Temposchlucker

 This morning I was thinking about why I am so bad at endgames. And I said to myself "because I always see too much possibilities". But then I heard the RCCM chime in "wait a minute, you don't SEE these possibilities, you only suppose them to be there". And I realized that that has been true all the time. I always felt overwhelmed by chess. Not by the amount of possibilities that I SEE , but by the amount of possibilities that I suppose there are. On another note: Invisibility You win when you see patterns that your opponent doesn't. To name a few areas: tactics mate pawn ending rook ending The first two I master reasonably well, and that is where I win my games. The second two are a recent discovery: I lose 0.5 per endgame galore. With the pace I'm going now, I deem that I need a year to fix pawn and rook endings to the degree that I see the invisible patterns. Furthermore, I have reason to believe that a full fix of endings would bring me to 1950 ratin...

 Let's have a look at the following position. Diagram 1. White to move 8/4k3/8/1p2Pp2/p7/P1K1P3/1P6/8 w - - 0 1 Stockfish indicates that two moves are winning: 1.Kd3 1.e4 First I try to get a global overview.. If white focuses on the left sight of the position and black on the right side, both need 8 moves to promote the pawn. This assumes no interaction between left and right. Since both parties promote at the same time, we have to look further. What if we take only the right side into account? Diagram 2. White to move The winning moves ar now: 1.Kd3 1.Kc4 Two remarkable things happened. We have a new winning move (1.Kc4) and a winning move (e4) has vanished. The first is caused by the fact that in the first diagram c4 is taboo for the white king. The second is caused that the black king can walk over to the left side and assist the pawns there. I think it is save to say that isolating pawn groups is complicating matters while having no tangible benefit to justify the attempt. Ok ...

 I'm trying to find which methods are practical. Diagram 1. White to move 8/1k6/2p5/2P5/K7/P7/8/8 w - - 1 2 What is going on? White must conquer the black pawn White cannot go via the left side White must go to the key squares of the black pawn via the right side Black cannot defend the key squares on the right side because white has a spare tempo (a4) Blacks only try is to conquer the white pawn on c5 via the left side Square d4 (red a) is mined (typical for the Trébuchet) White must avoid d4 until black steps on b5 (blue a) The two squares c4 and d5 (marked x) are rigged They are the cause that d4 is mined c4 is only rigged after the black king steps on b5

 Let's have a closer look at what is happening with the conquering of the black pawn. Diagram 1.White to move 8/5k2/3p4/3P1K2/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1 The battleground revolves around the key squares (red circles). The red arrows indicate the axis of outflanking. On the left side is a mirrored situation. If white decides to walk to the left, black must make sure that he can occupy the left axis of outflanking at the same time that white does. No matter whether he walks over the 7th rank, the 8th rank or a zigzag. When black reaches the c-file, be it on c7 or c8, he can always decide on which square to step on the axis, once white has showed his hand. But there is more going on. Diagram 2. White to move The distant opposition gets another meaning here. The kings are in a distant opposition, relative to the key squares. If you consider the red circles (not drawn here to prevent cluttering), white to move means that the white king steps out of the opposition. But relative to the blue circle...

 So what are the key squares for the Trébuchet? Diagram 1 What do these key squares represent? In a clean situation, the red circles represent the squares where the white king must be in order to win the black pawn in a "guaranteed" manner. In practice, the situation is usually more murky. What the opponent is doing might influence the effectiveness of occupying the key squares. Another term you sometimes find is critical squares . Since I intend to use that idea of a double attack in a more general sense, I prefer the term invasion squares . I think. There are other key squares too: Diagram 2 If the white king conquers the black pawn, then the red circles indicate where the white king must be in order to guarantee the promotion of the white pawn. If the black king conquers the white pawn, then the blue circles indicate the key squares. The white king must prevent the black king from entering the blue squares. Al these circles have to do with opposition. The attacking king tr...

