The Complete U2000 Guide to Theoretical Endgames

I know everyone talks about just doing tactics to improve at this skill level, and that’s not totally wrong. You can probably get past 2000 if you don't blunder your pieces and spot tactics when they appear. However, being able to do that is pretty difficult, so getting good at other areas of the game can make some big differences in your rating. In my opinion, the easiest part of this to improve is endgames. There isn't really that much to cover, which is why I think it's possible to write a blog and cover all the important information. If you know some of this stuff already, you should skip to a section you don't know much about to save your own time. I tried sorting this by least to most important, which is why there seems to be more content per part the farther you go along in the blog. Additionally, I suggest saving this blog for future reference, as there is a lot of content and even after you go through it all, the practice takes some time too.

Part 1: Mates

I do suggest learning all the different types of mates in order to improve your middlegame/tactics, but this post is about the endgame, so I'll only cover the basic mates. The most important ones are mating with a queen, a rook, two rooks, and the optional one is mating with two bishops. Why not a knight and a bishop? I mean, knowing it is cool and all, but the first time I got the opportunity to mate with a knight and a bishop I had already played like 15,000 chess games. After that time I've gotten that mate only two more times, and I've been playing chess for like 6 years, so I can confidently say you can become a strong player without knowing that mate.

You can practice all of the basic ones here: https://lichess.org/practice/checkmates/piece-checkmates-i/BJy6fEDf/dW7KIuoY. There are so many resources to learn these mates that I won't cover it in this post.

However, the 2 bishop mate isn't particularly simple. It doesn't show up that often, but it's good practice for avoiding stalemating. So, it's beneficial to learn this one. A prerequisite for this is knowing zugzwang (which is when your opponent is forced to make a move that makes his position worse), so that's why this is optional. The first step is trying to get the king into the corner. You can do this by building a wall with the squares your bishops cover, slowly decreasing the space the opponent's king has until they can only move to a few squares. Then, just redirect that king to a corner. Once the king is in a corner, you want to make it so that the king only has two squares it can move to. Afterwards, you can arrange your bishops in such a way that you reach a position like this:

Here, the reason it's so good is that your bishops are able to take the last two squares with check from the opponent, so like for example the mate here would be Bd4+ Ka8 Bd5#.

The main way to learn this is practice obviously, so here is a practice position and an annotated game where I won in a similar position against stockfish 8 (Playing against stockfish 8 when practicing conversion in general is usually a good idea):

The last one I want to talk about but I wouldn't say is too helpful is winning a queen v rook endgame. The main thing to look out for in these positions is stalemate traps, so you have to avoid those. However, I think in practice you'll be able to win all of your games with the queen due to the side with the rook not being good enough to defend with a fork of some sort.

Part 2: Knight v Pawn

There is one endgame I do believe is really important, and it is linked below:

Basically every other theoretical endgame just uses the stuff necessary for this defense, so yeah.

Part 3: Rook Endgames

I know there are many complexities to rook endings, but I mean you don't really need to understand rook endgames well to be good at chess. In fact, I myself know I don't understand rook endgames well, and I don't think anyone below IM level does. Luckily, you don't need to know them well in order to play them well. This blog will cover the like super basic theoretical rook endgames, as in my experience I didn't need anything more in order to get to 2200+ online. In fact, I think I didn't know all of these topics until I was much much stronger than 2000 lichess. So, this is a good way to get ahead. In addition to how to properly defend, I'll talk about how you can exploit your opponent's not knowing these defenses, because that can also be pretty common.

Lucena Position:

Philidor Position:

Vancura/Rook Pawn Position:

Passive Defense:

The last thing I want to say is that when you are reaching the end of the game and you are defend a rook versus rook and pawn endgame, always try to move your king to the short side. Why? It's so that your rook can give side checks to the enemy king from the long side, and that gap between the rook and the king often gets the draw. When I heard of this I didn't know what piece was supposed to go to the long side, so it wasn't really too helpful for me until I realized what it actually meant - aka rook on the long side, king on the short side.

