The endgame is hard

I no longer lose all my games because of tactical blunders in the middlegame. In fact, I have started to fairly consistently out-tactic my similarly-rated opponents. On the other hand, because my opponents are getting better, my material advantage (and mating prowess) is usually not enough to mate before the endgame, so we wind up in the damned endgame. The endgame is my new Official Weakest Area. I typically proceed to blow it, often losing theoretically won games.

Because of this I've starting to study some endgame material, starting with Pandolfini's Endgame Course. This book is typical Pandolfini: he doesn't provide a coherent, clearly articulated, conceptual framework for the endgame or any aspect thereof. He is generally a lazy writer. For instance, he doesn't name key positions like the Lucena (which is in there I think), and what he calls the Philidor position is not what other people call it.

But like his other lazy, unsystematic books, in practice it seems pretty helpful. It consists simply of two hundred thirty-seven positions, one per page, that he thinks are important for beginners to know. His treatment of the BNK vs K mate is quite nice. He builds up to the key position (Position 24) after providing eight useful intermediate positions. It took me about an hour to master this mate using his book, as opposed to about ten hours the first time I learned it using a slightly different pattern.

I am presently working on QK vs RK mates, and have spent about a half hour on the following position which he calls the Philidor Position (white to move and win):

For this position, we get the following from Pandolfini: 1. Qe4+ Kg8 2. Qa8+ Kh7 3. Qe8 (1-0). The evaluation is because we are now back at the original position, but with black to move, and there is nothing good for him here. Pandolfini examines a couple of possibilities: If 3....Kh6, then Qf8; if 3...Rg8 4. Qh5 mate; if 3...Rg1, then 4. Qe4+ Kg8 5. Qa8+ Kh7 6. Qa7+. And then Pandolfini says "Whatever else black tries leads to a similarly dismal result." While this may be true, I am finding even this apparently trivial problem challenging. After a half hour, I still don't feel I have fully mastered it, much less the more general problem of QK vs RK, which apparently is quite difficult in theory.

The endgame is all about slowing down and thinking through concrete variations, and that's what Pandolfini's book is aimed at. The book will be a good complement to a more wordy, explanation-heavy book that provides general principles in addition to concrete examples.

One bit of advice for other patzers embarking on endgame competence: enter the positions in Fritz and play them out there. Fritz has found many errors in my thinking that I don't find on my board: I'm just not good enough at the endgame to trust my intuitions. Also, this lets you slightly tweak the positions to determine how different the board can look for the general solution to still work (e.g., in the above position what if the king is not at f6? What if black doesn't play one of Pandolfini's moves: he acts like the solution is trivial, but you might be surprised: e.g., what if black plays 3...Ra7 or Rc7?). Also, it helps to practice the same position at different locations on the board, to try to see the pattern regardless of where it is on the board.

Note the above position received a nice discussion from Scirius here.