How to calculate pawn endgames?

well, and those lost puzzles, chew on them after. more than the others, like post-game. But, game here, chess study versus chess performance. But I get the development optimization suggestion over long arches of study/play. likely the same skill subset that was lacking in the failed position, will come back, and from the limited and timely so resources of a human brain, hard thinking where nothing comes to mind, is maybe a free spinning wheel with no real "mileage" or traction... just an analogy the last part though. It should be more about information, and cognitive processes turning for nothing over no new data per limited resource spent. Maximize that profit! but on long term. (what am I saying?).

edit: so I guess, if we accept existence of different goals of improvement (understand vs social performance, ok per unit game too), there might be a different notions of long term. The above reasoning was for performance first, and for someone having lots to time (but still the same brain limited resources say for a chunk of time, ... missing some nomenclature for a real dynamical model of cognitive processes, I claim, related to time scale,, yoo-hoo, anyone?).
Also above, is the view of pure statistical learning (or development per previous post), from random (uncharacterized, most of times) exploration within some subset of big chess (lots of hypotheses there, lots of rambling going with it).
While I believe it can also help for performance first understanding later brand of improvement (i.e. not later, finally, but something more complex over time, perhaps some dialog). yes, burying myself.. shortest vertical rambling though, believe me, if I untangled this, would be nightmare. Also, maybe I should start with punch, and then caveats instead of caveats before bunch, but then, if I were the reader, I would not finish reading the full set of nuances, can't have that, in theory, but since I end up not making sense, ... damn do, damn don't.... kidding aside.. back to point.

I believe that skipping over the losses is missing some acceleration opportunity for the longer longer** term (for the statistical only argument, ** damn I wish we could be precise about time scales, but that might mean some mathematical models, and can't have that). We have also that slower executing faster criticizing and deducing brain part. I know it had bad press, a la MFTL. But I come from a place where it is not taboo to blend both brains harmoniously. Am I thinking mathematics? sadly no! I am thinking physics. In mathematics, it is used in such a way for those that survive, but hush-hush, it is fine to do it, as long as not talking about it, the intuition part of the thinking, unshareable, but for few in the past. Not burying offering analogies to chew upon (English?).

But I don't really care, I care about understanding the board and myself thinking about the board.. So whether one can acceleration the development of the chess performer, I think for the minuscule population of chess amateurs that have limited time left on earth for chess, that skipping is missing the opportunity to learn about the board mysteries and self-diagnostic of own thinking about it. I can be my own judge of progress for that, using that statistical view blind spot brain type (for now, but nothing prevents modeling the interaction, one just need to ask questions first, and develop later, but not asking not going to get any answer).

I also believe that both brains can work toward personal wheel of science of chess, be it chess for all, or chess for self performance.

@theodorecalexico said in #49:

P&K end games are to difficult to think about i can look at P&K puzzle for 12 hours and still get it wrong XD

For the rest of puzzles, usually you see the solution and just understand it. For K&P puzzles, I think some (or a lot of) study is needed.

@OctoPinky said in #52:

For the rest of puzzles, usually you see the solution and just understand it. For K&P puzzles, I think some (or a lot of) study is needed.

almost exactly I would say. But one can learn about self by spending more time in the suboptimal solutions of self-diagnosing what was missed.. and a plug for lichess, thematic decomposition exercises is sitting there for that other brain to help for the understanding first performance later kind of crowd... or might not be that crowd (we are legion... kidding), might test it for the fun of finding patterns anywhere. I meant, use that rational brain of yours, to really learn from yours mistake and only use SF for its tactical shenanigans.. it is like data there. not thinking not human chess skill to be learned.. the themes are human chess thinking.. And I think lichess did a good job of sharpening the independent covering of tactical chess human thinking from chess theory. The set of themes, all of chess theory objects of the board should be taken together, and there is lots of work to do there, but with tactics, lichess did something I find consistant and generic (as in spanning, or generative) enough.

for the self diagnostic.. endgame examples, also can serve same purpose.. and there the chess theory is more precise, not talking about EGTB which is like SF, database. not human thinking.. but the human thinking "modeling" from chess theory, is solid there, and not about nooks and crannies of some exhaustive tree from there. This is different from saying that the problem positions (seeds, proposal) that are unlikely practical, which I propose having potential for generalizable learning, are nook and crannies.. not the same nooks and crannies..