Part 4: Queen v Pawn

We have a couple different cases that need to be covered for this part - normal pawns, c/f pawns, and two different flank pawn cases. The next few boards will be covering the aforementioned cases. I do suggest going through all of these positions, but if you want a TLDR, here it is:

1. The main goal of the winnable queen v pawn positions is getting the enemy king in front of their own pawn, so that you have the time to move your king closer to their pawn
2. The way you can do this is by forcing the king to either get in front of the pawn or give up the pawn, which can be done by putting the queen immediately diagonal to the pawn.
3. Draws in these endgames are usually due to stalemate tricks
4. If your king is close enough, you may still have a win by having a mating net when the opponent queens

Part 5: King and Pawn Endgames

The first topic I want to talk about is the rule of the square. It's probably helpful to learn it now before you get into a habit of calculating if the king can catch the pawn like me, so I personally don't use this.

If you want to practice this, three different scenarios for this is if the white king was on g5 instead of g1, if the black king was on g6, and if the black king was on h3. You can put your answers to this in the comments.

Similarly, another topic in this type of endgame is pawn races. This is relatively simple - either calculate to see which pawn wins or count the number of moves. The first option is much more consistent but if you can get the second method down, that would be faster.

The next incredibly significant topic is opposition. In my opinion, out of all the endgame topics, this is probably the most important to know. Here are images of the three types of opposition:

What is the point of opposition? It forces the other side to poorly place their king, allowing for you to get a king position that allows you to get into the opponent's position or promote your pawn. Additionally, if you're on the defending side, opposition allows for you to continue to save the game. Here is a basic example:

. I highly, highly suggest doing more opposition practice that doesn't include just reading this blog. This is another position I wanted to note due to how fast it can be played: . Additionally, for rook pawns, you just stay in the corner to defend. To flag someone on the worse side of a rook pawn, try interrupting their premoves by blocking them with your king. I could probably write a whole blog on opposition but for now I'll leave it at that since there are still some topics I need to talk about. Some more practice exercises are here: https://lichess.org/practice/pawn-endgames/opposition/A4ujYOer/eNlmabX1

The next topic is triangulation. If you aren't 1800+ lichess I don't suggest learning this, as it's relatively complex. Our example:

The last thing that can be very helpful and not really something to learn is shouldering the king when you can. This keeps it in a worse position and is generally good.

Part 6: Practicality & Miscellaneous

I know, this has been a very long blog, but this is the last part! What does practicality mean? It basically means exploiting stuff that people at your level are unable to do and exploiting your opponents time pressure. Here is a list of examples you can apply in your games

1. If your opponent has a knight, a bishop, and a pawn and you have a minor piece, your goal is to sacrifice that minor piece for that pawn. Why? Because your opponent will try to keep that pawn since he probably doesn't know how to do a bishop and knight checkmate. So, if you force him to try to do it, especially in time pressure, the position is practically a draw
2. If you have a bishop that is not the same color as the flank pawn it is trying to help promote like here,then you will draw by keeping your king in the corner the pawn is going to if your king can reach it (which is the a8 square in this example. So, using similar logic to the first point I was talking about, Bxa5 would be the best practical move in the below position since white can't win if he recaptures and defending one pawn is much easier than defending two pawns.So, sacrifices that lead into a drawn endgame are also very encouraged when you are on the back foot.
3. Some flagging/premove tips of mine include trying to predict what moves my opponents will do and moving my pieces accordingly, only premoving when you know there is no danger/no logical move your opponent can play to exploit that premove, and ruining the premoves of your opponent.
4. Stalemate tricks! Probably the best way to get a draw in my opinion. You can stalemate by doing the classic rosen trap as seen below.It works because you generally have a piece or a pawn on the square the queen is currently on, and they expect you to take back the queen since they just captured whatever was on the square. However, when you don't, and if they premoved the next move, it'd be stalemate. Eric Rosen has made this work numerous times against very stong opposition, so I'm sure it can save some games for you too! Other stalemate traps include sacrificing your rook for stalemate since it's your only piece and your king can't move.

If you've gotten to the end, thank you for reading this huge blog (probably the largest blog I've ever written so far) and hopefully you learnt a lot about endgames through it. If you think I missed anything important, write it in the forum/comment section and I'm happy to edit this post. Additionally, I didn't really go over general advice for winning in the endgame since I didn't want the blog to be too long, so if you want to see that drop a like. Also, if you want to see my posts more frequently and earlier than when I post on lichess, then subscribe to my substack at https://chessgrindr.substack.com/!