Chess Endgame Practice: 10 Positions Every Club Player Should Know Cold
Most endgame advice tells you what to think. This page gives you something to do. Below are ten classic endgame positions, ordered from the first one you should learn to the last, each with a board, the FEN so you can set it up anywhere, the goal, the key line and the principle it teaches. Every position and every move was checked with an engine-grade move validator before publishing.
TL;DR
- Ten textbook endgame positions, easy to hard: rook mate, opposition, rule of the square, outside passed pawn, wrong-bishop draw, queen versus bishop pawn, rook behind the passed pawn, Philidor, Lucena, Reti.
- Each comes with FEN, side to move, goal, a short key line in algebraic notation and the one principle to remember.
- Practice method: set up, state the plan, play it out against an engine from both sides, repeat on a spaced schedule, then check your own games for the same endings.
- Chess DNA analyzes your Chess.com and Lichess games and shows which of these endgame types you actually lose, so you can practice the right ones first.
Interactive lesson — The opposition: the king move that wins a pawn ending: Play it on the board below, and make the key move yourself. White to move. Two kings, one pawn, and exactly one winning move out of six. The instinct is to push, so pause before you do. Ke6. The kings now stand on the same file with one square between them, and it is Black to move. That is the opposition, and it wins. Black has to give ground. Whichever way he steps, he can no longer sit in front of your pawn. Kf7. You walk around him. Your king now covers e8, the pawn has a clear road, and it promotes. That is what the opposition buys you: the squares in front of the pawn.
Why practice positions, not just principles
Chess endgames are the one phase where knowing the exact answer is possible. There is no opening theory debate about the Lucena position; it is a win, and there is one method. That makes chess endgame practice unusually efficient: a small number of positions, learned properly, covers most of what you will ever face. It also makes reading a chapter of principles and nodding along unusually ineffective: you either know the moves when the clock is running or you do not.
The numbers back this up. When we ran Stockfish depth-18 analysis on 164 players across six rating bands, opening accuracy climbed from about 70 percent under 600 Elo to about 84 percent at 1800+, a gain of 13 points. Endgame accuracy did not improve at all; it fell 1.6 points, because higher-rated players reach endgames that are still genuinely contested. The full breakdown is in which phase of chess decides your rating. Nobody drifts into good endgame play by getting better at chess in general; it has to be practiced on purpose.
Our guide on how to improve your chess endgame covers the habits: king activity, pawn timing and the five mistakes that cost club players most. This page is the companion drill set.
How to use this set
The positions are grouped in three levels. Level 1 is the material every player should know before worrying about anything else. Level 2 adds the pawn and minor-piece ideas that decide most club games. Level 3 covers the rook endgame landmarks and one composed study that teaches a way of thinking rather than a single ending. Work through them in order; do not move on until you can play the current position from both sides against an engine.
Each card shows the diagram from White’s side of the board, so when the caption says Black to move, remember the side at the top is playing. The key lines are short on purpose: they show the method, not every defensive try.
Level 1: the endings you must never lose
Three positions that turn up, in some form, in a large share of games that reach a bare-king finish. The first is pure technique; the second and third are the foundation of all pawn endings.
2. King and pawn: the opposition
3. Rule of the square
Level 2: pawn and minor-piece endings
These three decide many games between 1000 and 1600. Two of them are draws that the stronger side regularly loses on the clock by trying to win, and one is a win that looks like a race but is really a decoy.
4. Outside passed pawn as a decoy
5. Bishop and the wrong rook pawn
6. Queen against a bishop pawn on the seventh
Level 3: rook endings and a famous study
Rook endings are the most common endgame at every level, which is why two of the three textbook rook positions are here. The last position is Richard Reti’s 1921 study, included because it changes how you think about king moves in every ending.
