Ferndale High School Golden Eagles Chess ClubEndgame Wizardry |
The Road To Endgame Pwnage |
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All About Passed Pawns
Always be on the lookout to force through a winning passed pawn, whether or not you have a majority. In each of the following diagrams (White's turn), White has a winning Pawn Breakthrough sequence. (Solutions at bottom.)
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If you want to practice playing any of these positions (or others), visit the Endgame Simulator, make the position, click 'Generate Diagram' and give it a shot.
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A Passed Pawn is a pawn that doesn't have any enemy pawns impeding its journey to the 8th rank. "Passed pawns must be pushed!" In the diagram, the pawns on e3 and h4 are the only passed pawns on the board. The h4 pawn is called a protected passed pawn. Observe how the White king can't capture the pawn on g5, since then the h4 protected passed pawn would win the race to the queening square.
A Pawn Majority is when you have more pawns than your opponent on one side of the board. If you have a pawn majority, you should be thinking about how to advance it and create a passed pawn. In the diagram, there are no passed pawns... yet. White has a pawn majority on the queenside, Black has a pawn majority on the kingside.
Keep your pawn majority mobile! In the diagram, White needs to slow down and think. If he plays 1.g4?, than Black has 1...g5! putting the Deep Freeze on White's pawns, and Black can win the game using the Chicken Coop idea. But if White plays 1.h4! Black has to play carefully to get a draw.
