5 Easy-To-Remember Chess Endgame Tips
5 Tips to Improve Your Chess Endgame
Lots of players are focused on learning everything about openings and tactics in Chess.
However, learning the endgame is often ignored, even though it’s the best way to increase your rating.
A dramatic Chess picture that makes little sense but looks good.
Being able to find a tactic that gives you a win won’t matter much if you can’t convert that winning position into a victory.
These are 5 easy-to-remember chess tips that will improve your endgame skills!
1. Move Your King Up
As more pieces are taken off the board, the king becomes more powerful.
Try to find a way to use the king as a supporting piece for the pawns or to protect valuable squares.
The King, with its ability to move in any direction, is basically a QueenLite in the endgame.
I think every arbiter has a horror story about some kid winning a position before they leave the king on the back rank the whole game and eventually lose.
It’s hard to separate the view of the king in the middlegame vs the view of the king in the endgame.
With the queens or a lot of minor pieces on the board, you don’t want to move the king up. It’s too dangerous when all those pieces can mate with ease.
But once it turns into just one or two minor pieces, the king doesn’t have to worry about being mated as much and is better used as a supporting piece or blockading piece for pawns.
This is another reason to create luft for your king in the middlegame.
Creating luft is when you play a move that gives your king an escape square, but if you play it right, you can use this escape square to activate your king before the opponent.
2. Hold the Opposition
“The opposition” is a chess term that describes the position of the two kings on the board.
One side has the opposition when they move opposite the king (i.e. the opponent king is on e3 and you move your king to e5, e7 or c7).
The opposition can occur completely across the chess board, and it determines which king will control any fight for space.
When your king has the direct opposition (just one square apart, like e3 and e5), the opponent's king is forced to move sideways or backwards, where your king will be able to move forward.
This is especially important in king and pawn endgames, where controlling the opposition can mean the difference between a winning and a losing position.
It’s important in king and pawn endgames to move the king in front of the pawn and try to fight for opposition.
Controlling the opposition while being in front of your own pawn in a king and pawn vs king endgame should almost always result in a victory.
3. Learn How to Mate with a Rook and Queen
If you’re just starting out, it’s a little overwhelming to think about all the endgames to learn, but I’d recommend learning how to mate with a queen and with a rook if nothing else.
The trick to both of these is to use the queen or rook, along with the king, to push the opponent's king to the edge of the board.
Once the king is stuck to the edge of the board, with your rook or queen keeping it there (this can be done if the king is on a5, for example, by keeping the rook on the b file and trying to move the king to c5), the king can approach the opponent’s king and wait.
Once the opponent runs out of moves, they’ll eventually have to walk into the opposition, where you’ll be able to deliver mate with a rook or queen.
To be clear, it’s important to only check with the rook or queen when the opponent is directly opposed, so they are forced to move back or are checkmated if they can’t move back.
Try this out a couple of times against an engine until you get the hang of it.
You’ll find it starts to feel much easier, and once you’ve got this down, you’ll be able to finish off more games easily and improve your rating.
4. Calculate
A lot of the time, chess players can get away without doing too much calculation, but in the endgame, that’s not the case.
It’s important to calculate out several moves in the endgame, as the lack of pieces on the board should make it easier to see the finite number of moves available.
Try to compartmentalise pawn moves, especially if the calculation involves two pawns racing down the board.
First, determine how many moves each pawn needs to queen and use that information in other calculations.
For example, you could say that they need four moves to queen and you need five, but if you can force the opponent’s king in front of their pawn, that should buy you an additional move.
This would mean both sides queen on the same move.
Using compartmentalisation like this can help you calculate ten or fifteen moves in the endgame, even if your calculation skills aren’t great.
5. Focus on Queening First
In the endgame, you can give away a lot if you know you’ll be the first to queen.
Look for variations where you’ll be able to queen first, even if it means giving up a piece or a few extra pawns.
The queen is very powerful in comparison to minor pieces, so usually, you can use the queen to stop any of your opponent’s attacks.
It’s not uncommon to see a game where one side is using their earned queen to try and stop three passed pawns from the opponent.
It’s difficult to convert a lot of the time, but it should be simple enough to use the queen to blockade the pawns while moving the king over to combine and take them or blockade them.
There are also some pretty well-known endgame equivalencies that expert players know about.
For example, it’s often said that two connected passed pawns on the 6th rank (two squares from queening) are worth the same as a rook.
That is because up until that point with two connected passed pawns, the side with the rook should be winning, but if the pawns achieve that, it’s over.
It’s also pretty well understood that two pawns for a minor piece in the endgame is a pretty good trade, since the pawns start to increase in value and a minor piece cannot mate alone, decreasing its value.
You can use this to try and convert drawn endgames into victory.
It’s always worth it to sac a piece for two pawns if the opponent would be left with just a minor piece.
You cannot mate in chess with just a minor piece, except for very specific and rare circumstances.
Try and find those variations so you can fight for a victory and don’t have to worry about losing if you make a mistake.
