Tip: Exploiting Your Knight in the Endgame 1 of 3

Knight endgames are like king and pawn endgames. This rule of thumb was given by former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik, who observed that if a king and pawn endgame was winning, the evaluation would be the same with knights on the board. We can infer that protected or outside passed pawns can be a huge asset in knight endgames, because the stronger side can always offer to trade knights, and the defending side will need to retreat in order to avoid the trade.

If you are reading this instead of viewing a chess puzzle or game, then you must enable JavaScript on this website.

[Event "rated untimed match"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Unknown"]
[Black "Unknown202"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Annotator "David Hayes"]
[BlackElo "0"]
[FEN "r3r1k1/ppp3pp/5p2/8/2P5/2Qn1P2/1B2qP1P/R5RK w - - 0 1"]
[SetUp "1"]
[TimeControl "0"]
[WhiteElo "0"]

1. Rxg7+ Kh8 ( { Black can try: } 1... Kxg7 2. Qxf6+ Kg8 3. Qg7# ) 2. Rg8+ ( { White can try: } 2. Qxf6 Nxf2+ 3. Kg1 ( 3. Kg2 Ne4+ 4. Kh3 Nxf6 5. Bxf6 Qxf3+ 6. Kh4 Qxf6+ { Black wins with a large material advantage. } ) 3... Nh3+ 4. Kh1 Nf2+ 5. Kg1 Nh3+ 6. Kh1 { Draw by repetition of position. } ) 2... Kxg8 3. Rg1+ Kf7 4. Qxf6# 1-0