Chapter 4 Knights and Bishops An important and challenging chapter, given the multiple possible exchanges into other endings. In general, knights are not worse than bishops, nor knight and bishop worse than a bishop pair, because the isolated pawn closes diagonals for the bishops. Conversely, a pair of bishops can offer great defensive chances even after the isolated pawn has been lost as they can suddenly have some open diagonals. Yet even in the worst piece match-up for the defender, a good knight versus bad bishop endgame (say, White: Nd4 Pe3 v Black Bd7, Pd5), the ending is a theoretical draw if there are no other weaknesses in the defender's camp, as has been known since a famous Fine-Capablanca game. However, since Capablanca defends very few endgames these days, in practice the attacker's winning chances are excellent. Above all, the defender must avoid giving up too much space on the kingside, as in Belavanets-Rauzer. These games lead to the conclusion that the defender must keep most of their pawns on the opposite-coloured squares to their bishop - but not too many of them! It is close to a general rule that the defender should keep at least one pawn on the same colour as their bishop - for example .h5 to exchange at least a pair of pawns should White advance on the kingside.

In practice, following this advice - and choosing the right pawn or pawns to advance, is far from easy. Once an extra pair of minor pieces are added to the board, though the objective assessment does not change, the defence becomes much more challenging, with every exchange a potential minefield. (See Flohr-Pirc.) It should be noted that a pair of bishops, though great for defence, offers no extra winning chances for the attacker. Indeed, a common strategy is to exchange off the isolated pawn in order to provide more breathing space for the bishops, as in Riazantsev-Musalov. It is, however, very rare that such a plan can be executed to advantage. (24) Sergey Belavenets - Vsevolod Rauzer Moscow Championship 1937 [diagram] One of the classic good knight versus bad bishop endgames and one which is not as bad as it looks for Black. While in practice Black will always be struggling to earn a draw, it cannot be said that Black's position is lost.

White's plan starts with bringing the king to d4, followed by trying to fix the pawn structure. (Obviously it is a bonus if Black pawns finish up on light squares.).