7. Rook behind the passed pawn
8. Philidor: the third-rank defence
9. Lucena: building the bridge
10. Reti: the king that goes two ways
For the theory behind positions 8 and 9, the Wikipedia entries on the Lucena position and the Reti endgame study give the full history and the main defensive tries. Short definitions live in our glossary entries on the opposition, the Lucena position and the Philidor position.
How to practice endgames so they stick
Solving a position once proves you can find the idea when you know there is one. Winning it with two minutes left and no hint that this is a Lucena is a different skill, and the routine below is built for that.
- Set up, then state the plan. Paste the FEN into an analysis board. Before you move, say the plan in one sentence. For position 2 that sentence is: king in front of the pawn, take the opposition, push only with tempo. If you cannot say it, you do not know the position yet.
- Play it out against an engine, from both sides. Lichess and Chess.com both let you play a custom position against the computer. Win it as the attacker, then switch colors and hold it as the defender. The engine punishes every imprecise move, which is the feedback a book cannot give.
- Space the repetitions. Revisit each position after one day, three days and a week. Spaced repetition works for endgames as it does for vocabulary: the second retrieval is where the memory forms. Ten positions on this schedule take about twenty minutes a day.
- Check your own games. Go through your last thirty to fifty games and note every ending you reached: which type, and whether the result matched the evaluation when the endgame began. That list tells you which of the ten positions to drill hardest. Our guide on how to analyze your chess games walks through this step.
- Go back to the conversion habits. Technique fails most often because the player relaxed, not because the method was unknown. If your list shows winning endgames drifting to draws, read how to convert winning chess positions and why you keep throwing away won games alongside this drill set.
Where Chess DNA fits. The app imports your Chess.com and Lichess games, runs every move through Stockfish, and groups your errors by phase and type. If your endgame losses cluster in rook endings, it will say so, and you can point your practice there instead of guessing. It does not replace the drilling; it tells you what to drill.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I practice chess endgames?
Set up one position at a time from its FEN on a real board or an analysis board, decide your plan before touching a piece, then play the position out against an engine from both sides until you can win or hold it without thinking. Revisit each one a few days later, then check your own recent games for the same endings so practice time goes to the positions that cost you points.
What endgames should I learn first?
Start with king and pawn versus king, in particular the opposition and the rule of the square, because every other ending can simplify into one of those. Then learn the basic rook mate, the wrong-bishop draw, and the two rook endgame landmarks, Lucena and Philidor. Those seven ideas cover the endgames that decide most club games; queen versus pawn and pure minor-piece endings can wait until you convert the simpler ones consistently.
Are endgame puzzles worth it?
Yes, but only when you know why the answer works. A tactical puzzle trains you to spot one move; an endgame position trains a method you will need to apply over ten or twenty moves. Solving the ten positions here once is not enough: play them out against an engine, explain the principle in your own words, and come back after a week. Puzzles solved by guessing and then forgotten produce almost no improvement in real games.
How many endgame positions do I need to know?
For players below roughly 1800, a working knowledge of ten to twenty theoretical positions is enough, provided you know them well enough to reproduce the method under time pressure. Manuals list hundreds, but the ones that decide club games are the pawn endings, the basic rook endings and a handful of minor-piece draws. Knowing Lucena and Philidor cold beats a vague familiarity with fifty rook endings.
How do I find out which endgames I actually lose?
Run your last thirty to fifty games through an engine and look only at games that reached an endgame. Note the evaluation when the endgame started and the final result; a game that went from winning to drawn tells you which type to practice next. Chess DNA does this automatically for Chess.com and Lichess games, grouping endgame errors by type so you can see where your losses cluster.
What is the difference between an endgame puzzle and an endgame study?
An endgame puzzle is usually a position from a real game with a single best move or short forced line. An endgame study is a composed position with one unique solution, often built around a surprising idea like the Reti manoeuvre on this page. Studies are harder and rarer in practical play, but the best ones teach a principle you never forget. For everyday practice, textbook positions like the first nine here transfer best.
