Opposition, king and pawn, the Lucena and the Philidor — the endgames that occur.
Endgame books are enormous and most of what is in them never occurs. These are the positions that actually appear in real games, and knowing them converts drawn games into wins.
Kings facing each other with one square between them — whoever must move gives way. This is the foundation of every king-and-pawn endgame and the reason a tempo can be worth a whole point.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
The rule of the square tells you whether the king can catch the pawn. The opposition tells you whether the pawn can promote. Between them they decide a startling number of games.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
Rook and pawn versus rook, with the pawn on the seventh — the winning technique is called building a bridge, and it is the most valuable endgame position in chess because it comes up constantly.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
The defensive counterpart — the rook on the third rank holds the draw against a pawn on the sixth. Learn Lucena to win and Philidor to save; between them they cover most rook endgames.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
In the endgame the king is a strong piece. The single most common endgame error is leaving him on the back rank while the opponent's king walks to the centre.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
Yours and theirs. Behind your own pawn the rook supports it as it advances; behind theirs it gets stronger as the pawn moves forward.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
The ideas on this page can be read in fifteen minutes. Making them automatic takes a few weeks of practice — which is why every section here has a matching interactive drill rather than just an explanation.
No. Every item on this page is a pattern or a principle, not a variation. Patterns are recognised, not recalled, and the way to build recognition is repetition on a board.
Work down this page in order. It is arranged from the most immediately useful to the most situational, so the earliest sections will change your results fastest.
Yes. Every lesson in the Grandmaster Gains Academy is playable free in the browser with no sign-up, and the engine will rate your moves afterwards so you can see where the idea broke down.
197 interactive lessons covering exactly these ideas, free in your browser, no sign-up needed.
♔ Open the AcademyCoaches use Grandmaster Gains to assign these drills and see who actually did them. See the trainer classroom.