Endgame

Rook endgames are the most common type of endgames there is in the game of chess. These endgames take place in about 50% of all games. If you are a tournament chess player and wish to improve your results in future, the rook endgame is something to look at more deeply. Rook endgames are not something that can be played intuitively; there are many positions where you need to make ‘strange looking’ or ‘counter-intuitive moves’ to win or draw the game.

What’s so special about the endgames? One of the greatest chess players of the past Mr. Capablanca suggested that one should start learning chess from studying endgames. First, a player should start with simple endgames with just a few pawns present on the board and then move on to more complex and sophisticated ‘piece’ endgames. Mr. Capablanca believed that a player should study an endgame first, prior to studying opening or the middle game, since it is possible to master this part of the game without knowing opening or a middle game. However, opening and the middle game cannot be studied separately from the endgame and so the endgame should be a priority thing.

Two Bishop Mate is another checkmate which seems problematic for club level chess players to implement, even though it should not be. I have previously written about Knight + Bishop Checkmate, which is much more subtle, but no doubt very important to know. The main idea of checkmating with two bishops is occupying the center with the bishops, using the King to force the opponent’s King to the edge of the board and checkmating.

Today I will discuss the Knight + Bishop endgame checkmate. This endgame was well analyzed by Philidor long time ago, in 1749. It is not the most common mate you will see, it occurs once at every 5000 games, but it is definitely important to know how to use the Knight and a Bishop together.

I have seen many guides that are trying to explain how to actually checkmate a lone King with Knight and Bishop, but they’re very often failing to teach. They show moves, give some explanation and it even seems like you understand how to do it yourself at first, but… when trying to do it, it just doesn’t work.

The problem is that there is no exact guide for this mate available; at least I wasn’t able to find it. This is a main reason why I’m writing and you’re (hopefully) reading this. I will systematically present the well known information and form an algorithm, how to do it.

Have you ever found yourself in a position when you think, you should win this endgame but don’t know how, even though it looks so simple? Many players did. In fact they failed to win these dead won endgames and end up with a draw or even a “0” right next to their name.

It feels very disappointing to draw one of these “almost won” endgames. It feels even worth to lose one.

If you’re curious to know how to win them, read on.

I have written multiple articles over chess strategy and the middle game, but for some reason I have avoided writing on the endgame theme. I was scanning through the “Lazy Person’s Guide to Endgame” by GM Ian Rogers published in January 2010 Chess Life Magazine and decided to write my own thing.The first endgame analyzed by GM Rogers is the famous Queen vs. Rook ending. He claims that it is an easy win for the side with the queen. I decided to go ahead and test this Q vs. R endgame against the Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition, setting the Queen for myself and a Rook for the engine. After about 20 tries I found this task to be impossible.