The Four Endgames Worth Learning First

Endgame books are enormous, which persuades most players that endgame study is a project for later. Then they lose a drawn rook endgame and resolve to fix it later again.

The practical truth is that four positions cover most of what decides games below master level. Learn them properly — not 'have seen them', but able to play them cold — and a real number of half points appear from nowhere.

King and pawn versus king

Everything starts here, because every endgame is trying to become this one. You need two ideas: opposition, and the square of the pawn. Opposition tells you who is being forced backwards when the kings face each other. The square tells you instantly whether a running pawn can be caught without calculating a race.

These are five-minute concepts that people avoid for years. The payoff is that you finally know, before trading into an endgame, whether the endgame is winning.

Rook and pawn versus rook

The most common endgame in serious chess and the one most often misplayed. Two positions carry the load: the Lucena, where you win by building a bridge for your king, and the Philidor, where you draw by holding the third rank and then checking from behind. Perhaps twenty minutes of work each.

A player who knows both will convert and save an astonishing number of games against players who know neither, and the two of them may be otherwise identical in strength.

Queen versus pawn on the seventh

Rarer, but decisive when it appears, and it appears in every fast time control after a pawn race. Knowing that a rook's pawn and a bishop's pawn draw — because of stalemate resources — while the others lose, saves whole games.

Basic mates, at speed

Queen and king. Rook and king. Not 'can eventually do it' but can do it in ten seconds without thinking, because in practice you will be doing it with fifteen seconds on the clock and a pounding heart.

Why this order

They are ordered by how often they occur, which is the only sensible ordering for a limited amount of study time. Everything more exotic — bishop and knight, opposite-coloured bishops, rook against minor piece — is real chess and can wait.

Four positions. One evening each. It is the highest-return study anyone below expert level can do, and it is the study everyone postpones.