A Bag of Tricks: How to (Hopefully!) Win With a Pawn on a Rook's Rank (Preventing Draws!)

Hello readers and welcome to the latest "A Bag of Tricks" post! Enjoy!

The endgame is one of the harder phases of the game. At this point, there is likely a clear winner. But sometimes, you find yourself in a relatively even position and after a few trades end up with a pawn on a rook’s rank against a lone king nearby.

You might think, Easy, I’ll just promote!, but games like this usually end in a draw. Sometimes, a draw is forced and you can't do anything about it. But other times, the position can be saved. Today I’ll teach you when you can save the position, if so, how to prevent this draw, and also when this trick is necessary.

1. Here’s Why 

Why a draw?, you may ask. Well, let’s take a closer look at this position. Doggedly, Black’s king will continue to chase and block the pawn while White will push it. It will eventually end up like this:

As you can see, if White moves its king anywhere it will end in a draw, be it by stalemate or insufficient material.

2. Drawn Game

There are situations where, no matter what you do, a draw is inevitable. For example, if the opposing king cannot be stopped from reaching the promotion square ahead of the pawn, then it can just barricade itself on that file moving from side to side and there will be nothing you can do about it.

3. Salvageable Positions

In some cases, this is preventable, though. If Black cannot reach the promotion square in time, White, instead of pushing the pawn, should move the king to create a sort of barrier, called  opposition. In this case, White can block the Black king and has a chance of winning. Take a look:

Now White can promote and win! 

4. Evaluation

Before any of this, however, let me explain how close is too close for the Black king to be. To evaluate if it can get there in time, count the squares until the pawn can promote. Then, create a large square using that length with the pawn in the bottom corner.

If the opponent’s king is in that square, then it can block. If it isn’t, then you don’t need this trick to promote.

Conclusion

Hopefully this will help you if you find yourself in this position. Thank you for reading!