King And Pawn Endgame N.01: Think Before You Calculate!

Hello students, I hope you are having a wonderful Monday! Today we will discuss the following position, White to play: 

1. Identify if the position is winning, losing, or a draw.
2. Calculate, and come up with the winning sequence of moves. Attention! Move order matters a lot in endgames!

Ok so now that our thought process is organized let's start!

• Firstly, when I am trying to evaluate an endgame, I like to use with my students the following checklist:

• Material
• Pawn placement
• Piece activity

"Ok coach what do we do with it?" I hear you asking. Both players compare each point on the checklist, and the player who is superior on that topic gets to check the box. The player with the most checks has a winning position. In case of a tie, we have a draw. Pretty simple right? "Ok coach but how can I know which box to check for each player?". Read carefully and you will understand what I explain in this example.

• Let us start with the material situation. This is an endgame with only pawns and kings, a pawn endgame, and Black is a pawn up. So Black checks the material box.
• Continuing to the second box, we need to observe the pawn situation. The first, important factor is that Black possesses a passed pawn (a pawn that is not blocked by an enemy piece) on f4, so can potentially bring a new queen into the game in 3 moves. On the other hand, White's pawn on f5 is blocked by the black pawn on f6. So if White wants to make a new Queen, they need to get rid of Black's f6 pawn first, having to spend 6 moves in total. Lastly, we observe that Black has doubled c-pawns (pawns that are on the same file). In conclusion, Black checks the pawn placement box, because they have a passed pawn that can promote in 3 moves and White doesn't...
• Now, whenever one side has 2 boxes already checked, it is very rare for the opposite side to win/draw. However, especially in pawn endgames, piece (in this case king) activity is very important.

1. Looking at the white king's position first, we quickly realize that White is not in time to stop Black's f4-pawn. They cannot blockade it because the white king cannot control the f3 square, since after 1.Kf4 Black plays Ke3 protecting the c4 pawn and at the same time controlling the f3 square. What the white king can do however is try to create a passed pawn on the f-file, since it only takes 2 moves to get rid of the blockade.
2. On the other hand, Black's king cannot blockade White's f5-pawn either since it is too far away on d2 (it would take 4 moves for Black's king to control the f6 square while it only takes 2 for White's).

Subsequently, both players check the last box since both kings are equally active.

"So Black obviously wins right? It is a 2-1 after all.". Unfortunately, we are missing a very important detail, I would like you to pause for a minute and think about it. Ready? So, while we examined in great detail, the pawn situation and the king activity, we didn't quite finish with the pawn placement. We mentioned the rows on which the pawns are and we understood the importance of a "fast pasted pawn" but we did not discuss the file the pawns are on, the f-file. Well, it turns out that some Queen Vs Pawn endgames (one player has a queen the other has pawns) are drawn! One of them is when one player has an f-pawn close to the promotion square and the other has a queen with an inactive king (the draw involves a famous stalemate)! This means White can try to reach this type of endgame, letting Black's pawn promote (not that it could be stopped anyway!). So White's f-pawn makes White's king more active than Black's since White has an additional role for the king! It is not 2-1 it is 2-2!

Now that we know the outcome all that is left is to calculate.

In conclusion, today you learned the following:

• The endgame checklist lets you evaluate a position correctly.
• By going through the steps, you observe the situation, collecting clues that will help you come up with the strategy and tactics (in our case stalemate) to solve the endgame.
• Knowledge is power and endgames require combining different ideas to find a beautiful solution.
• Paying attention to detail and using any resource available is crucial.

If you want to know more about the final Queen Vs Pawn Endgame, Pawn Endgames, or    Endgames in general, make sure to check out Chess.com's lessons.

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