Working on Endgames Below 2000 Elo
Hi all,
I am back with a new post to celebrate my "top blogger" status (thanks chess.com) about endgames. I did an early post on tactics and another one on openings below 2000; it was time to talk about endgames.
Before I start, I want to put the usual caution: I am no chess master. Simply a guy with a normal busy life who started chess late. I don't know how to play perfect chess, but I know how to improve and wish to share what helped me move from 1000 to 2150 on chess.com in roughly four years. My one and only strength over that of a GM is that I remember what it's like to be a complete beginner. But please, 9 times out of 10, if you see my advice contradicting that of a GM: follow the GM.
With this out of the way, I can start with a strong claim: I don't believe endgames are that important below 2000.
I know, I know! Educated chess players are supposed to look down on beginners spending all their time on openings and look down on them from the glorious heights of endgame studies. But I don't. Actually, I believe quite the opposite.
Before I continue, I must state another important caveat: I play online and mostly 10min games. My chess ambition is to improve in rapid. To me, it's the perfect compromise between playing many games and playing quality chess. Most of my pieces of advice, including this one, are best suited for someone who hopes to become a better rapid player. I insist here on this detail because the importance of endgames varies with the time on the clock. You reach more equal or complex endgames in rapid than blitz, simply because you and your opponents allow fewer tactics.
So, perhaps, the chess purists who spit on openings for beginners to praise endgames are not wrong. They are simply talking about OTB chess with 2h on the clock. Perhaps... I don't know, since I don't enjoy playing 2h OTB chess.
Anyway, to each his own! Here, I will focus on what I know (rapid chess, from 30-0 to 10-0) and talk to people who wish to improve there.
The main idea
There are two main reasons I don't believe in too much endgame study for beginners:
- Hardcore endgame theory doesn't come out often below 2000.
- It's tough and discouraging to study.
Early on, I did try to study endgame seriously. I was about 1800 when I went through a book to learn stuff like the Lucena position by heart. I stopped after two chapters... It was too abstract and definitively not fun enough to continue. I did remember the Lucena position, and, in more than a thousand rapid games, it came handy exactly once.
To me, that's what endgame theory was like until very recently: abstract, hard-to-remember, and seldom useful in my games.
The keyword above is hardcore, as I am not making an argument against all endgame studying, just against spending all your time on it.
In fact, I believe you can get up to 2000 with only a few hours spent on endgames. To be more precise, I'll put below what I believe you need through your elo journey.
What to study? (elo<1200)
When you start, you will need to learn how to mate and avoid the draw:
You need to learn :
- how to mate with two rooks,
- then one queen,
- the one rook.
That is all you need before you start playing. You should, however, know how to do these mates without thinking. If this mastery doesn't come through playing, you could perhaps take advantage of chess.com's drills.
Next, when you start are somewhat comfortable with the game (probably around 1000 elo), you should learn a few endgame's principles:
- King activity, the idea that the king becomes an active piece in the endgame and should move towards the action or the center.
- Passed pawn, protected passed pawn: how to use them once you have them, and how to get them.
- Opposite bishop endgames.
This last one occurs when you have: two kings, a few pawns, and one bishop, each but opposite colors. The idea is that the game has a good chance of being drawn even if the "winning" player has one or two more pawns.
The intuition is simple: because the defenders control one color with his bishop, it will be quite hard for the attacker to push the pawn all the way through.
It may surprise some that I put this concept this early in the elo progression, but unlike other semi-advanced concepts, it is very easy to remember, and it comes up often. More importantly, it can change your decision-making early in the game. At the extreme, it can make you resign when you shouldn't. I used to give up on "lost" endgames because I didn't understand how likely I was to defend them. I would have saved many games when I was 1000 or 1200 if I had this concept in mind.
What to study, and how (1200<elo<2000)
You have improved a bit, and you start to lose more and more endgame? It's time to learn some theory. There is no need to buy a 600 pages endgame manual, or even one with "only" 200 pages. You can get by easily with a few concepts:
- Opposition,
- distant opposition,
- triangulation,
- a few basic pawn-kings patterns (like rooks pawn),
- and some other simple rules of endgame, including bishop and rook-pawn vs. king.
Personally, I got almost all I ever needed to reach my level with a small video series from Anna Rudolf
I watched it a few times now to get the concept in, and that's it.
If you still feel that endgames are your weaknesses, I can't recommend the tactics trainer enough. Just spend half of your tactic training time on endgame tactics. (On chess.com, you can customize your set of tactics and only see endgame ones.)
I did this for a while when, around 1900 elo, I lost too many endgames to my taste. Just five minutes a day for a few weeks, and I saw a quick improvement. I believe it's because, unlike fancy endgame patterns developed by some bored theorists or overzealous super-gms, these tactics are:
- fun to solve, so you can actually stick to it and get them drilled into your brain
- frequently observed in real games.
Of course, if you love endgame, you should treat yourself with an 800-pages manual and go through it. I am sure it will help (sometimes). But for us mere mortals who tend to get bored after 5 pages of very abstract and very rare endgame patterns, I am here to vouch that you can get past 2000 in rapid on chess.com without actually reading one of those.
I know how intimidating those hard endgames manuals are. I also know how intimidating some experienced players can be when they chastise you for having fun with openings instead of doing the serious endgame stuff they do. I believe a bit of this comes from the fallacy that hard stuff must be useful and fun stuff must be useless. In any case, I am living proof that you can improve significantly while focusing on the fun part of chess (at least to me), and you should not feel guilty for not wanting to spend too much time on hardcore endgame theory!
PS: After 2000
Because a good post needs at least one fundamental contradiction, I will confess now that a week ago, I bought... an endgame manual.
I did this because recently, and only recently, I started to feel the limit of my lazy approach to endgame.
I stayed at 2150 rapid for a few weeks and, whenever I was lucky enough to play against 2250 players or higher, I felt that one of the differences between him and me was endgame mastery. Worst, in a few games, I clearly lost because of a lack of theoretical knowledge.
I leave you with one of those games. To be precise, this game is more than an example. It is the game that made me bought the endgame manual. I did a full annotation, but the interesting endgame bit starts in move 40.
This defeat showed that, at 2100+, I had reached the limits of my approach. I do need some more endgame theory to keep improving. But this doesn't change the fact that you can at the very least get up to there without!
Until next time, happy learning!
