Chess Teaching post

Driving the King to the edge

Posted on August 15th, 2007 by Chess Teacher

Driving the King to the edge with Bishop and Knight.

In the previous lesssons about this endgame we have seen how to drive the King on the edge to the right corner and how to mate the King with only a Bishop and a Knight. Now we will see how to drive the King to the edge.

In the diagram below the starting position of our pieces is far from optimal and gives us something to do. It will take us a lot of moves before we are able to get Black checkmated.









White to move

Nxa2

We will start by moving our pieces to the centre. These pieces are needed to drive the opponent’s King out of the centre. This turns out to be relatively simple.

1.Nb4+ Kc4 2.Ka3 because the Knight has to be defended, but also to give the Bishop a more active role. Black is unable to go to the d-file. Kc5 3.Be5 Kc4 4.Ka4 an intermediate move. We want to go to the right side. Kc5 5.Kb3 Kb6 6.Kc4 Kb7

( 6… Ka7 7.Kc5 Kb7 8.Nd5 Ka7 9.Nb6 Ka6 10.Kc6 Ka7 11.Bd6 Ka6 12.Bb8 and we can continue as described in the lesson about driving the King to the corner. )

7.Kc5 Ka8 8.Nd5 Ka7

( 8… Kb7 9.Nb6 Ka6 10.Kc6 Ka7 11.Bd6 Ka6 and again 12.Bb8 )

9.Nb6 Kb7 10.Kb5

( We are also able to play 10.Bd6 and continue with the familiar 10... Ka6 11.Kc6 )

10… Ka7 11.Kc6 Ka6 and we know by now how to continue this line.

12.Bb8 Ka5 13.Nd5 Ka4 14.Kc5 Kb3 15.Nb4 Kb2 16.Bf4 Kc3 17.Be3 Another waiting move. The Bishop has to attack d2. 17...Kb3 18.Bd2 Ka4 19.Kc4 Not the fastest way, but probably the easiest way to learn. 19... Ka5 20.Be3 Ka4 21.Bb6 Ka3 22.Nd3 Ka4 23.Nb2+ Ka3 24.Kc3 Ka2 25.Bc5 Ka1 26.Nd3 Kb1 27.Kb3 Ka1 28.Kc2 Ka2 29.Nc1+ Ka1 30.Bd4# 1-0

Another method to drive the King to the edge are for example by means of the Deletang’s triangles. Infomation about this method and a lot of other information about this endgame can be found at the blogsite of Mostly Chess Tactics, as mentioned before.

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