It's great to know a lot about endgames, but what if your opening and middlegame play is so bad that the endgames you reach are basically lost?
If you reach an endgame where you are two pawns down and with no initiative, IMHO you are screwed!
For me, it works best, if I try to advance all my areas of skill: openings, middlegames, transition to endgames and endgames, rather than working on only ONE area of chess skill.
Just thinking.....
It's great to know a lot about endgames, but what if your opening and middlegame play is so bad that the endgames you reach are basically lost?
If you reach an endgame where you are two pawns down and with no initiative, IMHO you are screwed!
For me, it works best, if I try to advance all my areas of skill: openings, middlegames, transition to endgames and endgames, rather than working on only ONE area of chess skill.
Just thinking.....
I agree. In my case I've spent a lot of time on openings. It seems like I reach endgames I should be winning but can't figure it out. So I decided to do something about it.
It's great to know a lot about endgames, but what if your opening and middlegame play is so bad that the endgames you reach are basically lost?
What's the point of gaining an advantage in the opening if you have no idea how to cash in?
I decided it’s time for me to advance my endgame knowledge beyond the basics. I have learned a few basics from Silman’s book How to Reassess Your Chess, Chess Life articles, and other odds and ends over the years, but never really studied. Silman’s book opened my eye’s to the importance of study in this area. I do have some books that I consider good. Pandolfini’s Endgame Course is for sure the first thing I’m going to read. It is basic, with well written descriptions. I like the way it has one position per page with a full but not overly wordy explanation. Next will be Jeremy Silman’s Essential Chess Endings Explained Move by Move. I also own Irving Chernev’s Practical Chess Endings and 200 Brilliant Endgames. I wanted to see what other books looked like. So I went to my library and checked out the following.
Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual
Van Perlo’s Endgame Tactics
Lev Alburt & Nikolay Krogius’s - Winning Chess Endgames – Just The Facts!
Glenn Flear’s - Test Your Endgame Thinking
Bruce Pandolfini’s – Endgame Workshop Principles for the practical Player
John Emms – Starting Out: Minor Piece Endgames
Efstratios Grivas’s – Practical Endgame Play – Mastering the basics
After skimming these books I’m pretty happy with my plan. I do think after I get through Pandolfini’s Endgame Course I’ll go to Flear’s - Test Your Endgame Thinking. Then Silman’s Essential Chess Endings Explained Move by Move. If I decide to continue after that I’ll go to Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual. So that’s my plan. I thought I would share it here and see if it inspires anyone else to undertake study of this phase of the game. Also I thought someone might want to recommend other materials.