How to Evaluate Positions Part 2: King's Indian Defense

This is part 2 of my series on how to evaluate middlegame and ending positions. You see part 1 here. The premise is that, once you understand a few core principles and know a few "thematic wins", then you can evaluate all kinds of variants much more effectively. In this blog, I'll teach you on particular position and pawn structure.

By the way, as I mentioned in my previous blog, the method I recommend following is:
1. Think of the most similar position I'm familiar with and remember its evaluation.
2. Figure out what's different and how it modifies the previous evaluation and plans.

If you prefer to learn from video content, checkout my YT channel, where I posted this content in video form ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEBqZrwojbw

Typical Middlegame

Here's an example from one of my own games. Are you able to evaluate this position accurately?

I played h4-h5 and after my opponent responded with ...g6-g5 after which I was quite happy.
I did a quick search on my database, and White tends to score over 70% when this pawn structure is present, and there are good reasons for it!

1. White has more space, due to the pawns on h5 vs. h6 and d5 vs. d6
2. White has a strong outpost on f5, an excellent square for a knight.
3. Black can't leverage the outpost on f4 because a knight would need to go through e6/g6, which is impossible.

Once we have this kind of position, our goal with White is relatively simple: Steer the game toward a winning ending.

Canonical Win #1

This first example is almost too simple, but starting from basics works great in chess. Let's learn how to win this position, and then we'll be able to reuse these ideas in more complex games:

Canonical Draw

You might wonder, what if the kings were 1 rank further back?

It turns out this is a draw! This is a small but very valuable conclusion we should keep in mind as we evaluate more complex games.

Canonical Win #2

Now let's complicate things a bit. Even though it's virtually the same position, the additional pawn requires more technique to break through:

Canonical Win #3

The next example simply builds upon the learnings of the previous two, but it's quite complex. In fact, I'll admit that the first time I looked at this position, I thought it had to be a draw, since the winning procedure is far from obvious. Still, I think there's a lot to be learned, both about the position, as well as general principles.

More importantly, I think this position conveys a key message: a very large percentage of such endings are winning for White, and we need to take this into account when evaluating related middlegames. If there's one thing I would hope my readers take from this position is the fact that the middlegame we saw in the 1st diagram is quite risky for Black, since most of the resulting endings give excellent winning chances to White.

My Own Ending

Now that I've built enough tension by showing you simpler positions, let's go back to the game I showed. It was a long game honestly, and for much of the game "nothing happened". Both sides played well, we traded a bunch of pieces and eventually got to an ending. The evaluation hadn't changed much yet (still a clear advantage), but now I was able to apply my understanding of canonical wins to convert the clear advantage into a convincing win:

Conclusion

There's a few things I hope you learned from this blog. Let me tell you what they are, from the most specific to the most general.

1. We learned 3 winning recipes ("canonical wins") in a specific King's Indian pawn structure.
2. We learned that the King's Indian structure in general offers much better chances to White once we're in the ending.
3. We learned that, in order to assess middlegame and ending positions correctly, we need to start from known "points of reference" and extrapolate from them.

If you found this content helpful, please leave me a comment, tell me what you liked, what topic you'd like to see next, etc.
Also, there's a bit of bonus content at the end of the video I linked above from my YT channel, feel free to check it out as well ;)

See you next time!