Finding Crutches in the Darkness

Crutches in the darkness?!

Wow, that sounds like my next goth-metal project. Or a novel. Or...something.

I'm doing some endgame study and I'm finding that a good foundation on which to build endgame knowledge is to look for "crutches" to help you navigate the darkness. Haha that sounds dramatic. Well it's also dramatically soul-crushing to let an endgame slip away that you later discover was winning. In his Complete Endgame Course, Silman was discussing the trebuchet idea when he first mentioned that knowledge of it can serve as a guide to help you in a rather confusing pawn vs pawn endgame. He says that if you can safely get to a position leading to the trebuchet and you understand the inherent zugzwang in the trebuchet position then you might be able to tell if a frozen pawn vs pawn endgame might be winning. Therefore, where you'd normally be stumbling through the darkness, all of a sudden you fumble around and see this crutch and you can stand! And get to a winning endgame! 

Silman says 

"The idea of something definable which can help us understand the right path in seemingly tough positions is an important one."

A crutch is a piece of knowledge or understanding that you can rely on to help you achieve a goal. 

It is the definable thing in a position you can point to and say, "that's winning" and I think it's extremely valuable in navigating basic endgames for beginner players.

The most basic example is "knowing how to mate a lone king with a queen." Granted this is a simple one and it is chapter one stuff of any beginner endgame book but it's a crutch nonetheless, one of which some don't know. But if you know it, and you find a position that can lead to a queen-up endgame, you'll jump to it immediately. Obviously!

Other crutches might be basic opposition, trebuchet, the square of the pawn, the deep freeze, the Lucena position. They're little patterns, positions, or techniques that one must know. They give you building blocks and positions to strive for, so that if you find one of those crutches, you can use it to win or more often to find another crutch that leads to another that leads to a win.

If white moves, you see he cannot save his f4 pawn, so black will take it regardless and have his king in front of his pawn with white's king not in any position to defend. After a few more king moves, you should see that black's king will be able to control the queening square. It's a simple, definable idea.

You can look up more information on the trebuchet but the point of this post is more broad than that. If you can memorize that position and the reasons why it's a dead loss for whomever has the move, then you've acquired a new "crutch" you can use!

Look at this example from Silman's Complete Endgame Course:

So, what's going on? For a beginner, it looks pretty messy, maybe even a draw. And therefore one might begin just making random moves like taking the pawn and then trying to get back to the center. But with a few moves of calculation and newly acquired knowledge of the trebuchet, you might see that black should be able to make contact with the frozen pawns first, thus threatening to take. So white must react and when he does, he'll force the trebuchet onto himself.

1. Kxh6 Kxc3
2. Kg5 Kd3!

See why 2. ...Kd4 doesn't work??? After 3. Kf5 black is on the ugly side of the trebuchet. 2. ...Kd3! is the move.

3. Kf5 Kd4!

And here we've reached the trebuchet "crutch" which you know is winning for black because it's white to move and he is in zugzwang. If this wasn't in black's toolbox, he'd probably lose because he'd play the natural-looking 2. ...Kd4? and let white get the winning trebuchet position. But instead, black wins the pawn but also the game because black immediately gets the more dominant king in front of its pawn, which is another crutch. In other words, from the darkness of the endgame jungle of Diagram 97, we found these two crutches we're familiar with (trebuchet and dominant king) that helped us stand up and walk to a winning game--due to yet another crutch of how to mate with queen vs lone king! You might realize you start avoiding mindless moves like 2. ...Kd4? and you're more aware there are winning moves and losing moves in otherwise seemingly simple positions.

Lastly, here's one more very simple one. Silman refers to it as the deep freeze:

If white to move, he could play a5 which freezes black's pawns for the time being. So here we have one pawn stopping two! Obviously, depending on king positions, there may be a better move but this example serves to show how simple some of these ideas can be. In fact, many crutches can be simplified to two- or three-pawn positions on very small areas of the board. Here's the deep freeze in its most basic form:

And that might be all you need to win! Maybe in one of your endgames you have an outside passed pawn that black has to deal with, and on the other wing you can push one pawn to freeze two, then use the "fox in the chicken coup" crutch to win the game! See how we're chaining these ideas together? Deep Freeze-->Fox in Chicken Coup-->Control Queening Square-->Queen vs Lone King Checkmate Pattern. It makes calculating endgames much simpler.

Conclusion

So, for me, this is one major point of studying endgames for my level. I want to build endgame knowledge from these building blocks. They still require accurate calculation and visualization to see if you can get to a position to utilize some of these crutches, but the more of them you have in your toolbox, the better! So make it a point to acknowledge as many of these building blocks as possible.