Endgames
Knight endgame tactics
Knights are slow, which makes knight endings a race the knight usually loses against a passed pawn on the far side of the board. They are also full of forks, because the pieces left are the king and one or two pawns, and a knight forking the king and a pawn ends the game.
How to spot it
Count how many moves the knight needs to reach the promotion square, and compare it to the pawn. Then look for forks, especially checks: with so few pieces left the king is nearly always on a square where a check also hits something else.
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
33.d6 b3 34.axb3
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2. Black to play Play it out →Answer
42...f2+ 43.Kf1 e2+ 44.Kxe2 Kg2
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3. White to play Play it out →Answer
63.e7+ Kxe7 64.Kc7
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4. Black to play Play it out →Answer
50...f4+ 51.Kxf4 Kxd4
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5. Black to play Play it out →Answer
55...f3 56.gxf3 g2
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6. White to play Play it out →Answer
34.Nf2#
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7. White to play Play it out →Answer
59.Nc7 Nf7 60.Na6+ Kc8 61.b7+
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8. Black to play Play it out →Answer
45...Ka3 46.Nc6 b2 47.Kc2 Ka2 48.Nb4+ Ka1
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9. White to play Play it out →Answer
45.Kd3 h4 46.a7
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10. Black to play Play it out →Answer
55...Nb5 56.g8=Q b3+ 57.Ka1 b2+ 58.Ka2 b1=Q#
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11. White to play Play it out →Answer
44.e6 Nb6 45.e7 Nc8 46.e8=N
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12. Black to play Play it out →Answer
60...e2+ 61.Kd2 Kg3 62.Ke1 Kxh2
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.