Pawn endgames for beginners

Of all endgame types the pawn endgame matters most for a beginner, for three reasons.

• It calculates exactly. There is no «roughly better» here: a position is either won or drawn, and it can be proved by counting. Nothing else in chess is like that.
• Every trade leads into it. Any endgame can simplify into a pawn endgame with a single exchange - and the decision to trade depends on whether you can judge it.
• The cost of a mistake is highest. In the middlegame a bad move costs you position. In a pawn endgame one bad king move costs half a point with no way back.

The most useful device in chess per minute invested. The question it answers: will the king catch the running pawn?

Picture a square whose side is the pawn's path to promotion. If the king can step into that square on its move, it catches the pawn. If not, the pawn queens.

• It is instant. No calculation needed - just look at the board.
• Account for the pawn's first move. From its starting square a pawn may advance two, and the square is drawn from where it lands.
• Check for obstacles. The rule holds only if nothing blocks the king - your own piece in the way breaks the count.

Practise it - the rule of the square on a board.

Two ideas that explain why «king and pawn against king» is sometimes a win and sometimes a draw from what looks like the same picture.

A word on the rook's pawn: a pawn on the a- or h-file is the exception to every rule. A defending king that reaches the corner draws even against king and pawn, because it cannot be driven out.

A passed pawn is one with no enemy pawn ahead of it, either on its file or on the adjacent ones. It decides most endgames.

• A passed pawn must be pushed. A stationary passer is harmless: the threat appears as it nears promotion and demands the enemy king's attention.
• An outside passer beats a central one. It drags the enemy king to the edge while your king eats the pawns on the other wing. The classic winning mechanism.
• A protected passer is a positional trump. A pawn shielded by another pawn cannot be taken, and the enemy king is tied to watching it.
• Two connected passers almost always win. They defend each other, and one king cannot stop both.

Practise - the outside passed pawn, passed pawns.

A position where any move only makes things worse: you would rather stand still, but the rules require a move. Rare in the middlegame, in the pawn endgame it is the main winning mechanism.

The practical meaning: in an endgame it matters not only where to go but whose turn it is. Hence devices like waiting moves - the stronger side makes a move that changes nothing in order to hand the turn over and push the opponent into zugzwang.

It is also why losing a tempo can be a good thing in the endgame - an idea that sounds absurd to a beginner until they see it once in their own game.

In order, from simple to hard. Each position is set up on an interactive board - move the pieces and check yourself.

The last two are rook endgames rather than pawn ones, and they are on the list deliberately: rook endings occur more often than all the others combined, and Lucena and Philidor cover half of the practical cases.

• Play the position out against an engine. Do not just read the solution - convert it against stubborn defence.
• Play both sides. Knowing how to win is useful; knowing how to save is twice as useful.
• Count out loud. Everything in a pawn endgame calculates exactly, and saying the line aloud disciplines the counting.
• Do not study the exotic. Rare endings appear once in a lifetime; the square and the opposition appear every event.
• Look at your own games. Especially the drawn ones - that is usually where the missed win was.