Instructive Endgame: One Pawn vs Bishop

Hello Friends. I am RuyLopez1000 and I will be showing you a educational endgame that will help your chess.

I will show you how to try to draw an endgame where your opponent has an extra piece and you have only one pawn.

This is the situation: You have four pawns vs three pawns, however your opponent has an extra bishop.

The good thing is that you have two connected passed pawns.

The strategy in these types of positions is to get rid of the opponents pawns through trades or captures.

This is because a King + Bishop vs King endgame is drawn, a King and Bishop can't checkmate by themselves.

To do this you must go to the kingside and try to win or trade the pawns off. The opponent may move their king to the queenside to win the connected passers. This allows the chance for you to win the kingside pawns.

It is quite interesting to see chess psychology at work here. We both assumed that Black would have to go to the Queenside. But they could simply stay on Kingside and advance their majority. The Queenside pawns are not a threat as they are blockaded by the bishop. We both forgot about the implications of Black's Kingside majority. This is probably because the position had unusual elements already: the extra piece, the connected passers. This imposed an additional cognitive load.

The lesson is to keep a clear mind.

Now we reach a position where Black has given the opportunity for you to make a breakthrough.

What do you play here?

Answer in annotations:

The method was to deflect the bishop so that we could win the h pawn. This allowed a draw to be achieved as no pawn were left on the board. This is the strategy for dealing with these types of positions.

Lessons for extra piece vs pawn endgame:

1. Try to trade off or capture the opponents pawns. This gets closer to a drawn single piece endgame.

2. If on winning side, think actively. See if you can promote a pawn.

3. Advance a pawn to allow the possibility of a breakthrough (e.g. h4-h5 as seen in game). But make sure not to lock your pawn structure. This idea depends on the specific position.

4. Look for a way to the king to breakthrough using pawn sacrifices.

5. Deflection is an important tactic for winning remaining pawns on the board when a piece is defending them.

6. If you see this endgame approaching, try to get a strategic asset like connected passed pawns.

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I hope you enjoyed and learnt from this endgame tutorial.

Till next time! - RuyLopez1000.

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