Knight Endgames — Essential Knowledge for the Practical Player
There is a paradox at the heart of knight endgames. Two knights cannot force mate against a lone king — one of the first facts every player is taught. Yet add a single pawn to the defending side, and the mate can suddenly appear. The pawn that should have saved him is the very thing that dooms him.
That reversal is the whole subject in miniature. Of all the endings, knight endgames sit closest to pure pawn play, and they inherit its unforgiving arithmetic: a single extra pawn is often enough to win, especially with several pawns still on the board, and one imprecise move can erase an advantage built over hours. Where an extra pawn can be meaningless in opposite-colored bishop endgames or even in rook endgames, here it tends to decide.
One structural law governs much of what follows: against a rook pawn, the knight is very often powerless. The a-pawn and the h-pawn do not merely inconvenience the defender — they change the result, and the most distant passer becomes the most dangerous. Knowing when a pawn decides and when it counts for nothing is the difference between converting and drifting.
Three grandmasters, three angles
The course divides the work, and each part carries its own weight. GM Felix Blohberger builds the foundation across five lessons, moving from the theoretical basis — including the two-knights question and its pawn exceptions — to a genuinely instructive knight ending from the Prague Masters, proof that these endgames still decide games at the very top.
GM Pier Luigi Basso then supplies ten positions drawn from the most recent elite events — the World Cup, the Grand Swiss, the European Championship — where strong players, under real pressure, went wrong. You are asked to decide first, and only then to see what happened. GM Andrea Stella contributes with six practical battles: real decisions with real consequences, not composed studies.
The authors have already treated rook endgames, bishop endgames, and opposite-colored bishop endgames in the same practical spirit; here they turn their attention to the knights.
What's inside
- 5 lessons
- 6 practical examples
- 10 positions to learn from real mistakes
- Video instruction
- Multilingual PGN (English, German, French, Spanish)
Do the work beforehand
Knight endgames reward the player who has put in the work, because there is no room to improvise once the pieces come off. Study these lessons and positions, and when such an ending appears on your board — as it will, even at the highest level — you will not be guessing. You will know.