 It turns out that the comment editor of SCID has a lot more possibilities with a few educated guesses. [%draw C,b6,royalBlue3][%draw C,f5,firebrick][%draw B,b5,royalBlue3][%draw A,c5,royalBlue3][%draw A,e6,firebrick][%draw B,f6,firebrick]

The book of Dvoretsky contains many compositions. Compositions are often some kind of freak positions that happen only once in every two lives. That doesn't mean that we need to dismiss them beforehand. The mechanisms that are at play in pawn endings are finite. It is important to study these mechanisms whenever we can. By translating the positions by a few files and/or ranks, we get a clearer picture on how these mechanisms actually work. Have a look at this position: Diagram 1.Black to move 8/1k6/1p6/1K6/P1P5/8/8/8 b - - 0 1 Only one move draws. White to move draws. It is not immediately clear why. Let's translate this position over two files. Diagram 2. Black to move 8/3k4/3p4/3K4/2P1P3/8/8/8 b - - 0 1 Black to move loses. White to move is a draw. Black to move Black must stay in contact with his pawn. So the only feasible moves are 1. ... Ke7 and 1. ... Kc7 The mechanism that white uses is to sac the pawn opposite the black king. Black has to take, and the white king can ta...

A composition from Jan Drtina, 1907. The first step is to identify the key squares. White to move 8/4k3/3p4/3P4/2P5/8/8/5K2 w - - 0 1 From there we can identify the attacking squares  White to move b5 and f5 are the attacking squares, while b7 and f7 are the defensive squares. If white manages to reach b5 or f5 while getting the opposition, he wins. The opposition battle is played along the f-file. Getting the opposition is half of the technique. The other half is outflanking. Opposition without outflanking is useless. In this position, you must realize that white is in the middle of the process of outflanking. That's the downside of compositions. It are freak positions of some sort. The upside is that you can learn a lot from it what is transferable to other positions. It just takes a bit of discipline to dissect matters. Once you see that you are outflanking the black king with the f-file as center line, matters become more clear. 1.Kg2 It makes no sense for black to stay on...

 The following position is the same as in the previous post, but now with the black king on a different position. The problem is that the black king has no waiting room. The two squares that he needs to wait on contain an obstacle. He cannot use b5. White can use that to get the opposition by force. By entering the attacking square f5, he can attack two squares in the opposition zone. Black cannot put his king on the defensive square b5 because it is forbidden. Black has no choice other than to enter the patrol zone. White can immediately take the distant opposition by force. 1.Kf5 Kb6 2. Kf6 or 1.Kf5 Ka6 2.Ke6 f5 = attacking square with double attack b5 = defensive square with double defense. But b5 is taboo. It is essentially a triangulation. But with an explanation why you can expect it to work (the obstacle b5).

 Let's see whether we can discover some brothers and sisters. Let's first make some invisible things visible. White to move 8/k7/2p5/2p2K2/p1P5/P7/8/8 b - - 0 1 The battle of the opposition is carried out along the 6th rank. White can move over the whole board, but as soon as he steps somewhere on the 6th rank, black must step on the 6th rank too. What is more, the black king must step on the same color as the white king. This means that the black king must stay in contact with b6 and a6. This means that his range is limited to b7 and a7. White to move While the white king moves around in the opposition zone of h6 - d8 (red circles), the black king maintains the (distant) opposition while moving over the blue circles. The actual battle is over the frontier c6-c7-c8. It starts with taking the opposition when white enters the opposition zone. The correspondent squares would look something like this: White to move UPDATE Adding some experimental nomenclature: Opposition zone = red...

  Yesterday, the book of Averbakh arrived. It contains a treatise of corresponding squares. It is not really a theory. It is more a set of findings of the endgame composer M. Zinar, with an attempt to categorise those and to distill a few rules from it. These are my conclusions: My attempt to simplify matters was way too optimistic. Almost ridiculous, actually. The shallow approach of corresponding squares by Dvoretsky is exactly what I need. The book provides exactly what I need to understand the videos about correspondence squares of NM Caleb Denby For all practical intents and purposes, the work of Dvoretsky is enough to understand corresponding squares for tournament play at my level + 500 (<2200). The video is useful above 2200, I guess.

