in common. The Bishop, Knight, and Rook can all give check to the enemy King in at most two ways in any given position.

Let’s start with the following diagram.

In this position, the Knight at h2 can check the Black King in two ways: the Knight can move to f3 and give check, or it can move to g4 and give check.

Similarly, the Bishop can check the Black King in two ways: it can move either to c3 or g3, giving check from either square.

And the Rook can give check from two squares: e2 or b5.

For the Rooks, Bishops, and Knights, the best they can do is give check in two ways. (Sometimes, of course, they can’t give check at all because friendly or enemy pieces get in the way.)

The Pawn is even weaker, usually giving check in only one way.

The Queen, on the other hand, can often give check in more than two ways — a LOT more. Take a look at the following diagram.

In this position, the Queen can give check to the enemy King in twelve different ways.

See if you can find the twelve ways the Queen can give check.

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Free Internet Chess Server (FICS)

One of the best is a free service provided at www.freechess.org. The site has a lot of very strong and serious competitors, regular tournaments, relays of grandmaster tournament games, a lively community, ratings, and more.

Most of the games played at FICS are blitz (speed games) played at 3 to 5 minutes per game, though many blitz games are played with shorter or longer time limits. Many standard games are played at 15 minutes per game. Again, many games are played at longer time limits. FICS features many tournaments, including a popular team tournament played at 45/45 (meaning 45 minutes per game with a 45-second increment added for each move made).

Queen Alice Internet Chess Club

Another good free chess site is Queen Alice Internet Chess Club (www.queenalice.com). This is a “correspondence” type of chess, where games are played with a time limit one move every week, or even more slowly. Again, the site offers ratings and a lively community. If you prefer to play correspondence style, Queen Alice is a good choice. And the price is right!

I don’t have any affiliation with either of these chess clubs … I’m not making money for recommending them.

And if you have any other recommendations, please feel free to leave your recommendations in the comment box below. Please make sure that you are recommending free sites only.

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