Did anyone mention Silman's complete endgame course? That has some nice examples of different concepts you can apply in king and pawn endgames.

important ones are the concept of king opposition, how to use pawns as decoys, the pawn square, and the power of the king.

It would be nice to have a curated list of those that are trying to be teaching and creating consistent theory in endgame, over lists of endgame problems and just their solutions to execute (it might not exist, I am just wanting to point to those that do teach objects that can be generalized over chess, caricature dichotomy).

Perhaps those atypical books that may have tried like Silman, Dvoretzky, Kmoch, and others (I am bad with names), to build something while proposing tools for performance improvement. So that some integrative point of view, necessarily able to be critical (not dismissing, but analytical) of each work, each goggles contributing to narrowing the fog left remaining from each individual expertise made text and few diagrams, can be kept growing, across generations. There will always be arenas left to measure who is the best. Why want the whole population to keep repeating from scratch what each preceding generation has been doing.

Those bringing new words even if we prefer another book because that is "the" book that we might have gone through and liked. Looking at all of them, we can't keep waiting for each of us to read them all. It is just keeping the same individual expert know best by its lonesome, because playing best in some pool of their lifetime.

Knowing and communicating are not the same thing. That is why the many human small brain have been build scientific theories for many other complex problems. I think endgame type of positions don't need the school of thought mentality, or less. This does not mean latching on one author, but trying to see each individual slant as each making some points. It might also teach the people starting to use theory, not to expect a recipe, and having to deal with the remaining experience trainable grey zones of chess theory. Grey zone because to construct from nothing but own expertise as player, theory had to use most separable features in position contexts exacerbating some dimension of chess (or feature dimension), so that it can be share by example, whiteout having to develop a measure or degree of contribution to various decisions toward better advantage seeking.

Nothing wrong with that. But having more than one angle would show from the start the status of what is being communicated, to be used with vigilance to their judicious application for example. not as automatic recipes. This might be more tempting behavior with chess opening theory, than with endgame, why I think we should start such many heads integration/comparison there.

@EmaciatedSpaniard said in #54:

Did anyone mention Silman's complete endgame course? That has some nice examples of different concepts you can apply in king and pawn endgames.

If not here, sure it has been mentioned somewhere else, also De La Villa.

I think pawn endgames are, above all, mastering a number of ideas and concepts, almost never intuitive and sometimes even counter-intuitive.

@OctoPinky said in #56:

I think pawn endgames are, above all, mastering a number of ideas and concepts, almost never intuitive and sometimes even counter-intuitive.

The counter-intuitive is about adjusting the intuitive. I would say the king walks, if one toys with drawing them all between source and target points (SPE has one diagram for it, that makes us imagine all of them, it triggers wanting to do them).. do that once methodically for various "angles" of source and target with multimove problem and only one king on board.

and that is allther counter intuitive (alterintuitive).. that is the amount of intuition nugdging between and euclidian space sense of distance. It is not as bad as "counter-intuitive" might mean. It is not pure combinatorial counter-intuitive. still spatial but with the notion of different speeds and different spatial figure of mobilities, but the space is still having our adjacency intuition from our pre-chess life walks.

sure put a knight in there.. and the combinatorics complexity jumps a nocth.. it becomes dispersed spatial intuition. still bound to notion of near and far from our spatial pre-chess intuition though.

we should have more words between intuition and counter intuitive.

king walks and angles? think transport logistics diagonal fast vs line slower. freeways with different speed limits. still bound by spatial topology.. inside, outside, in between notions still exist. they are just morphed...

@OctoPinky said in #56:

De La Villa.

I can't find googling that an chess the material for that author. adding book.
The 100 Endgames You Must Know Workbook: Practical Endgame Exercises for Every Chess Player

So, not a theory builder but good point for the thread op search. should go well with other books.

@dboing said in #57:

The counter-intuitive is about adjusting the intuitive.

Well, for an example, lesson one: the King has to protect the pawn advancing before it. Maybe it is just me, but at first it seemed nonsense to me.

Of course you're right and as you gain knowledge, intuition evolves and improves (or that's what they say).

@OctoPinky said in #59:

yes the non-instantaneous physics.. I guess anything going down the internalization gets forgotten. You are right. too.

Not only, "they", me too. I have had many opportunities to re-shape my intuition before chess. I have had to deal with that loud part anyways, mostly logic and high level engaged attention long enough and often enough.. a good for a sometimes bad.