Chess Endgame Problem of the Week

Well, I was surfing the web and to my great sadness I found it very difficult to get good endgame problems. As you get better at chess, almost all of your games are going to go to an endgame. Often, one player will be slightly better and one player will be slightly worse.

Outplaying your opponent in the endgame is actually very possible to do all the way up to very high levels. This is because endgames are extremely hard to play properly. A chess player's intuition, which is usually what wins you games, is much less useful in an endgame. It does you know good to centralize your King if your opponent can do something crazy with his Knight and win!

Presumably, then, practicing going through these types of endgames is very helpful. Like I said above, the current amount of resources on this topic on the internet is pretty low. Maybe you will find some endgame "tactics", where you push a pawn or two and win. That is all well and good, but most of the difficult work in an endgame comes way before that!

Coming up with ideas in endgames where you have a slight advantage is critical to winning chess games. Thus, the positions I will choose will rarely have a clear winner. Instead, the position will be roughly equal, with one player having some sort of small advantage.

When solving these endgame problems, try and find the best moves for both sides. Some of these positions may be draws with perfect play, some of them may be wins with perfect play. Even if I know, I will not state whether a position is drawn or won for one of the sides. Figuring that out is part of the problem!

Solving these problems will be fairly complicated. In fact, solving one of these problems may be practically impossible. New analysis comes up fairly often for endgames played in the 1920s! Dont be discouraged by this fact, though. Working through the problems is the end goal here. Solving the problem is just sort of a nice afterthought. If you and I work through these problems, our endgame play should improve very nicely.

So as not to spoil anything for anybody, please refrain from posting any analysis in the comments to the problems. After about 2 or 3 weeks, I will make a Problem #X Discussion Post where I will post my analysis of the problem. Everyone else can post their own analysis in the comments to this Post.

As a final somewhat practical note, the endgame is often one of the most neglected areas of study for chess players. This means that a little bit of work by you can often lead to a lot of reward. I know for myself, the endgame is probably the strongest part of my game. I get away with all kinds of terrible opening and middlegame play because I can draw lost endgames! I also manage to pick up a few "undeserved" wins because of my endgame play. You would be surprised, if not shocked, at how bad some otherwise very good chess players play endgames.

As a even more final note, I will try and post the Chess Endgame Problem of the Week every Saturday.

Have fun and good luck!