Hi,

I've had the above bought for me (arriving later this week), and I'm wondering if anyone can give me their opinion of it?

It was between this and Silman's endgame book. I chose the above because it sounded more extensive, but of course I could've just been bought in by the cover blurbs. If someone has read Silman's and the above could they let me know which they preferred.

Thanks!

Thanks! I've read that Dvoretsky's book is a tad advanced for a person of my rating, which is why I didn't look at it twice!

I also have FCE and it's a great reference book.  It's a bit dry, so I wouldn't recommend trying to read through it from front to back!  Better to dip in and out when a question occurs to you.

There are lots of great examples of endings from top level play (with even the GMs making mistakes), but I would have liked more test questions.

Thanks SoP; as always informative and not in anyway dry! I nearly got the Nunn endgame book too, but I've heard that Dr Nunn will blow the mind of any patzer like myself - so I decided against that!

FCE is cool for reference I guess.  I recently purchased Nunn's Understanding Chess Endgames and it IS great!  He explained triangulation better than anyone else I have ever seen!!

I have also being going through Nunn's Learn Chess Tactics and I have to say that Nunn gets a bad rap in that his verbal explanations tend to be VERY well written and not hard to understand at all.  Now I am sure the book he writes that are meant for better players would be harder for me to get at this poing but he does a great job of explaining things for mere mortals when he wants to.

I think Nunn's Understanding Chess Endgames is the best endgame book I have seen for general principles and positions...bar none!  (runner up would be Lev Alburt's book)

@tommy: Thanks for your two cents.

John Nunn is someone I'm looking forward to reading in the future. I understand that he explains things very clearly, but players with far greater ratings than mine have told me that he's a bit over their heads, so it's scared me off a bit.

At the moment, I enjoy reading Dan Heisman's Novice Nook webpage. Thanks to him I feel that I'm catching up on a million things I should've paid attention to in my earlier games. For example, such a simple concept as "counting" has improved my rating and my thinking greatly.

Heisman's articles are very good.  I would definitely encourage you to check out a few of Nunn's books though.  Some of them are written for patzers like us.  And he is so very clear in his explanations. 

Now that being said I also know that some of Nunn's are WAY over my head.  But the books he writes for a lower level target audience are awesome!

Good luck with the endgame study!

The book arrived, and I can see why a lot of people thought it dry/daunting!

Caramba!

I waded through the first 20 pages, then stopped to mop up a nosebleed, then ploughed through another 10 pages. It´s not something I think that you can just sit and read at your own leisure. Also a board is must in order to get the best out of the book.

On the huge plus side, it´s comprehensive; all theories have been checked and double checked by an engine, so it´s definitely worth the money. All in all I´m pleased, but I was hoping for something more readable... oh well... patzers can´t be choosers...