Pawn and King vs King and Queen and King vs King Endgames

Welcome to my blog! In this blog, I will explain some endgame techniques to apply in your games. Bet before that, let’s discuss first what is an endgame. An endgame is a part of a chess game where almost all major/minor pieces are traded and the main goal is to checkmate your opponent's king. You can do this by cornering your opponent’s king with pawns or promoting your pawns to a much more valuable piece and checkmate your king with that piece. Now that we know a little about endgames, you can now read what’s below. It is a 2-5 minute read.

1. Opposition [(Pawn and King vs King) and (Queen and King vs King)]
This technique is used mainly to promote a pawn. This position can be achieved by staying only 1 square away (horizontally or vertically) from your opponent's king. This technique makes your opponent’s king move aside so he won’t be blocking your pawn. In Queen and King vs King endgames, this is used to checkmate your opponent, once you reach this position at the end of the board, checkmate is inevitable.  If you don’t use opposition, the game will be very likely a draw (assuming that your opponent knows how to force stalemate). The figure below is an example of an opposition.

2. Don’t move your pawn into the 4th rank when you’re facing your side of the board (4th rank for white/5th rank for black) (Pawn and King vs King)
Don’t ever move your pawn forward two squares in the endgame. It will make it harder to use opposition. In the drills, I tried moving my pawn 2 squares and Stockfish, chess.com’s chess engine, said that it was a blunder. I continued the game and it ended in a stalemate. If you can’t picture what I’m saying, see the diagram below.

3. Don’t push your pawn too far…. (Pawn and King vs King)
Pushing pawns too far is a common mistake for excited players. I don’t recommend this because it disallows opposition. Your game will most likely end in a draw.

4. Stay a Knight’s move away from your opponent (Queen and King vs King)
This technique is used to push the king into the edge of the board. Just put your queen a knight’s move away from your opponent’s king no matter what (except if you already pushed your opponent’s king where you want his/her king to be or it’s stalemate). The reason behind the greatness of this technique is it blocks the diagonal and vertical/horizontal escape squares of the king. It forms a triangle. The triangle gets smaller and smaller as the King gets close to the edge of the board. Below is an example of this technique.

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