How to I get better at Endgame?

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g-force36

Hello, so I have had a problem lately when I will have a strong opening and middle game. But when I enter the endgame I lose my purpose and ability to calculate ahead. Any suggestions on how to maintain my purpose and improve my endgame strategy would be greatly appreciated.

Drawgood

Welcome to the club. In my opinion becoming proficient at endings is a common problem among beginners (like myself) because many of us don't get to play games to the very end often enough, while we all play openings and middle games. My dad went to a chess club at the pioneer palace in Ukriane in 1960s and he said basically you need to solve tactics designed for endings as well as practice with someone how to do checkmates with all possible piece combinations. He isn't a grandmaster or anything, but I read the same advice from chess masters who wrote books about endings. There seems to be almost no improvisation or creativity in game ending, but rather very accurate precision.

You can actually research if you could get chess software or a membership on some site like this one where a computer could generate tactics problems based on your chosen theme. Choose endings and solve as many as possible.

eastyz

You have to learn about endgames.  There is a lot of creativity in endgames in actual fact.  However, for each type of simple endgame, there are a limited number of ideas or principles (I am not saying that calculation easy).  For example, in rook endgames: you should put your rook behind the passed pawn, you can sacrifice a pawn for rook activity, you should centralise your king, etc.  You will be suprised to find that if you learn the principles, you will not play aimlessly.  But you do have to learn the principles.  And you have to learn to move the pieces in your head which comes with practice.  Get an elementary book about endgames which explains the principles of different types of endgames before it goes into any analysis.