The Importance of Endgames

Thanks in no small part to the almost simultaneous occurrence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the release of The Queen's Gambit, chess, and especially online chess, has seen an explosion in recent years. Lots of people started playing online on sites like chess.com and lichess.org and several people also started streaming their chess games online on Twitch. I have seen many pieces of advice offered to beginner players with the most frequently occurring ones being "Learn openings" and "do lots of puzzles". Very rarely do I come across somebody who recommends the endgame as a good place to start when trying to improve at chess. In fact, most people's reaction when they hear the word endgame is this:

No... endgames aren't THAT boring!

In this blog post I want to list a couple of reasons studying endgames is actually a very good way to improve at chess, especially for beginners.

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Keep it simple!

The starting position in chess is very complex and can be very overwhelming to a beginner player - there are already 20(!) starting moves to choose from and things quickly escalate: the number of distinct possible positions after 3 moves (i.e. 3 moves for White and 3 moves for Black) is already 119,060,324 (for those of you interested in seeing how this number grows visit https://www.chessprogramming.org/Perft_Results). Although we can use our trusty friends The Opening Principles (develop, fight for the centre and king safety) to help us navigate in the opening, the sheer number of possible moves (and pieces we can move) for both ourselves and our opponent can make it hard to make a choice.

In contrast, endgames are a lot simpler! Learning and practising positions with fewer pieces teaches us how to use our pieces effectively and how our pieces can work together effectively. The simplest example of this is the Rook and King versus King checkmate from which we can already learn many important things! For example:

1. The rook and king have to work together to drive the black king to the side of the board.

2. Mindlessly checking the black king leads nowhere! In chess, mindlessly attacking something often doesn't work: our opponent can simply run away with the attacked piece. Many times we should think about restricting our target first and only then attacking it.

3. The rook is a long-range piece and is at its happiest far away from the enemy king (who only has short legs). The rook is a happy piece when it has lots of open space where it can control lots of squares and can run away if something gets too close.

4. Our pieces can sometimes get in the way of each other and work against each other!

Let's take look together at a few more things we can quickly learn from some simple endgame positions.

Piece coordination

One of my favourite positions in endgames is one you come across when studying how to checkmate with a bishop and knight and illustrates how powerful co-ordination between your pieces can be:

White's bishop on e7 controls the squares highlighted in green: f8, f6, g5 and h4. White's knight on e5 controls the squares highlighted in red: f7, g6 and g4. Together, they create an impassable barrier and keep Black's king stuck in the corner. From this simple position we quickly see that if we have a bishop and knight they are happiest together when they stand on the same colour square: from a dark square the knight controls the white squares and the bishop will control the dark squares.

Domination/restriction

The fewer pieces are left, the more we can see the effects when one piece stands badly or is dominated. Consider the following position:

After the simple Bd4, black's knight on a4 is dominated and white can simply push his h-pawn with the help of his king.

In the position below, is Black's rook on c8 happy or not? How can White (to move) exploit the position of Black's rook?

Calculation

Endgames are great for improving calculation and visualisation. Typically there are fewer moves to consider and the reduced number of pieces also helps in visualising the variations more clearly. Especially in king and pawn endgames we often have to calculate long, forcing variations to see whether or not we promote first. Consider the following position with White to move: should White go after the pawn on b5 with Kd5, or play Kf4?

Simplification

In chess we are always faced with the question of whether to exchange pieces or not. Knowing our endgames well helps us in answering this question. As an example, consider the following position:

Black's king is cut off and White is threatening to push the e-pawn aided by his king. Can Black play Rc8 and offer a trade of rooks in order to try and get his king in front of White's pawn?

Beauty

Endgames can be beautiful! Even though we don't see too many queen sacrifices or spectacular checkmates in the endgame, there is still plenty of room for beauty as the following study by Troitsky shows (with White to move and win):

In conclusion, let me leave you with a quote from the 3rd World Champion, Capablanca: "In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else. For whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and opening must be studied in relation to the end game."

What do you think? Are endgames worthwhile to study? Or are openings and puzzles all we need? Let me know your thoughts and solutions to the positions in the comments!