A Puzzle: Can someone explain the concept behind this

Hi

I  can see the three possible moves here f5,g5,hxg6 for white? One of them is winning. Can someone please explain this puzzle and guide the relevant material. Thanks.

g5. If hxg5 then h6-h7-h8 wins. If gxh5 then gxh6 queens first on h8.

Got it.. but how to evaluate the others? f5,hxg6?  Look unclear..

g5 wins the pawn race for white

f5 gets you nowhere. Just a pawn exchange and you're still a pawn down. 

hxg6 fxg6 also leaves you just a pawn down. 

I don't know about where to guide you for the material to study this, although I'm certain that lots of people could answer that and hopefully one of them does post here.

I can give my two cents on what I think you've not understood about this puzzle, if you've struggled with it though (even if you eventually solved it). The whole concept of this puzzle is that the pawns are closer to the 8th rank than the 1st. As soon as you recognise that (which ideally should be instantly, as it's always something to look for), you know that the winning tactic will most likely be to force a pawn past the line. In this case, you should be looking force the Black Pawn on h6 to move, as it's what's currently stopping your advance. It usually won't matter how much you sacrifice or how many of your opponent's pawns also become passers, on boards like this one, as you're winning any resulting race.

As for your three suggested moves specifically:

- hxg is OK to consider, since it's so direct. However, after the obvious reply, it's clear that you've gained nothing. No deep analysis is needed. It's a dud. Move on.

- f5 makes little sense to consider. I don't understand the purpose of it.

- g5 is the obvious move to consider because it attacks the problem square of h6. You know Black can't take it, because you pass on h. That's a given. The main other replies to consider are Black taking on h, which fails to you also playing gxh and being passed; and Black doing nothing (always consider your opponent doing nothing), which again fails to gxh with passer.

The steps to understand/solve this puzzle:

1. Identify that the pawns are closer to 8th than 1st.

2. Identify Black's block on h6 as the problem.

3. Find candidate moves. In this case, there's only one move that challenges h6.

4. Calculate possible Black responses to candidate move(s)

If this was a speed puzzle, you'd skip step 4 in this instance, since there's only one candidate move. You'd just make the move without calculating if it was right, as you saw no other candidates.

I hope this helped you to understand the puzzle. Hopefully somebody posts with the relevant material you wish to study.

1 f5 exf5 2 gxf5 g4 and Black is up a passed pawn that the White king will have to stop.  It also helps sets up a wall on the fourth rank that the White king cannot enter.  3 f6 Kb3 4 Kd2 Kc4 5 Ke3 Kc3 6 Ke2 Kxd4 and now Black has a passer on g4 and a passer on d5.

1 hxg6 fxg6 and Black's h-pawn will force the White king to run while the Black king gobbles up the remaining White pawns 2 Kd2 Kc4 3 Ke3 h5 4 gxh5 gxh5 5 f5 exf5 6 Kf4 Kxd4 7 Kxf5 h4 (not the best move, but demonstrates the distraction the h-pawn causes) 8 Kg4 Kc3 9 Kxh4 d4 10 Kg3 d3 11 Kf2 d2 12 Ke2 Kc2 13 Ke3 d1=Q

For material, the lessons section on here has Endgames. There are also pawn endgames in the Drills section. I'm not sure if there is anything on this specific problem, but generally, if you are learning and practising pawn endgames, you'll develop the skills to think through these problems. Jeremy Silman has a good endgame book. Chessable has a good free course called Basic Endgames. And there is google and you tube of course.

And Kestony's king and pawn endgame post, a few messages down 😁.

Thank you, everyone.  Game of pawns, excellent explanation. I understood.

Jetoba, MarkGrubb. Thank you.

g5 is winning because the h pawn promotes before any other black pawn promotes

I've noticed that puzzles like these are almost always about getting a pawn promoted, or promoting first. That is all you should worry about at first. My immediate thoughts were:

hxg6... We are a pawn down and trading doesnt help.
K-move... to where, and why?
f5...trading leave them with a great passed pawn and while my King hunts it down their King takes our pawn.

that leaves:
g5 hxg4 and we get a passed pawn with g5 and we promote first. Promoting first means we check first, making their queen almost useless.
g5 gxh4 and it's basically the same when gxh5, but this time it is even easier because as soon as they promote we take their piece.

That passed pawn structure has also come up a few times when I do puzzles. Once you start recognising the patterns it becomes easier.

* Note, my ratings are not particularly good in anything because I don't actually see things as quickly or clearly as I might lead you to believe

You're welcome.

Looking back, there was something I didn't explain. It can be tough to explain how to do things that come naturally to you. I saw that problem and I knew the answer is g5. I didn't really have to think or calculate. Between my knowledge of basic endgames, my experience of seeing similar puzzles and my experience of positions like this in games, I just sort of knew what the answer was straight away. Most other people who posted here will have been the same, and you too will be the same in the future if you continue to play and study chess. So when you come to explain how and why to somebody, it can take a lot of thinking to work out exactly why and how that was the answer. You can easily fail to explain something, that might be natural to you but not the person on the other end.

I failed to explain why h6 was the "problem area". When I solved the puzzle, I identified this because of two main reasons. The first is that the Black Pawn here blocks your most advanced Pawn. You probably figured out that was important. The second, more important and probably less obvious reason, is that the Black pawn here is not defended.

Pieces (or simply squares) being undefended is huge part of tactics in chess. That can be a piece with no defenders, such as this Pawn, or a piece that is attacked and defended the same number of times. The solution to a puzzle will often be to win said piece, or perhaps use it to gain yourself a tempo to win something lesser. In this puzzle, you're not interested in winning the h6 Pawn, but it's still the fact that it's undefended that allows g5 to work. The point is that nothing can recapture for Black on h6.

After g5, there is nothing Black can do to maintain a piece on h6. That is why h6 was the key square in this puzzle. That is why you always look for undefended squares/pieces. That is what I missed out of my first post.

Thanks