Dear Chess lovers,

 I am just wondering have you ever faced or played 

1) Kt+B+K vs lone K (pawnless ending). What was the outcome?

2) 2B+K vs K  (pawnless ending). What was the outcome?

3) how many years have you played chess? how many games of chess have you played ?(including regular, CC, real-time, blitz and lightning/speed)

I will start first:

1) Never

2) Never

3) About 15 years. I think I reached more than 1000++ chess games. I never faced pawnless minor piece endings. Most pawnless endings I faced/played are Q or R vs K.

i guess im second then...

1) never

2) yes, once. and it took me about 20 moves to checkmate him, after the last pieces were traded off(other then the 2 bishops)

3) 10 years and 500-750 games maybe (thats a guess, but probably close) 

 have you ever studied the 2B vs K checkmate?

1) never

2)a couple of times. the result was a victory.

3) a long time. on and off and always fun.

1) im guessing ur asking knight+bishop+king vs lone king... I havnt played this in a real game but on chessmaster 11th edition u can play against the computer with those pieces. You can always checkmate if you  have a knight and a bishop vs a king (just takes a bit of practice)

2) also not in a realy game and again have  played this in chessmaster and chess mentor and you can always checkmate

3) Ive been playing for bout 4 monthes and ive played 300ish games. Most have been long (10 mins plus 15 secounds per game) and latly ive started to play 5 min blitz games with good results. Ive played errm bout 30 turn based games on chess.com (rated 1470)

 me? now i have, but that game came early in my career and it took me a little to figure out what to do

I did get 2Bs vs King on about my 10th USCF game (back in 1975).  Actually, it briefly was 2Bs vs Kt--but fortunately I was able to win his piece and wrap things up after that.

I also had R+B vs R in my first dozen games or so.  I lasted for about 30 moves before having to resign.

The weirdest endgame I've ever gotten without pawns was R+B+Kt versus Queen!  Against my computer.  I was only able to hold on for about 20 moves.

All this somehow reminds me of Botvinnik's book about the 1941 Soviet Championship.  In the middle of it he analyzes 2 Kts vs Pawn--and I was wondering why he was bringing up this arcane ending in the middle of a tournament book; and then it turned out to be one of the games!--with Lilienthal (I think it was) unable to win it.  Botvinnik expressed his surprise that Lilienthal hadn't yet figured out how to crack that nut, since he'd gotten the endgame no fewer than twice before!  I mean...I've never ever seen anyone get that endgame--and this guy gets it three times.

1. Never

2. Never

3. Just a few years, but I've logged over 7,000 games online, play at a weekly club and played every day for hours at my coffee shop for about six months. 

To tell you honestly I never met anyone that faced 2Kt vs K + P yet. Lilienthal must be very lucky/cursed to face that kinda of ending 3 times !!

 These 2kts vs k+P or Kt+B vs K endgames require some study time and maintaing that knowledge and the probabilities of facing them are so small (less than 0.001%) why bother with them.

chessmaster makes it easier to study kt+b vs k... lol i still have to complete the challenge (tried it once for a couple mins and left it for another day)

Lousy> These 2kts vs k+P or Kt+B vs K endgames require some study time and maintaing that knowledge and the probabilities of facing them are so small (less than 0.001%) why bother with them.

+ It takes maybe 4.5 hours to learn and 1.5 hours / year to maintain B+N. It's not so difficult as some people make it out to be.

+ The benefits of learning how to coordinate B+N go beyond the simple mate, indeed, that's one of the biggest reasons to learn it.

+ The chance is 0.02% that a particular game will end with a B+N, but being confident you can handle B+N will affect more of your games because you won't be worried about trading down to that ending, just like a knowledge of pawn endings helps in many rook endings.