Pawn Breakthroughs | Principles of Chess Endgames | GM Naroditsky

This video continues our journey into the heart of pawn endgames by examining one of the most important tools in the endgame master’s arsenal: pawn breakthroughs. We examine the 10 most common type of breakthroughs in abstraction, and then put them into practice by analyzing several real-life examples. Enjoy!

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117 Comments

  1. Great work! Way to make the end game digestible and exciting! Used this new knowledge to beat down on an old man at the coffee shop! xD Woohooo!

  2. Superb! …and I don't give out such compliments easily.

    I had (earlier) struggled to find material on such things — all located in one place and with a simple catalog (even the naming does help memory) of the types.

    Even the books on pawn play are seldom this clear (even yours) or organized so that someone new can get right to the heart of what isn't very complicated without wading through dozens or hundreds of pages or many many games.

    The pawn breakthroughs SHOULD be taught as readily as Pins, Skewers, and Discovered Checks — as you do here — but seldom are.

    Every player can benefit from this explicit knowledge much earlier in their chess study than is typical, whereas most people who only learn the simple parts once they reach the point of studying serious pawn structure books — or find it spread all through middle game or endgame books without focus.

    Also that 3 x 3 position you find uncommon is very common in PUZZLES which include endgames. It's provides a lot of confidence to be able to SEE the answer immediately and only need to check it than to need to laboriously work it out by calculation.

    Now if you can do the same thing for various other strategic and positional "priyomes", motifs, and methods…. (Hint, Hint.)

    File, rank, diagonal clearance are just one such example, there must be dozens or hundreds worth showing as clearly as this.

    I've appreciated your work before, but just became a fan.

    THANK YOU.

  3. Who is the best teacher? DANYA. Who is the best endgame teacher? DANYA.

  4. I particularly like your command of English

  5. Danya, just so you know, bad jokes actually make me want to double or triple subscribe. Great ideas and explanations, as per usual.

  6. Saying you are the best Chess teacher is fad. But this material is definately good food to eat.

  7. 22:15 The correct terminology here is actually the wide peepos

  8. My favorite chess channel on youtube by far thanks a lot

  9. I think these will be your greatest legacy. In that video is better for most than reading for chess education. And you do it so well. Hope more in the series comes out, this could be your My System.

  10. Thanks, Daniel. Exactly the video I was looking for.

  11. I just ran into 3 of these scenarios that i lost in the last day. This video will change my game!

  12. I feel like this is the chess equivalent of knowing all the 2-letter words in Scrabble.

  13. Very nice explanation and an amazing series. Thank you

  14. Apart from his amazing teaching, can we just take a moment to praise 30:16 ? 😂 This came very unexpected, great sense of humor.

  15. I found them much easier to memorise by categorising them by the number of involved pawns:

    8 pawns: Bathtub
    7 pawns: East Coast Best Coast
    6 pawns: Dynamite
    5 pawns: Pawn square, undoubler, head chopper, corner kick
    3 pawns: EZ, stop&go, square clearer

    Once you think of a number, the only other thing that matters is the formation, and there aren't that many possibilities.

  16. Where can I find exercises to practice those concepts?

  17. Sorry, I’m late to the party, Daniel, you rock. Very well done. I believe I learned a lot and hope it shows up in my games!

  18. I tried the bathtub breakthrough for white a couple of different ways against the computer on Lichess and it loses. The black king is just in time to stop the passer.

