Knight Endgames: Basics

For piece endings, Knight endings are the closest things to pawn endgames. Some people even say that Knight endgames are pawn endgames because of how similar the Knight is to a King in endgames. To begin with, let's see why this is the case:

Similarity between King and Knight

In order to see how the King and Knight are similar, you need to know how other pieces are so different to the King. For instance, let's see how many squares other pieces can control vs the King and the Knight:

As you can see, other pieces have a huge range compared to Kings and Knights and control a lot more squares. If the Bishop could somehow access both colour complexes, it would be a major piece, but cannot and hence is a minor piece. The fact it cannot access both colour complexes also makes Bishop endgames much more different to Pawn endgames and therefore Knight endgames too.

So what now changes in the Knight endgame from the Pawn endgame? For one thing, we said that pawn endgames can often be calculated all the way towards the final result. With an extra piece on the board, it gets a little more trickier, so now positional aspects become more prominent. 

Below are the goals we had found for pawn endgames:

• Seize control of the opposition if possible
• USE THE KING
• Try to create passed pawns (also deny your opponent these if possible)
• Assist passed pawns you have with your K (preferably in front)
• Square of the K

In a Knight endgame, opposition does not really exist anymore (which is what made pawn endgames very concrete):

Instead of the opposition (unless a zugzwang just happens to appear), piece positioning takes its place. Positioning the N so that it can take many useful routes and having a great King placement, such as below, can be very useful:

Also, as for the Square of the King rule, if the Knight is more effective when stopping the pawn, you may use the Knight instead if the Knight cannot put up any more useful roles.

So, with these changes, here is a list of key things to do generally in a Knight endgame:

• Place your Knight and King on good squares
  USE THE KING
• Try to create passed pawns (also deny your opponent these if possible, unless this denies you of any play yourself)
• Assist passed pawns you have with your King or Knight (or both)
• Use the Square of the King if the Knight has very important roles compared to catching passed pawns. If not, use the Knight to stop these pawns

So, here is the summary of basic ideas you may implement in Knight endgames. As you can see, there is still a huge similarity between Knight endgames and pawn endgames, so don't panic too much if you reach a Knight endgame!

Great stuff! Seems somewhat targeted considering our last game 😂😂

Ah, no that wasn't targetting you or considering that last game

Nice lesson!