Five endgames that come up constantly and decide half points. How long they take to learn and why this is the study that pays back fastest.
Of all the areas of chess, endgames return rating fastest per hour studied, and are the one almost everybody puts off. The reason is understandable — they are not entertaining — and the cost is high: half a point dropped in an endgame is worth exactly the same as a whole game given away in the opening.
These five are enough to stop losing what was won.
The foundation of everything. Every other endgame ends up here, so without it no exchange can be evaluated.
What you need to know:
The rule of the square. To know whether a king catches a running pawn, picture the square from the pawn to the promotion square. If the king can step inside it, it catches the pawn. No counting moves needed.
Opposition. With the kings facing each other on the same file, rank or diagonal, with an odd number of squares between them, whoever does not have to move is better off. It decides most of these endings.
Key squares. With one pawn, if the attacking king reaches the square two ranks in front of the pawn, it wins regardless of whose turn it is.
Time: one hour. It lasts a lifetime.
The most frequent endgame in chess from intermediate level on, and the one that gives away the most half points. Two positions solve almost everything:
The Philidor defence. With the weaker side: the rook on the third rank — from the defender's perspective — stopping the attacking king from advancing. Once the pawn reaches that rank, the rook drops to the back rank and checks from behind. It is a draw even a pawn down.
The Lucena position. With the stronger side, once the pawn has reached the seventh and the king is in front: you build a "bridge" with the rook to block the checks. It is winning.
Knowing these two turns an enormous number of lost endings into draws and draws into wins.
Time: two hours. It is the best study bargain in chess.
With bishops on different colours, draws are far more likely than the material suggests. One side can be two pawns up and not win, because the defending bishop blockades on squares the other bishop can never touch.
What you need to know: with opposite-coloured bishops, being a pawn up almost never wins, and two pawns sometimes does not either. And the other way round: if you are losing, trading into opposite-coloured bishops is your best defensive resource.
That single idea changes exchange decisions twenty moves before the endgame.
Not a position but a technique, and it decides more games than any specific position.
The rule: when up material, trade pieces, not pawns. Every piece traded makes your extra material weigh more; every pawn traded takes you towards a drawn ending.
The second rule: activate your king. In the endgame the king is a strong piece, and whoever activates it first usually wins the race.
The classic error: defending the extra pawn with everything instead of using it to create a passed pawn and force concessions.
In pawn endings, whoever gets an outside passed pawn usually wins even with material level: the enemy king has to go and stop it and abandons the other wing.
What you need to know: how to create a passed pawn from a majority — the pawn with no enemy pawn in front of it is the one that advances first — and how to use the threat to win the other wing.
One at a time, on a board. Endgames are learned by moving, not by watching. Set the position up and play it against yourself until it comes out without thinking.
One a week. Five weeks and all five are done.
Repeat them a month later. A forgotten endgame is an endgame you do not have.
Look for them in your games. When you reach one of these, mark it. Seeing something you studied three weeks ago turn up in your own game is what fixes the learning.
The five endings above are learned far faster if you first understand three ideas that appear in all of them. They are the grammar of endgames:
Opposition. Two kings facing each other with one square between them: the side that does not have to move is in charge, because the other is obliged to give way. It is the idea that decides practically every king-and-pawn ending, and it takes ten minutes to understand.
The square of the pawn. To know whether a king catches a passed pawn without calculating move by move: mentally draw the square running from the pawn to its promotion square; if the king can step into that square, it catches it. It is a one-second rule that replaces thirty seconds of calculation, and in an ending with little time that is worth a game.
Zugzwang. The obligation to move as a disadvantage. In the middlegame it barely exists; in the endgame it is the mechanism that wins half the positions. The whole technique of king-and-pawn endings consists of handing the turn to the other side.
With those three, the five endings stop being five recipes and become five applications of the same thing, which is the difference between memorising them and knowing them.
Once the five basics are in place, these three are the next ones and cover almost everything that comes up in a club tournament:
Queen against a pawn on the seventh. It looks always winning and it is not: with a rook's or bishop's pawn about to promote, there are stalemate draws. Knowing which ones saves the unpleasantness of not winning a queen up.
Rook against bishop. Drawn with correct play, and a thirty-move torture if you do not know which corner to take shelter in. The rule is short and has to be known: the defending king goes to the corner of the opposite colour to its bishop.
Rook endings with two pawns against one on the same side. It is the ending that comes up most in practice after the single-pawn one, and it is usually drawn. Knowing it stops you playing forty moves to lose a position that was saved.
And a general rule that holds for all of them and saves study: with few pawns, almost everything is drawn; with pawns on both wings, almost everything wins. That sentence alone guides which trades to seek and which to avoid, long before the ending begins.
There is no point knowing them if you arrive at the ending badly, and that is decided twenty moves earlier:
Save clock time. It is the most practical item in the whole article: most club endings are lost not through ignorance but with under two minutes left. A won ending needs precision, and precision needs time.
Decide exchanges by the ending they produce. Before trading the last minor piece, look at what ending is left. "I trade and I get a rook ending a pawn up with my king in front" is a two-second thought that decides the game.
Activate the king as soon as the queens come off. It is the commonest error of all: continuing to treat the king as something to hide when it has become a piece to use. In an ending, an active king is worth more than a pawn.
And do not be afraid of entering an ending. A lot of people avoid trading pieces because the endgame feels like unknown territory, and end up playing worse middlegames to avoid better endings. Five hours of study fixes that permanently, which is exactly the point of this article.
Because of an asymmetry: most of your opponents do not know them either. In the middlegame you compete against someone who studied roughly what you studied; in the endgame, against someone who studied nothing.
Five or six hours of study put you above almost your whole band in the part of the game where half points are handed out. No other area of chess has that ratio.
How many hours does learning all five take? Between five and six, spread over two weeks. It is the best ratio of time invested to games won that chess offers, and the reason almost every coach starts here.
Is studying endgames useful if I still hang pieces? Less than tactics, and not zero: the three basic mates and king and pawn are worth knowing from the start, because they are what turns a won game into a win. The rest can wait.
How do I practise an endgame without an opponent? Against the engine, setting the position up and playing it out from both sides. It is the one exercise where the engine is an ideal training partner, because it does not err and does not tire.
Do I need to know queen endings? Not at club level. They are enormously complex and come up rarely; time returns far more in rook endings, which appear in half the endgames you will play.
If you want to put this into practice with structured material:
Four classes and eight hours of training to master modern evaluation, read the engine, handle complex positions and improve your endgame technique.
ARBy GM Andrés Rodríguez
A six-stage course to improve position evaluation, understand pawn structures and develop practical resources in openings, middlegames and endgames.
ARDFBy GM Andrés Rodríguez and GM Diego Flores
A collection of six courses by GM Andrés Rodríguez to enrich your repertoire, understand complex positions, and improve your game from opening to endgame.
ARBy GM Andrés Rodríguez
Philidor to defend, Lucena to win, and the five practical rules of rook endings. Two positions worth hundreds of half points.
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Read the articleARDFBy GM Andrés Rodríguez and GM Diego Flores
