Strategy Wednesday - Endgames with Minor Pieces 

The December edition of Strategy Wednesday, led by GM Ioannis Papaioannou, is now available as a digital product! This course dives into the fascinating world of endgames with minor pieces, exploring their strategic depth and practical challenges.

Through 4 in-depth lectures, GM Papaioannou provides a systematic approach to mastering these essential endgames, covering key structures and principles. By connecting ideas across the opening, middlegame, and endgame, this course equips you with the tools to navigate these critical positions confidently.

What’s Included?

✅ 4 Video Lectures: A comprehensive breakdown of endgames with minor pieces.
✅ PGN Files: Detailed analysis of all examples and principles discussed.
✅ 40 Test Positions: Hone your skills with targeted exercises.

Now, let’s take a brief look at each of the lectures.

LECTURE 1 - OPPOSITE-COLOURED BISHOPS

In this lecture we are studying endings with opposite coloured bishops. While it is known that they have a certain drawing tendency, there are thousands of exceptions. We will study the basic principles of pure bishop endings. If we add various other pieces, for instance, rooks or queens, different principles would apply! Then, it would be about the activity of the major pieces, and concrete calculation would play a major role.

SAMPLE EXAMPLE

LECTURE 2 - PAIR OF BISHOPS

This lesson is dedicated to the pair of bishops—one of my favorite advantages. It's not a very common feature in amateur players' games, and it's not an easy advantage to convert. However, it's important to learn the most important ideas and to try to master them—this is the only way to improve! When examining thousands of games, two bishops proved to be in most cases stronger than bishop and knight or two knights. We will have a look at several instructive examples.

SAMPLE EXAMPLE

LECTURE 3 - BISHOP VS KNIGHT

When discussing endgames with knight against bishop, many players and even trainers mention a general rule that is wrong: "When there are pawns on both sides of the board, the bishop is stronger." This is not at all the case! In order for the bishop to be stronger than the knight, some additional conditions must be met! By studying instructive examples, we will learn how to evaluate bishop vs knight endgames correctly. In the first part of the lecture, we analyse endgames in which the bishop is better than the knight; in the second part, we look at games in which the knight is superior.

SAMPLE EXAMPLE

LECTURE 4 - BISHOP ENDGAMES

In this lesson, we study bishop endgames with bishops of the same colour. We begin by studying some basic winning positions, continue by studying more complex examples, and will also check some important theoretical positions.

SAMPLE EXAMPLE