We’ve all been there (some of us more often than others!) We try our best, but the game is not going our way. We have lost a significant amount of material or we’re under a crushing attack or (you fill the blanks). Is it time to resign? Definitely not. Before I […]
Daily archives: 11/02/2017
Have you heard of this famous quote by Lasker? It may sound surprising at first, but the more you think about it, the truer it becomes. Why is it so difficult to win a game where you have more material or a much better position than your opponent? Well, you […]
‘The hardest game to win is a won game’
There are many different kinds of endgames. When I was starting, I was told that I needed to master the King + Bishop + Knight vs. King endgame with the aim to deliver mate within 50 moves. If you’re familiar with this endgame, you would know that this is a […]
Which endgames should you spend your training time on
The short answer is no. There is not a good reason to study endgames. The truth is there are MANY good reasons to study endgames! 🙂 1. Endgames will win or lose the game for you. What happens in the first 10-20 moves of a game can be reversed with […]
Is there a good reason to study endgames?
There’s a lot of ‘meat’ in the endgame, so I’m going to present here some of its basic principles: 1. Use your King We are often taught that King safety is of paramount importance. This is definitely true when the Queens and the Rooks are still on the board. But […]
4 basic endgame principles
The endgame is probably the most underappreciated phase of chess for beginners. Newbies tend to like having many pieces to play with. They like moving their Queen all around the board and their Rooks up and down open files and their bishops in long diagonals. Beginners also like to have […]