A Spiritual Guide to Rook Endings

[@davidmencik9990]

As a 1950 fide rated player I have a feeling that your videos is what I need the most for my chess training! Please continue doing this until I become master. We can do it together :-) If I ever become a chess master and get asked who my trainers were I am going to say Jesse Krai and Kostya Kavutskiy. Guys in the moment you are the best chess training channel on youtube!

[@ChessDojo]

Thanks David, much appreciated!

[@g.h.g.1106]

I am a similar rating range, and have a similar opinion. Most other channels are just not right for me. You, however, treat almost all the questions I actually have.

[@BobfromSydney]

Thank you for that enlightening video GM Kraai! I believe that a have a solid understanding of the Lucena position but am quite spotty with the Philidor position and this has been a wake up call to brush up on it. I've previously heard that rook activity is paramount in the rook endgame even to the point of sacrificing a pawn if necessary to activate your rook but it's a great reminder when you talked about the King being the other piece as well. The "goal" concept you were discussing is very valuable because it provides a simple way to come up with a plan in the endgame - firstly asking if I can promote or trade down to the Lucena position, then failing that, aim for the Philidor position.or a drawn pawn endgame.

[@vatsala6497]

Next up: A Religious Guide To Rook Endings

[@mevansthechemist]

I’ve been drilling the rook endings in 100 Endgames You Must Know for quite a while now. Perfect timing! Thanks, Jesse.

[@christopherjohnson1873]

You made a comment in an earlier video about how you can help evaluate knight endings by taking the knights off and evaluating the pawn ending. Thinking about it, it seems as if that principle is broadly applicable across a bunch of piece-against-the-same-piece endings. Which makes sense, because any piece ending can reduce to a pawn ending in a matter of a few moves. Obviously, in the Lucena the attacker is winning because their king is in front of the pawn, just like how you'd win king and pawn vs king. The original Philidor position is winning with the attacker to move without the rooks, but also the whole idea of the Philidor is that the rook is BLOCKING what would be the KEY SQUARES on the 6th rank in a pawn ending. And a key reason why the Philidor is drawn to begin with is because potential pawn endings resulting from it are drawn. It also seemingly applies in KQPvKQ, which is much more complicated but has a lot of the underlying structure to it, in that the way for the attacker to try to win is to force a winning pawn ending; if they can't do that they basically got nothing, but if they can, they can generally get the defender to run out of checks eventually. I've also looked at some KEPvKE (E=elephant, rook+knight combo in s-chess), and again, it looks like the same basic pattern holds. The attacker has pretty good winning chances as long as the defending king isn't in front of the pawn, ruining most chances of simplifying into a winning pawn ending.

[@nomoreblitz]

Great comment. But you found significant similarities between R+P v R and Q+P v Q? I had understood, perhaps misunderstood, that they were so different in part because the optimal King positions are very different? idk

[@julek94]

Pawns aren't people, rooks are people! Can you make a video about "pawns aren't people" some day, explaining it in more detail? This quote struck me so hard that I feel like I gained 50 chess IQ points since first hearing it. Also when I watched your analysis of the Caruana - Carlsen 2014 Olympiad game which you did for St. Louis, it was such an amazing revelation to me when you talked about keeping the light-square bishop bad and NOT MOVING the c6 and e6 pawns at all even though it would be my first instinct to do it to just liberate my pieces but that's not what the position demanded. Thank you for another great video :)

[@ChessDojo]

thanks, Julian - gotta do a vid with that exact title

[@julek94]

​@@ChessDojo Can't wait :)

[@feuillea4880]

Thank you for your work guys !

[@Socialdogma]

Great concept!

[@nomoreblitz]

Beautiful! This reminded me of the genius pedagogy of Hellsten. Over the last year, I've been trying to navigate a narrower group of positions between a Long-side Defense and Lucena. And just those with a central pawn on its 5th or 6th rank. And just those where the defending R is on the long side with its defending K on the short-side. Yet there are still far more than I expected... Slowly, however, after comparing a few books and collecting different key positions, I'm beginning to understand some of the nuances. But it remains intimidating...

[@Socrates...]

Thank you Jesse

[@josepud9380]

Pawns are Not people. Statement that changed my chess life. What a life hack

[@brucelittleboy3594]

Excellent practical advice.

[@ChessDojo]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@IB4theAIB]

In talking about Rook endings he starts talking like a Bishop

[@crawfb5]

I actually like Rook endgames. I still consult my old copy of Levenfish and Smyslov from time to time. That's not to say I can't still make mistakes. I made a hasty, distracted move in this position (6R1/k5P1/8/pp6/8/PPP1p1r1/4K3/8 w - - 1 46) as White (46 c4? instead of 46 a4) in a recent game despite having all the time in the world and threw away the win. I'd seen the winning idea some moves back, but hypothetical victories don't count. Sigh.

[@Socrates...]

Hi Jesse, could you make a short video where you clearly delineate between what you are saying is Dvoretsky's algorithmic paradigm and what you are trying to teach us. I cannot really tell the difference. These two positions you are advocating we learn seem to clearly fall within what Dvoretsky is showing in his endgame manual....

[@ChessDojo]

good idea, maybe a title like "Algorithms and Ideas in the Endgame"

[@Socrates...]

@@ChessDojo thank you so much

[@theplayfulbot8447]

From what I understand a Dvoretsky endgame will be something that can be described like a rook endgame with a "4 vs 3" in the kingside and maybe a pawn on the a-file. The Philidor and Lucena are algorithmical for sure, but they contain 2 big ideas: in the Lucena you put the king in front of the pawn and shepard the king with the rook. In the Philidor the défensive side uses his king in front of the pawn to shepard the atacking king and uses his rook to disturb the king. And they are fundamental because the Idea is to take a position with a random structure with split pawns everywhere as in the game and to try to reach a position which you can draw for sure (the Philidor). In general if you are trying to draw you use the Phillidor (or rather the big idea of the Philidor) and avoid the Lucena; and the other way around if you are trying to win.

[@Socrates...]

@@theplayfulbot8447 Thank you for your reply, it helped a lot.

[@johnmarkcastillo3692]

Hello chess dojo. Do you offer coaching?

[@ChessDojo]

We have a self-study training program with a private Discord attached! 🙂 chessdojo.shop/training

[@michaelvanzyl9418]

Engines have up to 7-piece table bases so it can’t be wrong for low piece endgames?

[@ashlynwoods8464]

They can have those, however (generally) they won't (lichess or chess.com engines for instance dont, they don't out of the box if you download them).

[@michaelvanzyl9418]

@@ashlynwoods8464 lichess very much has it by default. No need to download either

[@BobfromSydney]

I think the point is that for practical human play, the engine assessing a position as being drawn with perfect play (narrow road, unintuitive/hard to find moves, many consecutive only moves required) doesn't help you at the board trying to find the moves with time pressure or a bunch of spectators standing around (having already finished their games first).

[@lastsonofkrypton3918]

If people could just see the forest for the trees they would realize that rook endgames are the easiest there are to deal with, bro. Just resign the game if you are in one. Ain't nobody got no time for dat. 😂