Opening courses and books get all the love from consumers. However, it is of much greater practical importance for young chess players wishing to get better at chess to spend time mastering basic endgame techniques instead of investing hours of time memorizing lines of openings made fashionable by popular chess streamers.
My advice on this subject to chess parents is that immediately after mastering basic checkmating technique, it is incredibly important for their children to start studying King and pawn endgames. Recently, as I was passing by a chessboard at the CalChess K-5 State Championship, I saw one board where the players exchanged some minor pieces and ended up in the position below.
A few moves after this position was reached, the players agreed to a draw. It was obvious that the young player who had the white pieces simply lacked some basic king and pawn endgame knowledge that would have enabled him to earn the full point. Even more disappointing, the children involved in the game had played no less than fourteen very precise opening moves that they must have spent hours memorizing.
Fortunately, I ran into this player and his father later in the day and gently showed them the correct technique to employ in the future and why Siegbert Tarrasch once said, “it cannot be too greatly emphasized that the most important role in pawn endings is played by the king.”
