Philidor Endgame

The Philidor Endgame also known as The Philidor Position is a fundamental concept in chess where one side has a king, rook and pawn while the other side only has a king and rook. The side with the pawn will try to push this pawn and promote it while the other side will try to prevent the promotion of this pawn and draw the position. The Philidor Endgame if played perfectly by both sides IS a draw.



The Philidor Position

White here can respond to this move in 2 ways:
1. By giving us a check with his rook
2. By pushing the pawn to the 6th rank

We’ll look at all of these because whatever white does, he has NO progression in this endgame. First let’s take a look at what happens if black tries to give us a check with his rook by playing Ra8+.

We can just respond to this check by moving our king to d7 and white can repeat moves by playing Ra7+ Kd8 Ra8+ Kd7 and it goes on.

Now let’s take a look at what happens when white tries to push the pawn to the 6th rank, shielding the attacking line from the rook and cross the 6th rank with his king. White plays d6, and we can easily respond to this move by playing Rb1.

The intention of this move is to give the white king checks from behind which leads to a draw, white can play anything here in this position but our game plan remains the same which is to give checks to his king.

Now we can start giving checks: … 3. Re1+ 4. Kd5 Rd1+ 5. Kc5 Rc1+ 6. Kd5 Rxc7 7. dxc7+ Kxc7 and the game ends in a draw, if white’s king strays too far from the undefended pawn we can just attack it and he’ll be forced to come back and defend it after which you can continue giving checks.

This wraps up the lesson, hope you enjoyed! I will be linking the lesson as a study with all the moves and variations discussed above.