Magician in the Middlegame, Machine in the Endgame
Hello Dear Chess Ethusiasts,
We are going to look at another famous game played by Capablanca and Corzo. It is the eleventh game of the exhibition match played in Havana/Cuba,in 1901. If you want to see another famous game from that match, you can review my latest post here.
Before starting the game I want to share my thoughts about studying Endgames and my method of handling it. Studying Endgames is always a must for every chess player who really want to improve their chess. There are so many ways to achieve it. You can solve Endgame puzzles, enter to the world of magic endgame studies-which I really liked at my younger ages-, you can watch videos which can be more exciting for visual learners, -it can lead to some laziness though if just passive listening happens- or more methodically and theoretically you can study books which are known to be complete manual to this phase of the game. Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual and Silman's Complete Endgame Course can be classified for this category.
But there is also one other way that can help us rectify our Endgame Play: analysing the games of grandmasters who play the endgames like a machine. I like this way a lot. Because it helps me discover not only the thematic concepts of the endgames but also transitions among the phases of the game. Thus I can learn some theoretical and practical themes of endgames without getting much bored. The real issue is about finding proper "Endgame Idols" that can fit your playing style. Then you can go over their games and try to understand the decisions he/she made in particular moments.
(Decision making at the most crucial part of the game I Photo: https://alchetron.com/Anatoly-Karpov)
After deciding the method of learning endgames, it is time to find an "Endgame Idol". There are so many and it is hard to pick one up but, I can easily come to the solution: Yes, The Mozart of Chess- Jose Raul Capablanca is the right answer...He should be the first "Endgame Idol" that come to my mind. Then I am planning to follow the order with Rubinstein, Symslov, Karpov and Carlsen.
I started searching a book which would really be helpful with the issue. Because I love studying with the chess books, using real chess board. After some search process I found a great book that can be very beneficial. It was Capablanca's Best Chess Endings by Chernev. Written by one of the most prolific writers on chess, the book includes sixty well-annotated games played by Capablanca. Eventually I decided to study one game per day from this book. It will be great if I can analyse the games in full detail. It will also be great if I can share them in my future posts.
Let's take a glance at the game I previously mentioned. It is the Game 2 published on the Chernev's Book.
I also realized that Jeremy Silman used this game in his book How to Reassess Your Chess. The opening is Queen's Pawn Opening: Krause Variation, which later transposes into a well-known Colle System. After reaching late-middlegame with significant advantage for White, Capablanca launched a plan in order to activate his "Tall-pawn" looking Bishop. After achieving to clear the diagonal of the Bishop, he magicly sacrificed his Queen aiming to reach a winning endgame! What a royal idea for a Queen sacrifice! Normally when I had a chance to realize such a sacrifice, I would do it just for checkmating purposes or for gigantic material advantages. But Capablanca did it so as to create positional advantage only at the age of twelve and spent such a short time while executing his plan, (only 42 minutes for 60 moves as Chernev mentioned in his book.) Here it is:
