Improving Your Positional Understanding the Fun Way (Domination II)

In my previous post I discussed a book of endgame studies, Domination by Kasparyan.  In this post I am going to showcase one of the other advantages of solving endgame studies.

A lot of players prefer solving tactics (or looking at youtube videos of attacking games) to studying "dry" endgames and Karpov games. Luckily one of the great things about endgame studies is they often help develop your positional intuition.

For example the following puzzle is one I have shown to a lot of the players I coach and is a really good illustration of the theme of bad bishops:

After solving this puzzle you will get a real feeling for what a bad bishop actually is, as opposed to just understanding on an intellectual level. You should definitely still dust off the old Capablanca books as well though

Another good illustration of this principle is :

In all of these studies the cause of black's demise is that the bishop is hemmed in by it's own pawns.

Hopefully you are now sold on the idea of endgame studies as a challenging yet enjoyable way to raise your chess game to the next level

If you have a favourite endgame study please post as a puzzle in the comments!

[EDIT: Next Blog in the series here ]