Chess notation cheat-sheet (for new readers)
Pieces: K king · Q queen · R rook · B bishop · N knight · (a pawn move has no letter)
Actions: x takes · + check · # mate · O-O short castles · O-O-O long castles · e8=Q pawn promotes to queen
Annotations: ! good move · !! brilliant · ? mistake · ?? blunder
Bishop endgame chess puzzles: reading the bishop-color split before you move
The first thing to check in any of these positions is whether both bishops travel the same color. That one read tells you which plan the puzzle wants. Same-color positions usually have a solution to convert; opposite-color positions usually want you to find the hold or the one breakthrough that beats the wall.
When the bishops share a color and you are up a pawn, look for the move that opens a second front. A single bishop covers one diagonal and the king covers the rest, so the answer almost always probes a square the defense cannot reach with both pieces at once. Scan for the enemy king's entry squares and the pawn the defending bishop is tied to; the winning try tends to hit the second target while the defender is busy with the first.
Watch the good-bishop, bad-bishop cue too. If your bishop is fenced in by its own pawns, the puzzle often asks you to free it or to push on the wing where it already breathes. Each position is computer-verified from real games, the slider runs 400 to 2400, and the queue tunes to roughly a 75 to 80 percent solve rate.
Counting files to the passed pawn: the opposite-color bishop endgame chess puzzles that hinge on a breakthrough
Opposite-color positions ask a different question at the board: can the wall be broken, or are you the one building it? Before you push anything, count the files between your passed pawns. Pawns one file apart let a single enemy bishop watch both; widen the gap and the bishop has to choose. The rule to apply over the board is plain: the farther apart your runners, the more the defender's lone bishop fails, and four files apart usually lets your king walk in between them.
So the move you are hunting for is the one that separates the pawns or that drags the bishop off its blockade square, not the one that grabs another unit. Place your passers off your own bishop's color so the defending bishop cannot lean on its own pawns to form the wall. When you are defending, do the reverse: park pawns on the bishop's color, glue the bishop to the blockade, and refuse the trade that would let the enemy king in. I keep my own engine open whenever a two-pawn position looks too tidy, because those borderline holds are the ones these drills lean on. Three free hints sit ready, motif first, then the piece, then the move.
Wrong bishop: checking the queening corner before the king run
The last group turns on one quick check. With a bishop and a rook-pawn against a lone king, the win exists only when your bishop controls the pawn's promotion square. If it does not, the defending king sits on a8, a7, or b8, drops back to b7 when the pawn advances, and cannot be evicted no matter how you maneuver.
So in these puzzles, read the color of the queening corner first, then decide whether to start the king run at all. The same pawn shape is a clean win or a stone-cold draw depending on that single diagonal, and the fastest way to fail the position is to push the king before you have checked it. If the colors match, bring the king up and shepherd the pawn; if they clash, look for a different idea, because the corner march will not deliver. Train the eye to flag the corner color on sight and the rest of the calculation falls into place.