  19. I just finished a 5 round swiss tournament and I came in second by winning my last game by liquidating to a winning pawn endgame with opposite flank majorities that involved sacrificing a pawn to create trousers and then winning a pawn race where I had to make sure I prevented my opponent from promoting in a particular square and then make sure to promote with check. I wanted to play …c4 and I wanted to make sure I could deep freeze b4 with …b5. A good sample of the pawn themes seen in this playlist. I was able to see all that in 3-4 minutes THANKS TO THIS SERIES!!!
    [Just in case anybody is interested and to flex a bit 😀 here is the position where I calculated the endgame and the continuation:
    8/pp3k2/2p1pq2/8/3PQ2p/2P2r2/PP1R2K1/8 b – – 3 39
    39… Rg3+ { [%eval -5.76] } 40. Kh2 { [%eval -5.81] } 40… Qf1 { [%eval -6.49] } 41. Rg2 { [%eval -6.25] } 41… Rxg2+ { [%eval -6.18] } 42. Qxg2 { [%eval -6.19] } 42… Qxg2+ { [%eval -6.33] } 43. Kxg2 { [%eval -6.05] } 43… Kg6 { [%eval -6.06] } 44. Kh3 { [%eval -6.57] } 44… Kg5 { [%eval -6.61] } 45. b3 { [%eval -7.16] } 45… c5 { [%eval -6.75] } 46. dxc5 { [%eval -6.77] } 46… e5 { [%eval -8.62] } 47. a4 { [%eval -13.82] } 47… e4 { [%eval -13.51] } 48. a5 { [%eval #-11] } 48… e3 { [%eval #-10] } 49. Kg2 { [%eval -17.36] } 49… e2?! { [%eval -7.31] } { Inaccuracy. h3+ was best. } (49… h3+) 50. Kf2 { [%eval -7.09] } 50… h3 { [%eval -7.15] } 51. a6?! { [%eval -60.22] } { Inaccuracy. Kxe2 was best. } (51. Kxe2 h2 52. a6 bxa6 53. Ke3 h1=Q 54. c4 Qg1+ 55. Kd3 Qxc5 56. b4 Qxb4 57. Kd4 Qd2+) 51… e1=Q+ { [%eval -60.4] } 52. Kxe1 { [%eval -12.25] } 52… h2 { [%eval -60.05] } *]

  20. In the first example the white player is named Jesus… Also the irony is he's playing white.

  21. Tack! Thanks for providing fantastic content!

  22. it's a shame that this series doesn't get more views, those are the best end game videos that I have ever seen and I bet it took a lot more effort than some random speed run video that Daniel makes. (those are also excellent by the way)

  23. Hi, i looked at the bathtub formation and i put this in an an engine and after f5 white is completely losing after eXf5, gxf5 and then king b7. according to the engine this is completely losing for white… can someone explain to me what i am missing here??

  24. You can contact Rohde but he won't respond. Not after what you did😉

  25. I'm literally loving this series. So good to have instructive content on endgames without having to deepdive into books on my own 😫… Great series man well done

  26. I really like how Naroditsky gives names and defintitions to everything (maybe because I work as a terminologist!)

  27. "Shoulder black's King into oblivion"

  28. This series is fantastic, although the video time is misleading, as I feel I need to go through this one at least 3 times.

    But here's the FEN for the bathtub: k7/5pp1/4p2p/4P2P/5PP1/8/8/K7 w – – 0 1
    f5 is tagged as a blunder because the black king has plenty of time to reach the passed e-pawn. Stockfish wants white the bring the king in for support first.
    I realize this wasn't intended to be a complete game situation, but is strictly illustrative of the kernel of what is found in complex positions.

    follow-up: I am finding it very instructive to play these positions out against the computer. Danya makes the solutions appear simpler than they are, at least at my skill level.

  29. You say trousers comme inspector gadget says wowsers.

  30. thankyou, I'm learning a lot from this. some great examples reinforced by play from actual games.

  31. Please try to include all the concepts and examples from Dvorestky's endgame manual other literature.
    Endgame study is hard and equally beautiful. ❤️

  32. I love this video! Can you please make another one involving these breakthroughs with more examples? Please don't worry about your videos being too long – I think I speak for everyone when I say that they can never be too long. Thank you, Daniel!

  33. Hey dany i love your videos please tell me how to improve chess rating i am stuck in 1200 in blitz bullet rapid i practice daily

  34. After watching this vid I SUBCRIBED! Great Job Daniel! I cant wait to what move of your eductional vids. I did find it funny that f5 is the only losing move for white in the Bathtub 4:33 because of 1.f5 exf5 2.gxf5 Kb7 and white cant get a passer quick enough to promote. But very very very instructional none the less.

  35. This is the most relevant knowledge for me to improve my level. So good Daniel.

  36. Just found this and it’s awesome -love the whole series thus far and just subbed! Thanks for the great content!

  37. Amazing content! I'd like to suggest putting numbers next to each as it isn't clear to me which video is next in the series

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