Endgames
Bishop endgame tactics
A bishop covers half the board and is blind to the other half, and endings with bishops turn on that single fact. Opposite-coloured bishops draw endings that look completely won; same-coloured bishops make a single weak pawn on the wrong square decisive.
How to spot it
Ask which colour the pawns are on and whether they can be changed. Against an opposite-coloured bishop, count whether a fortress exists before pushing anything. The tactics are usually a bishop trapping a rook or a pawn on the seventh that the bishop can neither stop nor be given up for.
The positions
Easiest first. Every one is from a real game, and the rating under each board is what it costs the players who have tried it on lichess.
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1. White to play Play it out →Answer
54.Be4+ Kc7 55.a7
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2. Black to play Play it out →Answer
31...a3 32.Bxb5 a2 33.d8=Q+ Kxd8
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3. White to play Play it out →Answer
60.h5 Bd3 61.h6 Kf4 62.a6
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4. White to play Play it out →Answer
47.b5 cxb5 48.Kxd5
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5. White to play Play it out →Answer
39.b6+ Kc8 40.b7+ Kxb7 41.Bxd7
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6. White to play Play it out →Answer
44.f7 Bd6 45.Kxh6 Ke4 46.g5
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7. Black to play Play it out →Answer
59...Bd7+ 60.Be6 Bxe6#
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8. Black to play Play it out →Answer
39...h5 40.g4 Bd8#
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9. Black to play Play it out →Answer
45...Kxe6 46.Kc4 Bf2
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10. Black to play Play it out →Answer
36...d3 37.Kf2 b3 38.Ke3 b2
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11. Black to play Play it out →Answer
31...c3 32.bxc3 b3 33.axb3 axb3 34.Bb4 b2
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12. White to play Play it out →Answer
49.f5 Bxb7 50.f6 Kxc4 51.f7
Reading about a pattern is the easy half. Motify finds the positions where you missed one, by running your own lichess and Chess.com games through Stockfish, and puts each of them behind two or three puzzles on the same idea so you meet it having just found it three times. See how Motify works.
Positions from the lichess puzzle database, released under CC0.