One of the truly elemental endgame positions of chess. With White to Play, it was composed as a study. With Black to Play, it was an actual game played in the Italian women’s championship in 1996. In both cases, White wins, but you have to know how!

1.Kg4 Kg6 2.Kf3! [And not 2.f5+ Kf7 3.Kf4 Ke7 4.Ke3 Kd7 5.Kd4 Kd6 6.Kc4 Kc6 7.Kc3 Kd7 8.Kd3 Kc7 9.Kd4 Kd6 10.e5+ fxe5+ 11.Ke4 Kd7 12.Kxe5 Ke7 13.Kf4 Kf6 with an excellent lesson on keeping the opposition. If you don't know what opposition is, the basic idea is for a king to be an odd number of squares from the other king with it being the other king's move. That means that king with the move can't make any headway. For example, if you carry this variation out, it could go like this: 14.Kg4 Kf7 15.Kg5 Kg7 16.f6+ Kf8 (16...Kf7 17.Kf5 Kf8 18.Kg6 Kg8 19.f7+ Kf8 20.Kf6 stalemate.) 17.Kg6 Kg8 18.f7+ (18.Kf5 Kf7) 18...Kf8 The key to remember is that if the pawn gets to the 7th rank with a check on the other king, it's going to be a stalemate. If no check, then it's a win. 19.Kf6 Stalemate] 2...Kf7 3.Ke3 Ke7 4.Kd4 Kd6 5.f5 Kc6 6.e5 fxe5+ 7.Kxe5 Kd7 8.Kf6 BTW, If Black went the other way, it wouldn’t work either: 1.Kg4 Kg6 2.Kf3 Kh5 3.Kf2 Kh4 4.Ke2 Kg4 5.Ke3 Kh5 6.Kd4 Kg6 7.Kd5 Kf7 8.f5 Ke7 9.Kc6 with play as noted above. Now, with Black to move in the diagrammed position, it would go 1...Kg6 2.Kg3 Kf7 3.Kf3 Ke7 4.Ke3 Kd7 5.Kd4 Kc6 6.Kc4 Kd6 7.Kb5 Ke7 8.Kc6 Ke6 9.f5+ Ke5 [9...Ke7 10.Kc7 Ke8 11.Kd6 Kf7 12.Kd7 Kf8 13.Ke6 Kg7 14.Ke7] 10.Kd7 Kxe4 11.Ke6 Kf4 12.Kxf6 and wins. If you didn’t know all this, you just got a valuable endgame lesson. Remember it!

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