A journey into Dvoretsky's endgame manual

Hello everyone. I've recently been inspired to take another crack at Dvoretsky's endgame manual. I propose that anyone else who's interested in tackling this monster should post updates about his/her progress in this thread. Hopefully seeing others improving and making headway into this thing will help push us all along. My goal is an average of atleast 5 pages each week. Sounds somewhat tame until you actually read the book! Anyways good luck to anyone else willing to join me in this journey.

I saw the thread in public forums and what made it a must study was that it is way better than Silman's book. The Silman book to me is more like a reference book but not to study. After reading any of his books i found myself going step 1, step 2, step 3......did i do step 2 right and follow that rule on page 1184....ok back to step 1, step3 skipped a step. This what it felt like sometimes when i make a move in a game after reading his book. It took me a couple weeks to get my head straight again.

Looking foward to a journey with into Dvoretsky's endgame manual.

I have this book too, but it is gathering dust. Last year I did the blue diagrams in the pawn endgame section, a few weeks work for me. Then I faded while starting on the rook endgames, they were unexpectedly complicated. My initial goal was to do all blue diagrams, which amounts to about 220 positions I believe and learn them cold. I may give this another try... hopefully I have more stamina this time around...
Good luck to all in working through this book!

"they were unexpectedly complicated" for me too (even the 1st chapter, I failed at diagrams 1-82, 1-48, 1-10 after about 1 hour of search)

"My initial goal was to do all blue diagrams" the same for me

Yes the first section was quite hard for me too. As an 1800 uscf player it took me a good 10-25 minutes to solve each problem. And a lot of the time I wouldn't get it completely right, there'd be a final twist surprise at the end that would completely throw me off. I was going through all the black and blue text when I did manage to get through the first chapter a couple years ago.

Yesterday night I managed to get through the first 4 pages before I went to bed. They are much easier the second time around, not to mention it was nice to remember all the tricky tactics involved with each problem!

I bought this book some months ago as the reviews of it are absolutely fantastic. Having lost a rook endgame, which was equal, I also decided to try to start reading it. It is quite entertaining but extremely time-consuming for me. I've managed the first 50 pages but keep on making excuses for studying tactics and openings instead. Will try to proceed, so that it isn't only about pawn endings. It is a good idea with this thread. Will try to do some pages this week too! 

I've had to take 4 school tests in the last 7 days, so I've had to put off Dvoretsky, but I should make some pretty rapid progress by the end of the week. Glad to have you on board Pabstars! I really need to get to the rook endings part myself :).

Hi there, i'm also interested, and will start to read and post here.

Anyone have the pgn to this ?

I do not have the pgn file for this.

But I know that there is a PC version of the book

http://www.amazon.com/Dvoretskys-Endgame-Manual-For-PC/dp/B001DYM2US

This is expensive, you can also get it on the Forward Chess app - which sets up the positions, shows the text and allows you to play through the moves. It is about the price of the book

http://forwardchess.com/endgame-books/

Hello all.

Very pleased to find this thread, as I've recently purchased the PC version, and am cracking on with the first section. I have also read and absorbed the Silman Endings book, up to 1800 level section, which has helped so far.

Where I would like some help is in relation to using the games/exercises in the database in a "training", as the way it is working for me in Chessbase doesn't seem to be anyway near as good as it could be.

When you select a game/exercise, the game pops up in ChessBase Reader, along with commentary, showing the correct line (and some failures) in the annotation. This is great for understanding the answer, and variations, but not very good if you want to use the game/exercise interractively to try and solve it yourself. Apart from anything else, the annotations for you own attempted moves start to get messy very quickly, and mixed in with the author's own annotated moves.

I can't find a way to have the computer play these positions against me, which I am assuming your average reader would like to do. I understand Fritz can be used. Is there a slick way to avoid copying over each file separately. Is the solution to have the same database open in Fritz and Chessbase reader at the same time?

I guess I'd just like to be able to revise previous chapters by firing up the games/positions in Fritz, but again it's a shame there is no objective stated in the title.

I've seen a review stating the Chessbase Reader is not as good as Chessbase itself for reading this book? Can someone explain why?

All in all I was expecting this product to work as an all in one solution where I could hit "train" on the exercises. So it leaves me wondering if I am doing something wrong.

Also, I was surprised that there were some "blue" examples that were only included in text, rather than included as a game/exercise that you can play through.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks in advance, and looking forward to hearing people's progress.

Just played with this a bit more and have answered my own questions. The trick is to forget Chessbase Reader entirely and open the whole thing in Fritz. Have the chapter (ie text) open in one window, and the games/examples open in the other (be sure and use the Themes tab so the games/examples follow the text). It works brilliantly. Only when you use the Themes tab can you see the number of games/exercises that correspond to each subject.

Hi whallsey. Cool this worked out for you. What about the blue diagrams? Are they fully included too in Fritz? They are the 'must know' cases if I recall correctly. So they should get full attention. Good luck with your work on this book!

Hi, this book is very very good in my opinion. I agree some of the content is very complex and difficult. Still I think this can be studied again and again as we improve. Right now I'm studying this book in relation to 'The Survival Guide to Rook Endings', also a good book but sometimes lacking detail in my opinion.

For instance, in the black print of 9-82, in Black's move 14, I was pleased to find the analysis for 14...Kf4, which was not in the analogous position in 'The Survival Guide to Rook Endings'.  And in general I think books can only get you so far in and of themselves. They are helpful tools but we have to look at the content critically in order to really understand it and make it ours.

I am a lowly rated CM, rated about FIDE 1850 but about to make some serious improvements.