Defensive Chess Patterns, playing from an inferior Position: one Piece down, so what?

Many chess books try to teach you how to eventually win, a few if any will tell you how to defend, here you will find suggestions on how to play in (even dead) lost situations.

Thirty odd endgames you are likely to encounter soon or later, where you could fight for your half point.

If you read other books of mine you will recognize some of the patterns, but here they are arranged in a systematic way.

A good visualization is not needed, as the sequences are of really a few moves.

Enjoy the book and your games.

Rodolfo Pardi, librarian, arbiter and instructor of FSI (Italian Chess Federation)

Where's the problem?

You might be one piece down for several reasons, what will you do, resign? In a blitz game I saw stalemate the opponent while having two Queens and a pawn against a lonely King, so let's consider the situation before resigning.

Sometimes chess players resign a position which is not lost. Moreover, there are some examples where a game was resigned in a completely winning position!

A Sample game can be seen here, where Black resigned in a winning position: scacchi.vecchilibri.eu/partite/resign.html

There are many reasons for being a piece down:

1) willingly. You do like, as I do, aggressive games, so gambit lines are preferred, you give a pawn and as compensation you have better development and the initiative. You are not scared, as you are used to play this way, but if your game is slowing down, the opponent exchanges a piece after another, all of a sudden you find yourself in the endgame one pawn down, fighting for a draw.

2) with your great surprise, you took a bait, and found yourself a piece down following an opening trap you were not aware of.

3) as the result of a tactic

4) as an error of visualization during a sequence of captures, at your surprise on the board some piece is missing, that should be there

5) what remains after an unsound sacrifice

6) a plain blunder, you left a piece unprotected, or worst you gave it freely away

7) worst of all, you are outperformed by your opponent in a long strategical sequence of small disadvantages, till your pieces have no mobility, and finish trapped

Sounds new?

What will you do, hang down your head and cry?

In this handbook you will find my idea of the correct approach to (try to) save the game: some guidelines, some techniques, some examples. Remember, never give up!

Are all these positions known? YES, obviously, some is 250 years old. But they are rearranged in a systematic way to help YOU learn and remember them.

>>> As usual with my books the translation from Italian is not impeccable, therefore I suggest to click to look inside to check if you will understand.