 I used to complain that my endgame knowledge consists of a lot of dots without connections. That is the problem when you are your own coach. You waste a lot of time with dealing with issues of a different level. If you don't know what is important, you have to study a lot without knowing whether it will become useful. I used to study Euwe long ago (as everybody in the Netherlands used to). His endgame book started with nine chapters which were irrelevant for my level (like calculus when you need the tables of multiplication). Only to discover that I wasted my time for nine chapters when I finally arrived at chapter 10. Once you know what you need to know, you can search for material that might fit the bill. When you have gathered the material, you need to adapt your study method. Which is again a problem on another level. I discovered that for some material, I need to extract the scenarios and build a framework from it.  For some patterns the repetition doesn't work: Who is t...

 The latest tournament clearly showed: it is time to fix the holes in my endgame bucket. I dropped 2.5 points in 5 endgames. The amount of endgames is rising (5 out of 7 games) because I fixed my opening problems and my opponents get better. My method says: fiddle around. Fiddling around leads to a clear insight: invasion is paramount in the endgame. Apparently I don't know how that works. I need a firm grasp of corresponding squares. I concluded that already in 2006, but back then the time wasn't ripe. Now it is. The sloppy videos on the internet aren't of much help. I need a good source. Claude recommends Dvoretsky. Which I happen to have in my library. So let me dive in head first!

 There are 3 systems that are used to describe correspondent squares. The reason for that is that you have to deal with two problems: ambiguous squares blocked squares A square can be blocked for two reasons: it is covered by an enemy pawn it is occupied by your own pawn I have no complete description of these 3 systems. I think this is how some people call them: 8-square system quadratic system triangular system (not sure of the name. Is it the same as the T-system from Zinar?) The 8-square system is said to be the most complete. If there is no room to use all squares because some squares are blocked, the quadratic system is used. If there are ambiguous squares, the T-system is used. At least, that is what I suppose. I experimented with unifying the 8-square system and the quadratic system. At first glance that worked. But it is not battle tested. Let's go a bit deeper. This is the position: White to move 7k/1p6/1P2p3/1P2P3/4P1p1/6P1/8/K7 w - - 0 1  In an ideal world, the 3x3...

 Apparently you can take other middlepoints. This one is with c4 in the center. White to move The black king stands on a blue 5 and a2 is a 5.

 Ok, I simplified the method of Zinar a bit. Take two squares that are diagonally adjacent on the shortest route from invasion square to invasion square. Choose the square that makes a triangle. That can be c4, d3 or f3. That doesn't matter (I haven't checked that yet). Let's take d3. Put a 5 on it. That is the middle of a 3 x 3 square. White to move 7k/1p6/1P2p3/1P2P3/4P1p1/6P1/8/K7 w - - 0 1  Put the digits 1 to 9 around it. White to move Let's extend that as follows. 2, 5, 8 is repeated to the left. Then 1, 4, 7 is repeated to the left: Then do the same downwards: White to move Then do the same with blue. White to move

 Corresponding squares can be a mighty weapon, I suppose. Therefore I need to be able to see the squares without the need to calculate them. In order to be able to do that, I must first understand what we actually are talking about. I get the impression that there are a lot of systems out there that treat a part of the system. Opposition, diagonally and distant, triangulation and zugzwang seem to be all part of the same family . It might well be that the Trébuchet and the Reti manoeuver are siblings of the same family too. I wouldn't be surprised at all that there is a relationship. What are we talking about? Key squares The first element that must be recognized is that there are such things as key squares . A key square is related to a pawn. If your king conquers a key square, you can make further progress. No matter who has the move! If the key square belongs to an enemy pawn that progress means conquering the pawn. If it is a key square of your own pawn, you can push it. Pushin...