Some explanation about chess, endgames and endgamestudies.
Understanding endgamestudies, you need to know some basics of the chessgame, but also some general understanding of endgames.
I.e. many endgamestudies stop where many novices will ask, but why?
You need to know that certain endgames are easily won or can't be won at all.
Em. Lasker 1890
White plays and wins.
Here some rules to remember or try to find this out in general chessbooks about endgames:
1. White single King against Black
single King nobody can win. We note this down as
-
=.
2.
+
-
= A bishop alone can't give
checkmate.
3.
+
-
= A knight alone can't give
checkmate.
4.
++ -
= Two Knights in general
can't force to mate.
5.
++
- + A Knight+Bishop can
force mate, although this is not easy.
6.
++
-
+
A King + Two bishops (of different colours) can mate.
7.
+
-
+ An
extra Rook can easily win.
8.
+
-
+ An extra Queen is the
easiest win.
9.
+
-
there is often a win, but there are also drawish lines.
If the black king can get before the pawn it becomes more difficult. The pawn has to promote once to queen or rook. You have to learn the rules of opposition.
Black king before a h-pawn or a-pawn is always a draw.
10.
+h-+ -
= WhitecoloredBishop
against Black King before the h-pawn is a draw
or
+a-+ -
= BlackColoredBishop against
Black King
before the a-pawn is always a draw!
Even if white has more doubled pawns on the same line.
11.
+ -
+
is a win
12.
++ -
+
is a win (although a
hard one). Bishops of different colours.
Marcel Van Herck 1985
White plays and makes a draw.
A nice example, where black with his last move has to protect his 3 Knights
because with two he can't win, but then a beautiful Stalemate position arises!
13.
++ -
+1
If
the pawn is not too far moved white can win. There is a Troitzky-line see
EBUR/1999/2/Page 8.
14.
+++ -
+
normaly wins for the 3 knights.
There are more of these rules and typical positions. There are chess endgame books who analyse all kind of positions.
Let us know if you do not understand the end-position (or subvariation) of a study.
Ken Thompson has figured out with a computerprogram and filled a database with all positions with 5 pieces or less where all forced variations to win or draw are in. So this is how we can check if a certain final position (with this number of pieces) wil end.
They are delivered with the TascBase-chessprogram.
Harold van der Heijden is collecting endgamestudies in a database. It is useful to check if a new study is unique or is looking much alike to another.
This is used for Endgamestudy-Competitions. He has now a collection of more than 76.000 studies. See also menu Websites.
Platov,V 1905
White makes a draw
by perpetual check
(or black has to give up it's Queen).
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