Opposition and critical Squares. The most important Chess Pattern

White King in d1. White pawn in d2. Black King in d8. White to move. Depending on your move, you could win, or simply draw.

This booklet is only about this pattern, a fundamental pattern, where nothing is left to chance or sheer luck, only one move out of the four possible moves wins. If you know it, the continuation, and the reason why, just skip this book then, it will not be of any help to you.

Only knowledge is important. But if you have not deeply assimilated the concepts underlying this position, you are just playing "hope chess", according to Dan Heisman definition.

It's the analysis of pattern #29 of my book "Fundamental Chess Patterns", so important that one book is needed to cover it properly. It's just King vs King and Pawn, but easy only when you know the correct play. How could you play with 32 pieces on the board if you are not completely sure what to do when there are only three?

Some word of notice: If you came here, you probably have already read the above book, being so familiar with my basic English, which with the help of many diagrams should be capable to explain these concepts. This translation by me is again based on an ebook written in Italian, not still controlled for proper language. I apologize for the grammatical errors.

To help, notation is algebraic with figurines, one of the feww ebooks with this feature And there's plenty of diagrams to take care of low visualization capability.

Novice and intermediate players are the target of this book, up to 1.700 Elo rating. Here you must not simply memorize, but you have to understand! In chess, as in many disciplines, both knowledge and ability are important, they are complementary, one alone is not enough. If you do not know the proper procedure, you will just try, and you might promote, but only if your opponent does not know the correct defense.

This booklet will not improve your ability, for that you must play, applying your knowledge. But it will try to increase your knowledge in this specific position. It will not (and could not) be a replacement to the wide specialized available literature, paper books or ebooks.

There's no limit to what's available to a Chess student today, you can find more than 500 Gbytes of books, in PDF or even Chessbase format, programs, hundreds of instruction movies, a forest in which the Chess student can go astray. A large choice of endgame books is available, each proposing some hundreds of sequences, and when you have finished reading them, maybe you will recall three or four, which struck your imagination: and over the board you will recall that in a similar position there's a winning sequence, but it does not come back to your mind. As when visiting an important Museum, at the end of your visit your mind will be confused, and you will remember just a couple of masterpieces.

But did you know and remember how to play this position? and the underlying reason also?

Enjoy the reading, and play well.

Rodolfo Pardi, FSI (Italian Chess Federation) instructor and tournament director

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