Improve Your Queen Endgame Accuracy
Due to the great mobility of queens, queen endings can be some of the toughest endgames to calculate and play accurately. Therefore, it is important to follow some general principles when you find yourself in such a situation. Here are 5 guidelines that will help you better assess the positions involving Q + P vs Q and find the correct plan.
1. The queen is placed best on central squares
This goes without saying. Whether you are the attacker or defender (playing for a win or playing for a draw respectively), it is always good to have your queen cover more squares, thereby limiting her counterpart's freedom.
2. If the defender's king stands in front of the enemy pawn, it is nearly always a draw
This is rather self-explanatory as well. In order for the attacker to make progress, he must first displace the defender's king, which is not possible with the lone queen. Therefore, the former's king also has to participate in the attack, which makes it easy to trade the queens into a drawn K + P vs K ending.
3. The attacker should try to place his king on the same file/rank as the defender (and the defender should try to avoid that)
Why? Doing so will set up the possibility of pins and counter-checks as the attacker's queen blocks the checks.
4. If the defender cannot go in front of the enemy flank pawn, the best chance to achieve a draw is to head for the diagonally opposite corner
As it can be inferred from point 3, the defender wants to move his king as far away as possible from being on the same file/rank. The "drawing zone" in this case is often the four squares nearest to the corner. The further the defender is from the safe corner, the more likely he will lose.
5. When playing against a remote king,
- winning chances increase when the pawn has moved further up the board
- winning chances decrease when the pawn is closer to the edge
Point (a) is quite simple to understand. A pawn that is less advanced takes more time to queen, which means the defender has more time to move his king to a "drawing zone".
As for point (b), rook pawn endings will have higher drawing tendencies than that of other pawns as the defender can safely trade queens more often (to reach a drawn K + P vs K ending). Additionally, as mentioned in point 4, the drawing zone in the corner does not even exist in the case of bishop or central pawns.
A final word
Even in positions where you are, according to endgame tablebases, winning, it can take many moves before your opponent runs out of checks, especially if he puts up a tough resistance. So do not fret if you are unable to find a forced line that leads to immediate progress. Instead, follow these general principles for the best chance of achieving a position where your opponent is out of checks.
