King and Pawn Endings IV
Submitted by
Loomis on Sun, 05/11/2008 at 9:34pm.
Hopefully I don't seem like a broken record regarding king and pawn endings, but all of these examples come from actual games I've played, so it's clear to me that they are frequent and it's important to get them right.
The examples in this installation are a little more subtle and might be more difficult than my previous blog posts. These examples don't depend on the previous, but if you're interested in more basic king and pawn endings, check out the earlier posts.
The first example starts in an equal endgame and black makes a mis-step with his king. At the moment of the error, black will be losing a pawn and has to know where his king needs to end up in order to defend the pawn down finish. Let's have a look:
The second example features a see-saw where I go from a winning position to a losing position and finally drawing the game. In defense of the players, this was a blitz game with time winding down. Nevertheless, it demonstrates the complexity that can be hidden in King and Pawn endings and the value of knowing the right approach to them. Especially interesting is how every tempo matters as demonstrated by the variation at move 5 (5. h5 instead of 5. Kb4).