Tip: Exploiting Your Knight in the Endgame 1 of 3

Knight endgames are like king and pawn endgames. This rule of thumb was given by former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik, who observed that if a king and pawn endgame was winning, the evaluation would be the same with knights on the board. We can infer that protected or outside passed pawns can be a huge asset in knight endgames, because the stronger side can always offer to trade knights, and the defending side will need to retreat in order to avoid the trade.

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[Event "rated untimed match"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Unknown"]
[Black "Unknown593"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Annotator "David Hayes"]
[BlackElo "0"]
[FEN "6k1/5pp1/5n1p/R4P2/Pp3N2/r5PK/1r5P/4R3 w - - 0 1"]
[SetUp "1"]
[TimeControl "0"]
[WhiteElo "0"]

1. Ng6 ( { White can try: } 1. Ra8+ Kh7 2. Re2 Rxe2 3. Nxe2 b3 4. Rb8 Ne4 5. Nf4 Nd2 6. Rb4 Ra2 7. Nd3 h5 { With a likely draw. } ) 1... Kh7 2. Nf8+ Kh8 3. Ra8 g6 4. fxg6 Kg7 5. Re7 Raa2 6. Rxf7+ Kg8 7. Ne6+ Ne8 8. Rxe8# 1-0