Hello Chess Friends, In today’s chess video, I am going to show you how to Win an endgame when you have a king, a knight & a bishop versus your opponent’slonely king. This is my second tutorial on the bishop and knight checkmate. So in case you haven’t checked out the first part, then I would recommend you watch that first by clicking on the ‘i’ button above. And don’t forget to watch this video till the end because I also have a really interesting Chess Puzzle for you all. Let’s see if you can solve that.
So without further ado, let’s get started. As I told you in my first video, the trick to win such an endgame is to push your opponent’s king in a corner which is of the same color as your bishop. In this case, you need to push your opponents king to any of these 2 white corner squares since your bishop is on a light-colored square. Now let’s assume your opponent is smart & he knows this. And therefore, he decides to run away to this corner, right from the start. What will you do now? Well, let me break it down & make it simple for you. Our first aim is to get our king diagonally opposite to this corner.
So we need to get him on this f6 square. Let’s do this fast. Black will just keep moving back & forth like this because he wants to stay in that corner. And we got our king here. This is the key starting point to drag this black king out of this wrong corner. Now let’s say we want to drag him towards this side so we simply block this square by moving our bishop here. Now to move him out of here, we need to control this corner square with our knight.
So Let’s quickly get our knight to this square that we can control this corner. It’s checked and the king is forced to move out. Please pay attention now. This is a very important move for you. Let’s analyze this. Like I told you earlier, your king needs to be on this square so that’s fine, your knight is also perfectly placed to control this corner square and your bishop is also controlling this square, preventing this king from running away. So what you need to play at this moment is a waiting move.
And like I told you in my first video, waiting moves are always played with the bishop. So we simply move our bishop here, keeping it on this diagonal. Black is forced to move this side. Now You need to block this square. Use your bishop for this since all your other pieces are perfectly placed. Basically, from here on, this is what we are going to do. We are going to shift from this position to this and then to this and then finally checkmate in this corner. When we reach this position, our bishop will control this diagonal and in this position, our bishop will control this diagonal to simply stop black from running away.
Coming back to the game, black has only one square to go so he moves here. Now an important thing to remember is that from this position, your knight will only be moving like this, in a W pattern. And your king will slowly shift towards this side. So Just keep that in mind. First, let’s move our knight here to block this square. Now black has 2 options. He can either go this side or this side. First, let’s see what happens if he goes here. We will move our knight to d7 (remember theW pattern).
It’s a check. Black is forced to move here. Once we are sure that black cannot go back to this side, it’s time for us to shift our king. Black has only one legal move. And then, we shift our king further to prevent black from running away this side. Now again, black has 2 options. If he goes this side, then it’s quite straightforward, we can move our knight and proceed with the W pattern and continue to push the black king to this corner.
But what if he tries to again go back? That’s when you need to move your bishop. This is always going to be our strategy. Whenever your opponent changes direction, attack with your bishop to block the king. It’s a check, so black is forced to retreat. Now again, it’s time to complete the W with our knight. Black has only one legal move. Now don’t shift your king just yet otherwise black will be able to escape from here. So what do we do now? It’s simple, just play a waiting move with your bishop.
But Keep him on this diagonal only. Now again, black has 2 options. If he moves this side, then simply block this square by placing your bishop on this diagonal and after that, you can simply shift your king further to restrict the movement of your opponent. And then finally checkmate in the corner. Okay, now if he goes back, then complete theW with your knight. It’s a check so black is forced to move here.
Again, it’s time to shift your king, protecting this knight. Black has only one legal move. And then We shift our king further preventing blacks from running away. See we reached this position. Now Whatever move black plays, you will block off this diagonal with your bishop. It’s Check, the king moves back, we reposition our knight. You need to be careful of the stalemate so don’t move your knight here immediately, instead play a waiting move with your bishop keeping him on this diagonal.
After king moves, give check and finally checkmate in the corner with your bishop. Easy peasy! Okay, there is one more important piece I need to cover. For that, Let’s go back to this position. We start with the W and then instead of moving here, let’s say black tries to run away from this side so he plays king to d8. What will you do now? This is a little tricky so follow me carefully. From here, we will continue shifting our king. You might be thinking that the king will run away from here.
Don’t worry, it might seem that way, but we have things under control. After black moves to c7, we will continue the W with our knight. We have got this square covered. So black will look to run away from either here or here. Let’s say he moves to c6, it might seem like black has escaped, but no he hasn’t. Our knight is controlling these 2 squares we just need to block this square to stop the king from running away. What do we do? We simply slide our bishop to d3 just in time to cover this diagonal.
This is a very important line you need to remember so make a note of it somewhere. As you can see now, the black king is trapped in this cage so he can’t run away. He has only 2 legal moves. If he moves here, then we can push him further with our king like this and we are back to the same position that we discussed earlier in this video. If he moves like this, then we will move our bishop to Cutoff this diagonal. Again we formed this perfect cage to push the king back further. If you notice now, we are back again to the same position discussed earlier.
You need to follow the same process. Get the game to this position and then finally checkmate in a corner. The best way to master this checkmate will be to set up a random position on the board with these 4 pieces and play it out against the computer or any of your friends. Once you do it 3-4 times, it will become very easy for you.
