Chess endgames worth knowing by heart

King and pawn against king is won when your king gets in front of the pawn onto one of its key squares — for a pawn on the fifth, the sixth rank. Get there and the pawn promotes whoever is to move.

Step directly in front of the enemy king, one square apart, and it is the other side who has to give way. Here exactly one move draws and every other move loses — that is how narrow king and pawn endings are.

Your king must get in front of the pawn and stay there. From the back rank there is exactly one square that holds, and it is not the one most people play.

Strip the h-pawns off this position and it is a dead draw — Black has the opposition and keeps it. The extra pawn is not extra material, it is an extra move: played at the right moment it hands the opposition over, and that is the whole difference.

Draw a square with the pawn and its promotion square as one side. If your king can step inside it, you catch the pawn without counting a single move.

A pawn on the edge is the one case where being in front of it is not needed — the corner does the work. With the defending king on h8 there is no way in, and the attacking king's best try walks into stalemate.

Three pawns against three, all blocked, kings miles away — and it is winning, because one pawn can be given up to open a path for another. The order matters: the middle pawn goes first.

Lucena, 1497

The most important winning position in chess. Your king is stuck in front of its own pawn and every attempt to step out is met by a check — until you build a bridge: put the rook on the fourth rank, walk into the checks, and block the last one with the rook.

Philidor, 1777

The most important drawing position in chess, and the answer to Lucena. Put your rook on the third rank so the enemy king can never reach the sixth; when the pawn advances to shift it, swing the rook behind the pawn, where it both checks from long range and waits for the pawn to fall.

Cut off from the front, with Philidor unavailable, and still drawn — because a rook checking from the far side of the board cannot be chased away, and those checks buy the time to walk the king back in front of the pawn. Distance is the rook's whole defence: three files or more and the checks never run out.

Vancura, 1924

A rook pawn on the sixth with the enemy rook in front of it looks hopeless, and is drawn. The defending rook attacks the pawn from the side along its own rank, which pins White's rook to its defence, and then checks the king from a distance for ever.

Cochrane's defence

A rook does not beat a bishop. The defence is to keep the king away from the corners of the bishop's own colour — those are the only corners where a rook can force mate — and to keep the bishop near the king rather than stranded on the far side of the board.

Philidor, 1777

Won, but not easily: as long as the rook stays next to its king the queen cannot take it. The method is zugzwang — reach a position where the defender has to move, and the rook has to step away from the king to a square where it can be picked up with a check.

A pawn one square from promoting, and a queen wins anyway — on the b-file. The trick is to check in a way that forces the king in front of its own pawn: that blocks it for one move, which is exactly long enough to walk the king closer.

The exception that makes the rule worth knowing. On the c-file the pawn draws, because when White finally wins it the capture is stalemate — the king tucks into the corner and the queen taking on c2 leaves it no square at all.

The other drawn file, for the same stalemate reason — but here distance matters. With White's king this far away it is a draw; bring it to c3 and the same position is mate in one, because the king is close enough to join in.

An extra bishop and an extra pawn, and it is a draw — because the bishop is light and the promotion corner is dark. Get your king to h8 and stay there; the bishop can never take the square away from you.

The same material as the wrong bishop, one shade different, and it wins easily. This bishop is dark, and so is h8, so the corner is no longer a refuge.

Two knights and a king cannot force mate against a bare king, however long they try. Knights cannot lose a tempo, so every attempt to squeeze the king either stalemates it or lets it out.

Réti, 1921

The most famous draw ever composed. White's king is hopelessly far from Black's pawn and cannot possibly support its own — and yet one move does both jobs at once, because a diagonal walk approaches two things at the same time.

Barbier & Saavedra, 1895

The most famous underpromotion in chess. The pawn walks to the eighth with the rook checking all the way, and then a new queen is only a draw — Black gives the rook away and it is stalemate. A rook wins instead.