Extra Pawn vs Wrong Bishop: Practice the Win

Watch the method: press play to see the winning idea run, or step through it move by move.

The wrong-bishop fortress is usually taught as a defensive miracle. This position teaches it from the other chair: you are winning two pawns up, and the entire game is preventing your opponent from BUYING that miracle. Every defensive resource you learn is a threat you must learn to deny.

One pawn is the win, the other is a rumor. The h-pawn promotes on a dark square and your bishop lives on light: alone with the bishop it draws against a king in the corner, no matter what. The g-pawn promotes on light, the right color, so the win exists exactly as long as the g-pawn does. That asymmetry rewrites the value of every capture on the board before it happens.

Sorting the trades. Bishop for bishop: winning, take it whenever offered, since king with g- and h-pawns strolls home. His bishop for your g-pawn: drawn, EVEN when the bishop is lost for nothing in return, because bishop plus wrong rook pawn is the same fortress with extra furniture. The defender will offer the g-pawn trade in every geometry the position allows, including sacrifices that look like blunders. Count the leftovers, not the points.

The conversion is ordinary technique with one extra commandment: the king leads, the pawns advance together, and the g-pawn is never, at any moment, capturable for less than a whole bishop that you get to keep... which is to say never. Endgames are exit ramps: before every trade, name the ending you are entering and make sure it is on the winning list.