WHY LEARN BISHOP & KNIGHT CHECKMATE PATTERN?

So I am contemplating stuff in my old age that I never thought about when I was young, like how glad I am now that I didn't wait until I was 50 before planning my retirement. I undertook retirement planning at age 32 so I'm OK for now as long as serious inflation doesn't kick in as a result of the deficit spending that seems to be the craze these days in Washington DC.

Not that my retirement is of a concern to chess players, but some of my contemplations do involve chess, so I will try to limit this blog to those topics.

One humorous idea I have struggled with is why do all the books and knowledgeable chess afficianados say you need to learn the endgames first? I am old and my brain is full of cr@p already so I think I need to learn things I can use in the endgame of life, and if 99% of my games end in the middlegame because I'm not such a good player, maybe I'll wait until I get that number down to say 90% of my games ending in the middlegame before I worry about learning all about winning the endgame.

Actually, it's not that bad, I actually have a lot of fun doing problems on chess.com that feature endgame studies. And that has helped me win a few games. But if it wasn't fun learning those concepts, my record of about 30 more won games than lost games would be more like 25 more wins than losses. And my rating might be 6 points lower.

So learning the "basic checkmates" I guess is important. I can almost hear some of my opponents snickering when they have blundered away a game to me but I am doing some slow rook roll to get the mate when there are faster mates (stockfish tells me this frequently).

But if you are one of those snickerers, I can snicker back because 1) my slow mate process is still sticking you with a loss, and 2) I didn't waste part of my life learning faster mates that I almost never need.

I also fail to see some mate in twos or mate in threes, but I confess I go after the first forced mate I find, no matter how many moves it is. It works for me. Now you know why I hate speed chess.

Now all of this mumbo jumbo that I have been spewing finally gets around to the point of this blog. WHY DO I NEED TO KNOW HOW TO MATE WITH A BISHOP & KNIGHT OR WITH 2 BISHOPS VS LONE KING?????

I've been playing chess for 64 years and I'm certain that I have played way more than 10,000 games, maybe even 100,000. I have played exactly one game wherein I had to try to mate with a knight and bishop vs lone king and I've never tried it with two bishops, probably because I like knights more and am more skilled with them.

BTW my user name and e-mail address have been borrowed from my beloved horse, Tijuanaboomboom, who I bought for a dollar, rehabbed his "career-ending" injuries and took him to the winners circle a plethora of times. Message me if you want a you tube link of him racing with me as his driver. He died last year, I still cry about that sometimes. So I'm a horseman and I like knights!

And while I contemplate these things, maybe you could leave a comment telling me how often you have faced these "basic endgames" that seem so rare.

Another question I am soon to contemplate: Do I need to learn the Ruy Lopez if I open with d4 as white and respond to e4 with the sicilian when I'm black?