Importance of the Lucena and Philidor

Why are these considered so important? I've never had either come up.

I suggest that you wait until you draw an endgame that you should have won... THEN study them.

That's what Anna Ushenina did.

I never considered them important (vaguely knew about the starting positions) until I took the time to learn the ins and outs. 

My God the amount of times these positions come up in my games (or at least similar situations where I could tranfer the knowledge) is astounding. 

It depends on your level too. Basically, endgames become more and more important in practical play when you get better - because you do not crush players or get crushed, or hang pieces anymore, so you end up reaching roughly level endgames.

And between all endgames, the rook endgames are the most common*. A naive explanation is that rooks are not used before some exchanges have been done (they need files) while minor pieces and later the queen go out quicker, so that the rooks stay longer on the board - but I was never convinced.

Rook and pawn vs. rook is the basis of rook endgames. This endgame is itself terribly complicated. The author of my endgame book says that he spent months studying those endgames (it was before the tablebases, btw) and stopped when he started to dream about it - he knew something was going wrong.

Yet, many of the rook+pawn vs rook endgames end up with one of the Philidor/Lucena position. Here, "many" = 90% at least, from my experience. So in a sense, this is the core of rook endgames.

This being said, those positions less important than other things - king vs king + pawn for instance. But they are still of huge importance in endgames.

*however, all endgames can potentially lead to pawn endgames, so you could argue that pawn endgames are more common (if not on the board, in the calculations)

lol

I just decided one day to learn how to mate with N+B in the endgame, and low and behold, within a month I actually had the position. After the game I made it a point to immediately learn the lucena and phillidor positions as well...

Often times these endgames come up and we don't realize it...because we don't know what they are 

They are important because understanding them enables you to identify situations where you can cause them to come up.

Don't neglect the Vancura. Or other like positions with a rook pawn with the stronger sides rook stuck in front of it. 

You are missing 2 others.  The Shortside Defense and the Longside defense.

These all come up more than you think.  In about 2100 tournament games, I've had Philidor's Draw come up at least 20 times, Lucena's come up at least twice that I can think of, and the Shortside Defense come up twice (once with me defending, once with me having the pawn).

Also, that's simply instances where it physically happened.  Other games were agreed drawn or resigned before the book ending was physically reached, but it was inevitable that it would happen!

The most common ending is Rook endings.  If you are down a pawn, you would love to get it down to Rook and Pawn vs Rook, and achieve one of the 3 drawing techniques.  Obviously the other side wants the win.

A friend recently showed me a game of his where his opponent could attack one of two pawns.  By virtue of where they were on the board one of the pawns was a Philidor pawn (it was on the sixth rank) and one was a Lucena pawn (hadn't made it to the sixth yet).

In other words, if the opponent attacks and wins the Philidor pawn you are left with the Lucena pawn and you can build a bridge and win.  Knowing that tells you which pawn to save if you are the attacker and which one to attack if you are the defender.  Even though the position itself wasn't yet on the board.

Huh ?

There is no such thing as a 'Lucena' pawn... But anyways in the Lucena position the pawn is on the 7th, so I guess he got through the 6th at some point.

I use it all the time in rook endgames. When my opponent has the most active rook, I try to sacrifice a pawn to get the Philidor Position, since I know it's a draw.

I once was in a very complicated rook endgame in blitz. I had like 1 minute back, and I had a chance to drew because I knew a drawing position. It was with black, with white rook on a8, while white pawn on a7, and black rook on a1. White had a g-pawn, so I was down 2 pawns in a rook endgame. I would never have sacrificed my pawn if I wasn't sure that this held, but it's an easy draw.

If you use 3 hours each year on rook endgame theory, you will gain alot of points.

Well, yes, but that is not the only characteristic of position.

The Lucena position is a position where there is a pawn on the 7th, the attacking king in front of this pawn, the rest of the pieces can vary in placement but basically the hard part is to find a place to hide for the king. As soon as you add other pawns of either color, it becomes easier.

If you want, a "Lucena pawn" is a pawn in a Lucena position. But such a pawn does not exist by himself, or even in reference to a small portion of the board.

Lucena pawn meaning that the pawn would later be capable of being used in a Lucena to build a bridge.

In other words he had a pawn left that if it survived would lead to a drawn Philidor and a pawn left which if it survived could later be used to create a Lucena position.

I once played in a tournament where I was playing on board 1 against a master in the last round, a friend of mine was playing on board 2 against a master. The four of us all had 4/4 points. We both reached the Lucena position. I won, he drew. As a result of that single piece of knowledge, I earned ~$500 more than my friend did.

So please, do NOT study these endgames. They are NOT important! 

= I didn't learn them until I learned them.

So you can earlier recognize whether that trade of pieces leads to a win or a draw.

Do yourself a favor and learn the Lucena Position ASAP. There's 2 "solutions" and learning one isn't that hard, probably learning both isn't any harder but one maybe more "obvious" to you (just like one was made more sense to me at first). Once you learn it you can rest assured it will never be "refuted" or "updated" and it's not that uncommon you're going to see it in one of your games or more eventually. OR just wait until you bungle away a win by not knowing it that may be the incentive you'll need to learn it. Of course, if you don't even know what the Lucena or Philidor Positions are you probably won't know you walked into one and blew it.

The Philidor Position K+R vs K+R+P is also good to know. There's another Philidor position K+Q vs K+R which is also good to know, but a lot less common than K+R vs K+R+P endings.

The powerful and mighty OZ has spoken!

Huh ?

And what is the difference between a pawn that will become Lucena and one that will become Philidor ?

It's not an intrisic properties of pawns. When the defending king comes in front of a "Lucena pawn", it becomes a "Philidor pawn".

You might as well call these pawns 'would-be queens' or 'would-be knights' according to what piece you expect them to promote to... even when still on the 2nd rank.

Of course it's not an intrinsic property of pawns.  It was a property of individual pawns in a specific position based on the entire position.

i.e. if I keep my c pawn my opponent draws and if I keep my e pawn I win.  Yes, enough could have changed about the position (i.e. king placement) so that those properties no longer applied.  But knowing those endings allowed a knowledgeable plan to be formed.