Thanx for the vid..

Nice and more importantly instructive video. I was working on a king+pawns endgame exercise a week ago which ended in the Q vs. bishop pawn example shown in the video. The solution just said that it is drawn but I did not understand why - until now.

glad you found it helpful! If you have any video requests for discussion of a specific kind of endgame, feel free to PM me or post them.

I had forgotten about Bishop pawns being a means to draw. I guess earlier in the game, that is something to keep in mind when exchanging down to the endgame. Thanks for all these videos.

Glad you like the video! Yeah, thanks to the stalemate possibility, bishop pawns can be really annoying...or great, depending on whether you or your opponent has the queen.

Nice video, and a good introduction to this ending. Do you have any plans to do a sister video to this one? I think it might help for people to understand when the king is closer, in the wing and Bishop-pawn endings. The quadrangle for the King, and the trap variation against a rooks pawn. Also the rectangle with two missing squares against a Bishop-pawn.

I tried it with Fritz and it worked. I have a little more chess knowledge than I did this morning. Thanks.

Hi there, really nice video's!!!

An endgame theme I'm really struggling with at the moment is Q vs Q+advanced pawn. I'm doing my best to figure it out, but I can't manage to find a clear win. The defender seems to be able to give endless checks, resulting in a draw.

I thought you might be able to tackle it for us?

Bart

Hey Josh,

First off thanks for the wonderful website, I really am learning a lot from all the great contributors.

Just wanted to tell you how happy today when a game actually came up with a queen vs. pawn on the 7th rank.

It took me a while to realize that this was the actual position I had watched the video about. And of course my execution was sub-par and I didn't take the fastest road to town, but still I remembered the principle of bringing your king in when the other king is behind the pawn and eventually put my opponent in a nice zugzwang. I'm glad I didn't take the draw offer! And it's all thanks to you!!!

So here's the game, but don't mind too much the rest of it, I'm just starting to play blitz and am really bad at it still (not that I'm any good at standard time settings either...)

Thanks again for all your time and trouble.

Vincent

I'd really like to see this vid, but I'm seeing in the first post is this line:
"[advideo:0ad66be6aa0019127ea211fa1c12557c.flv]"

Video seems to have gone missing.

~Dan

Sorry about that! It had a problem related to our recent forum upgrade. It's working now.

Hey hotnuts, in your game above you could have won very quickly with 49...Qg3! and there is no way White can stop you from playing 50...Qb1, just putting your queen in front of his pawn. Then you can walk over with your King and mate him at your leisure!

I just got a really interesting variant on this in the endgame simulator.

The starting position was:
White: K a4, Q f5
Black: K a2, P b2

Now, I know that this position would just about never happen, but it is interesting how it plays out.

Given the position of the White King, the only move that prevents Black from promoting instantly is a Queen move to the second rank:

1. Qc2

(Or: 1. Qf2, which produces an identical position after the fourth move, with all the other intermediate moves being the same.)

This leaves only one legal move for Black:

1. ... Ka1

Then, there is only one good move for White. It actually turns out to be a very good move. All Queen moves are obviously bad, and four of the five King moves make handing a tempo to Black inevitable, so this leaves:

2. Ka3

But then I was more than a little surprised by Black's response:

2. ... b1=N+

This then plays out:

3. Kb3 Nd2+
4. Qxd2 Kb1
5. Qb2#
(or 5. Qd1#)

Now, I was all ready to say that Crafty had blundered (or at least acquired a sense of humour) with 2. ... b1=N+. So I got some real chess pieces out and played out the obvious version:

2. ... b1=Q
3. Qc3+ Qb2+
4. Qxb2#

So well done, Crafty, for delaying checkmate by one move! And I'm seriously impressed that it has been programmed to be able to underpromote, seeing how rare it is that underpromotion achieves anything ( http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/minor.htm ). Of course, a human would probably resign after 2. Ka3.

For the interminably curious, underpromotion to Rook works the same as promotion to Queen here; underpromotion to Bishop is even worse, resulting in 3. Qb2#; and the King move is obviously silly: 2. ... Kb1, 3. Qxb2#.

In the 1. Qf1 line, Crafty still underpromotes to Knight. Why promotion to Queen doesn't work in this line is a little less obvious (or at least it was to me): 1. Qf2 Ka1, 2. Ka3 b1=Q, 3. Qd4+ Qb2+, 4. Qxb2#. I found it all too easy to nonchalantly play 3. Qd2 and end up drawing.

Anyway, that was probably one of the most practically irrelevant endgame simulator positions I have ever played, but it was strange in such a beautiful way that it made me smile. And I'm sure I've learnt something from it, even if it is just "don't play nonchalant moves in endgames".