May/June: Pandolfini Mailbag Questions

    hahahahahahahah  wordily   Related to Daryl Waltrip I see

Doirse Good question, to be sure. I will answer it in the endgame column.

RonaldJosephCote I'm glad you liked my humor. Until now, only my mother did. 

DarklingSalmon Good point. I'm going to have to discuss it all with the staff. We're still not sure what the best way is to handle this column. I really want to provide a useful service, but it's not as easy as it may seem. Originally, I was going to answer only three questions a month. To decide which three were most interesting, we were going to wait until a bunch of questions came in. But as the weeks drag by, it all loses immediacy and perhaps some of its value. If you or any readers have intelligent suggestions on how to do the column better, we would certainly appreciate hearing from you. Thanks for expressing your feelings about it. 

I have a question about endgames that has been confusing me recently. I've studied many grandmaster games, but even in doing so this particluar topic seems very confusing and contradictory.

The question is essentially: when to activate a rook, and when to keep it behind your pawns.

One endgame principle says clearly that rooks belong behind passed pawns. This makes perfect sense in and of itself. However, another equally important principle says that rooks should be activated, especially to the 7th rank. And in doing so, you often see masters put their rooks behind the opponent's passed pawns.

So, it seems like more art than science to know whether, in an endgame, one should "activate" a rook or keep it behind your own pawns and push the pawns ahead of the rook. For some reason, the other pieces make more intuitive sense on where they should go. But rooks pose an especially unique and difficult problem.

Where in the world should rooks go in an endgame? Where do they belong in relationship to pawns? I never know when to "activate" a rook and whether such a move is a good idea or dangerous and a waste of time.

Do you really have to learn the obscure endgame checkmates(like B+N, N+N vs. P, Q vs. R, etc.)?

CelloBob2012 My tactics website keeps telling me that there are faster ways to checkmate and I am not sure what the theory behind these faster wins are.

Dark_Shepherd It's one thing to know the principles, it's quite another to know when they apply and when they don't. Your question is a good one. It triggers many issues. I shall put it on the queue. Thanks for posing it.

y2721 You don't have to learn anything. So there's no need to learn how to mate with a bishop and knight, for instance. But will doing so help your overall play? Absolutely. 

LEGOMaster2  The use of computer engines is a critical issue these days. The principles of good play may suggest doing this, but the assessment of the computer is to do that. In most cases, the computer will be right. But going with computer recommendations exclusively is not the best way to understand chess. For a developing student, it's better to comprehend what principles apply, when and how, and to supplement (not depend upon) all of that with computer evaluations. You can learn to play by the principles, but I wouldn't count on being able to learn as easily how a computer comes up with its "best moves." The trick is not to rely on computers, but to rely on oneself. Thanks for your question. I'll try to get into some of its ramifications in an upcoming column.

For a 1800 USCF player, what endgames should they know and learn?

And is silman's complete endgame course accurate in the what you should learn?

What would you recommend as a good training routine for practical endgames (like your everyday R+B+3p vs. R+N+4p or anything you can expect to meet on the chessboard) ?

How to find good training positions, and how to train them in practice ?

Do i need to calculate a lot in endgames? Calculating requires time and endgames usually is the longest part in chess (in the matter of moves). I don't know why i lost so much games from endgames due to simple tactics such as knight forks

What is the best way to study endgames? I have several endgame books, and they contain many diagrams and solutions, but I haven't been able to learn the principles behind the solutions? Is it sheer practice and brute calculation in the endgame? 

at what point does a chess game become an endgame

Question 1 (submitted by chesskid12377): At what point does a chess game become an endgame?

Answer 1:  While it can be expedient for purposes of study and classification to divide a chess game into three separate phases (opening, middlegame, and endgame), these distinctions are somewhat arbitrary and contrived. Indeed, a chess game is an organic whole, and there often are no clear boundary lines between phases. Sometimes it seems that play just keeps moving and transitioning. To be sure, these transitions may be hard to perceive, especially as they’re taking place.  Now it’s true that the phases are generally described in definite ways. So we say the opening is a building phase, where we develop the forces, the midgame is a planning phase, where we accumulate advantages, and the endgame is a capitalizing phase, where we convert those plusses into victory. But these are merely conveniences of description, not integral characteristics. Nevertheless, in typical portrayal, the endgame tends to begin once the queens come off the board and the kings can more safely take part in the fray. Why is the latter important? It’s important because the main theory of the endgame revolves around the conversion of an extra pawn into a win, and that process may require the help of the friendly king. True, you can have endgames with queens on the board, where the kings don’t become involved without trepidation, but these are less common. So those are two of the main descriptors: the queens are off the board and the kings can play around with less fear of Thor’s Hammer.

RonaldJosephCote Cute, especially in a Cote sense! 

       Bruce, do you have any info to what's happening at ChessCafe?  Are they on their way up, or on their way out?                                                                     http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/what-is-going-on-with-the-chess-cafe

Question 2 (submitted by hicetnunc): What would you recommend as a good training routine for practical endgames (like your everyday R+B+3p vs. R+N+4p or anything you can expect to meet on the chessboard)? How can I find good training positions and how can I train for them in practice?

Answer 2:  There are many different approaches you can try. I will suggest just one. Play out resigned positions, particularly those with material disparities. Start with good databases, and drawing upon games played by strong players, take those resigned setups and play them out against software, with you generally taking the losing side. The computers will show you how to win most economically and professionally by beating you with dispatch. That’s one thing computers are really good at, winning efficiently when materially ahead. Grandmasters don’t normally play out such positions because they know them and already understand the winning methodology. But most of us don’t, so it makes sense for us to play them out, so that we assimilate how to implement the correct procedures. Practice that way for the remainder of the summer, playing out hundreds and maybe thousands of such finishes, and watch your technique sharpen and improve dramatically.