Thank you for an entertaining, instructive and practical endgame lesson. I’ll have to play this one over the board and revisit the video a few hundred times.
I was watching this game play out on the Saint Louis Broadcast, and 100% blundered with Bf2, the same as Nana. Seeing exactly where and *why* GM's blunder is so educational, the Bf2 against knight on f5 pattern is hardwired into all of our brains, it's super clear black's dominating and is forcing the knight to move. And white brutally says "that's absolutely correct!" I know you're keeping the good GM sauce on the shelf still with this subject :P Kosteniuk scoring 1.5/2 from lost positions in rounds 5 and 6, or Nepo scoring +1 from God only knows how many lost positions in the candidates. You GM's all must have a special hookup to Dale Gribble's pocket sand supplier.
Hey Coach, thanks for the lesson, the sound is a bit low, maybe turn it up a bit next time? Congrats on your new book on Chessable, I saw it was published some minutes ago. Thanks!
Very good points. Practical, instructive advice. I often feel that at amateur level most endgames are drawn too quickly without putting the opponent to the test.
In a 15/10 game against 1600 elo player, I actually won a pawn down rook ending due to 2 blunders by the opponent (each time losing a pawn). They can't test the opponent as well but the opponent can also blunder.
@joshfriedel , Very instructive video, but how do you actually do deep calculation without getting completely overwhelmed when it does need to be done? Is there a way to systematize it such that you can keep your brain focused on the task at hand and not get distracted and overwhelmed with all of the variations as the move tree increases exponentially in size? How do strong players remain focused under these circumstances? My brain freezes up like a bad Windows operating system any time I'm faced with deep calculation.
A big part of improving at it, apart from practice, is working on your "base" skills. Those would include tactics, visualization, spotting forcing moves, etc. It never becomes easy, but as your base skill set becomes stronger, you'll find the calculation of deep lines becomes more manageable.
I think your analogy explains it perfectly. And I am backed by Joshes reply that it never becomes easy; well unless you have a high IQ or your brain is designed for Chess. A computer freezes up and crashes when it runs out of memory. Our brain works around similar rules and infact we have less working memory than a computer. So there is only so much variations you can look at before you begin to run out of memory. That overwelming feeling is your brain questioning if it needs to used up longer term memory to store more variations. I can go further by saying; storing a singe random Chess position in working memory is hard. You have to remember X amount of pieces on a 8x8 board. When it comes to chess analysis; it requires a powerful hardware. No amount Chess principles will help you. That is why old Chess players retire. The best you can do you is eliminate as much options as possible. You can look at stupid looking replies first to ensure they dont work. You can look at your most powerful looking move first; instead of looking at Checks captures checks first. That is a trap that was taught to us that no serious Chess player really does. Looking at Checks first can lead you in a circular loop. Another one is compiling candidate moves. Compiling candidate moves takes up memory(which for a human comes at a premium); and it takes up time. I Think better is looking at an option; and have the principle to come back and look at other options. Here is a good principle to have. Limit your depth search (computers do this). And keep an evaluation of each final position.
Loved the video, thank, it's not obvious to me why you dismissed Nf3 instantly in the last position though, but I suppose you have to calculate the most promising move first
@@joshfriedel thanks for the precision, I just found your channel and it really is one of the best ones for actually improving at chess, love it. I think if you keep it up you will have great success
Regarding the second position : The thought process should be - Is the pawn endgame winning, and it can be determined relatively quickly by a decent player. Most of the lines presented about the position are irrelevant ( although they can serve as a clarifying tool for weaker players). There is only one key idea in that pawn endgame - to make two passed pawns that can defend each other and at the same time to stop white's passer. This idea is relatively easy to spot for a person that studied pawn endgames diligently. With all due respect I think it was a bad example. No strong player will think there: " Am I winning if I don't play Rxd2? and what is the eval of the position if I don't play that forcing line" Instead they will first check if Rxd2 is winning, and determine that it is winning very quickly and then go for it. If they determine that it is not winning then they will proceed with the (re)evaluation and other stuff. All the rest you presented I agree with, and appreciate that you are sharing your knowledge with a wide audience. Thank you for your efforts
I actually think it depends who you ask. Some players would just calculate ...Rxd2 without looking at other moves, and I don't think that's invalid in any way. For myself, I prefer to evaluate first, since that gives me an idea of what I'm shooting for. I wouldn't calculate a move like ...Re3+ too deeply, but I would take maybe 30 seconds to evaluate the position if I don't take on d2, and only then proceed to calculate the lines. If it clearly wins then it doesn't matter much and I've lost only 30 seconds, but if it is more complex I like to have the evaluation as a basis for comparison.
@@joshfriedel Thank you for the reply and explanation. I wasn't aware that some strong players think that way ( Since you clarified that this is how you would approach the position, now I believe there are many others who do it that way, too). On the other hand, I could have assumed that your approach is valid, given that you are lecturing on it, but somehow I felt you made a blunder in your lecture ( since I thought that my way is the only right way), and I was clearly wrong. I sincerely apologize.
I love you Josh Friedel. you are my god. Wish you could be my personal coach. I am looking forward to playing rated tournaments and get some titles. I would really love the Grand Master title.
Really amazing study position, with the choice between the 5 king moves. I went into it knowing that one of the king to the d file moves was probably right, just because it's a puzzle position and they're so counter-intuitive(Why am I letting the black king off the A file??), and I still settled on Keymer's Kc5 move. I didn't spot the Nh6 mechanism either. Such a tricky endgame, thanks for explaining it so well!
I don’t think you should turn your two pawns into five queens. Infighting would likely ensue, then they’d start forming alliances or excluding one queen, who would start undermining the leader. That and the threat of stalemates. I’d go for the five knights out of two pawns ending. You could sacrifice four of the knights for all but one pawn, and go for that checkmate. I’ll run it through stockfish.
