May/June: Pandolfini Mailbag Questions

why are the vast majority of pawn endgames (with no pieces) either won or lost and nothing in between?

thanks for the great answers

RonaldJosephCote Sorry, I don't have any inside knowledge about what's happening there. I always liked being a part of the site, going back to before YK2. It offers some nice stuff and I hope it survives.

kitkat54259 Thank you for the compliment. I will answer more questions over the next month, one here, one there. I'll try to answer them all, if my aging brain and body can get to them.

Question 3 (submitted by sp1234): How does one win the ending of king, knight, and bishop vs. lone king?

Answer 3: Let’s see if I can do this without diagrams. It’s Monday morning, I’ve had my coffee, and I have nothing more fun or satisfying to do. True, I could have another coffee.

To force checkmate you have to drive the lone king to one of the correct corners. There are four corners: two correct ones and two incorrect ones. If you have a light-square bishop, you can force mate in the a8-corner or the h1-corner. If you have a dark-square bishop, you can force mate in the a1-corner or the h8-corner. You can mate in one of the incorrect corners, but you can’t force it. To mate in an incorrect corner, your opponent has to play badly or like you very much.

Of course, depending how the opponent replies, you might not mate with the bishop. Instead you might mate with the knight. But still, that can only be forced in a correct corner. And yes, you don’t have to use the words “correct and incorrect.” You can alternatively use the words “right and wrong” or “good and bad.” Do it by force, and I don’t care what words you use. 

It’s not a complex procedure to mate once the lone king is trapped in a correct corner. The trick is to drive it there. Before you can drive the lone king toward a correct corner, however, you have to confine its movement with cutoffs and bishop-and-knight barriers, making sure to control the lone king’s possible escape squares. Once the enemy king is controlled, the defender may try to resist by retreating its king to an incorrect corner, since mate can’t be forced in such a corner.

The method for driving a king from a bad corner to a good one is not very hard, though it can take a number of moves. Now the technique for doing this has long been known. Emanuel Lasker, for instance, gives a good outline of it in his “Lasker’s Manual of Chess,” though, through the years, one or two improvements have been found.

The process can be helped if one thinks in terms of three nets. These nets or “cages” entrap the enemy king. There are three such nets – a large one, a medium one, and a small one. In the case of the large net, your opponent might not even realize he or she is being trapped in it. After establishing the big net, one gradually maneuvers into the medium net, and then finally into a third net, the small one. From that small net, one-two-three, even I can force mate.  

The key maneuver uniting the netting process is based on viewing the nets geometrically, as constituting three triangles -- a large one, a medium one, and a small one – with the bishop occupying the hypotenuse of each triangle in succession. I think my October 1979 article in “Chess Life” frameworks an overall approach that students can actually follow and try to implement.

Obviously, in typical situations, your pieces are somewhat randomly placed (or may be). So you’ll need to coordinate them. Unless the position clearly suggests a better, more immediate plan, it can’t hurt to shift all three attacking pieces to the center. That way, you’re ready for business and can begin establishing the big net, or some other formation that leads to control of the enemy king.

For example, you could start with your king on a center square not the color of your bishop, your bishop on a center square next to the king, and your knight to the other side of the king, just off the center, so that the three pieces form a straight line, say from e4 to c4 (this is merely an exemplary setup, and not to be followed religiously). Once so stationed, your forces are disposed to confine and drive. The rest is mere procedure, which you can get from my October 1979 article or any number of texts these days.

I can’t help thinking how absurd many of the bishop-and-knight illustrations were in a few of the classic texts. The authors gave specific lines, without much underlying technique. From those sketchy sequences of moves, they expected students to grasp how to do it. Needless to say, such lazy, bad-teacher presentations simply don’t work. I learned how to explain it to students by actually trying to do just that any number of times. Gradually, by trial and error, mixing my own ideas with several techniques drawn from other experts, I hammered out a methodology that definitely works, which can be explained to introductory and intermediate students alike.

The big test came one weekend at the Marshall Chess Club in 1973. I played practice speed matches against ten players rated 1800-2400. In the two-game matches (I had the three attacking pieces in one game, the lone king in the other), I mated my opponents all ten times in under fifty moves (actually, way under). Curiously, not a single opponent mated me in under fifty moves, not even the 2400 player. These days, many more players know how to do it, even the 2400 player, and it’s doubtful my score would be that good. 

Do you have any extra copies of that 1979 Chess Life article laying around that you can send me?  I'll pay you extra if you sign it.

Or, is there somewhere online one can access it?  The article, not your signature.

Doirse It's funny, I don't. In fact, I don't have copies of most of my books and writings. I've given much of it away to students. In some instances I don't even have my original notes. I have a feeling the article is probably online. I wish I still had the notes to that column, since I'm sure I dropped 80 percent for space purposes in Chess Life. I'd be happy to sign, and you don't have to pay me anything. Not even my mother would do that.

I did try searching online but I'll give it another go.  I learned the triangles method from a youtube video but there was no attribution of the concept to you!  

I'd love to have an autographed copy of your article...if I can find it online.  I will frame it and hang it on my wall (upon approval from Mrs. Doirse, that is). 

Doirse I was just about to answer one of your questions concerning rook-and-pawn endgames, which I will, but I'm presently running off to a session. Nevertheless, let me correct your last impression. I did not invent the concept of the triangles. You can find that in some of the earlier writings of Cheron for example. It's my overall presentation that I believe can be helpful to students. The one or two early descriptions of it out there are theoretical. I think my overview is more practical. I've tried to base it on what I think students need to know. This is not related to Cheron’s treatment, but I want to bring it up as a general teaching mistake. Let’s think about strong chess players who suddenly try to teach. They may know how to do things, but they often don't describe the doing of those things clearly or well. What’s more, even good chess-playing writers can go wrong instruction-wise. One huge mistake they tend to make is to use colorful synonyms just to vary and make more interesting their language. But these refinements, no matter how beautiful and clear they think the improved wording to be, can be terribly confusing. Teachers, for example, often have to risk looking pedestrian to get the job done properly. That is, they must be willing to be repetitive, using the same words, for the same concepts, over and over. That way, there is likely to be less confusion. To some extent, teachers should teach adults as if they're teaching children. They must be cognizant that even the slightest turns in word use and quality of language can cause chaos, with the end result being a failure to communicate. My writing tends to be so boring that I don't have to worry about it. So thanks for the attribution, but I cannot take credit for the triangle method. I wish I could, because it is ingenious. I think the next technique I’d like to tackle is the presentation of the queen vs. rook ending. Most chess writers do a horrible job of it, if they try to do the job at all.

Ah, thank you for the clarification.  You deserve credit for bringing attention to a much more effective way of executing that mate than the more clunky approach that is in most endgame manuals.  

Fwiw, I did write to uschess.org to see about getting a copy of your 1979 article.  The online archives only go back to 2006.  Certainly decades of chess writings haven't been lost!?!

And since I have your attention if I can make one plea on the QvR endgame?  Please don't only focus on the philidor position!  Could you please try to explain the third rank and second rank defenses in a way that mere mortals can understand?  I have invested many hours (tens, not hundreds) trying to understand how to break them down...but most of the instructional material just gives variations with no explanations.

Keep going with those articles! :D

• 41 hours ago · Quote · #46

  NM brucepandolfini  

   I will answer more questions over the next month, one here, one there. I'll try to answer them all, if my aging brain and body can get to them.       Consider this an invite. We'd be happy & honored to have you join our group; "Geezers"

Chess Life has sent me a scanned copy of that 1979 article!!  Is there anyway I can upload it to chess.com?  It is pdf