Name: EASY CHESS ENDGAMES: King & Pawns
Uploaded: 2025-03-01T13:39:25.000Z
Duration: 21 min 15 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Chess is split into three phases, the opening, the middle game, and the endgame.

Modal verbs - A2

Endgames can be a little bit more boring and even mysterious to study, but you absolutely should.

Because endgames are theoretical, that means they're solved.

If a position is winning and you learn the technique, you're gonna win 100% of the time.

If an endgame is drawn, or a little bit tricky to win for the other side, you might draw rather than losing.

In this video, I'm gonna teach you the proper technique for king and pawn endgames.

At the end, I will tell you my favorite endgames book.

I've put timestamps on the video player for every technique you'll have to learn.

We're gonna kick things off with a very very fundamental basis of king and pawn endgames.

The pawn is trying to promote and become a rook or a queen, because you cannot win with just king and bishop or king and knight.

If it's white to move, white will push, black will try to get our pawn, white will push, black will try to get our pawn, white will push.

And black is not in time, we make the queen and hopefully we know how to win this position.

However, if the black king is still on the square, but in the initial position, it's not white to move, and it's black to move.

Black has now entered what's called the square.

The square is a little geometric kind of understanding of where the defending king has to be to stop a passed pawn.

The way you figure out where a square should be is you see how many squares, or I guess how many spots until promotion, and you draw an equivalent amount to the other side.

So, what this means is that if the black king enters the square in time, the black king will stop the pawn.

You're going to get endgames where the pawn can run or the king...

If the king can stop you, be very careful.

Be very, very careful with just pushing your pawn and not thinking.

So, if black moves to e5, black enters the square.

However, if in the initial position, it's white to move, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, and the black king, even on this move, will not be able to enter the necessary square to stop the pawn.

That is an absolutely basic example, and we need to get this out of the way.

Why are we even studying king and pawn endgames?

Because you're going to get positions like this.

This is the most famous position of all king and pawn endgames.

This is the one that you will spend the most time on in this video.

Okay, you're going to get this position, and someone's going to tell you, is white winning or is this a draw?

And the answer is, as long as the pawn is between b and g, there are winning chances.

If it's your a or an h pawn, you will find out in a few minutes why that's basically always a draw, as long as the defending king is close.

Of course, it's also important to note, you know, if the king is like over here, it's a very easy win.

So, first things first, the defending side is at least close to the pawn, and really in front of it is the most important.

We're going to start with it being black's move in this position.

Right now, white has played the move king to e3, and is doing something called opposition to the black king.

That means you're opposing the black king.

So, the winning technique here, if it's black's move, white is winning.

And we'll learn in a few minutes why, if it's white's move, it's a draw.

So, the black king will give way to the white king.

If the black king goes straight back, then we continue to march the king down and implement the same technique that you're about to learn.

We move our king out of the way to take control of these squares, to open the path for our pawn.

Again, if the black king ends up on a square to try to see our pawn, we do opposition again.

If the king just goes straight back, cardinal sin of this endgame, your pawn should never, never be side by side with your king, and definitely not in front of it.

Like, almost never side by side, and definitely not in front.

Do not march the pawn in front of your king.

What you need to do is continue to create a little bit of distance for this pawn.

Side defense by black never works, because again, now you can push, and the king cannot get back in time.

It's about controlling the squares, ensuring a safe passage of the pawn to the end of the board.

Now, when you can push your pawn is as long as it's still behind the king.

If the second the king looks at our pawn, we say, uh-uh, uh-uh, no way.

If the king goes here, we outflank in the other direction to maintain the squares here.

We can push and then get in front, or even we can just go like this.

We need to create the situation where the defending side has to skedaddle.

If we go back to the starting position, and we say, well, Levi, you said it's black's move here, right?

Like, what if black just got us in opposition?

The way you defend this now is, I can even probably flip this.

Because if the pawn moves up, it's in front of the king.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

EASY CHESS ENDGAMES: King & Pawns

massive

figure

recommend

technique