should beginners study endgames?

Thanks for the tip NM Reb.

Yeah.  I would have thought that endgames are more like 100% positional, which is why computers have trouble with them.

Dude, computers not only rock endgames, but endgames up to 6 pieces have been SOLVED.

Has anyone mentioned John Nunn's recent volume "Understanding Chess Endgames"?

Seirawan's Winning Chess Endgames is also very good.

All three texts (Silman, Seirawan, Nunn) are very clear and useful to the beginner.

Endings are the best part in chess.  It is where the middlegame and the openings should be directed to.  And if you played the chess without ending then we do not have the same definition of the word.  The endings that you are refering to perhaps are those endings that have descriptions such as basic, fundamental, advance.  What I am refering to here is how the game will be won.

Well of course every game has an ending but not every game has an endgame. Many games get decided by mate in middlegame. Or, if an endgame is reached with substantial material advantage to one side then you will not need to know the intricacies of subordinate squares to convert that into a win.

I came to endings late, but I think they should be studied very early-- not much after learning to move the pieces. 

You learn the properties of each piece, how they work together, and all the same tactical themes that exist when the board is full exist when the board is empty so you can see more clearly.  To me it is why 2 voice counterpoint is studied right after the rules of melody and harmony are learned when studying music theory and composition-- it is where the ideas are in their most pure form.

It can be frustrating to get busted in the opening or in a middle game that was misunderstood; but seeing the possibility of a won end game in a middle game is going to get you some points.  You'll understand better why in some positions anyway why the book says "and black is better ... "

Basic mates, King and pawn endings, rook endings: all very important and will lead to wins.  I don't mean to leave out queen endings or minor piece endings, they're all important.  I know for me K+P and Rook endings had an immediate impact on my game-- 20 years ago. 

This is a 4 page thread of comments, I'm sure what I'm saying has been said many times on each page.  It is pretty much fundamental.

Wrong.

It all depends on your definition of a beginner. If you consider a beginner to be someone who has just learnt the rules of chess; then no way - you should learn basic tactics such as forks, pins, skewers ect. But if define a beginner as anything more advanced than that level then learning endgame technique is vital. 

 Absolutely agree - many of my hopeless, miserable middle games have been brought from the dead with well executed end games

One educational feature that's rarely mentioned about endgames is that they're very good for developing accurate short-term calculation skills (2-3 moves ahead)

Right. See e.g. http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/endgame-database.html

And wrong -- apart from positions where they can use those tablebases, computers are quite poor at endgames (compared to GMs...)

Scarblac is right, I should have been more specific...

"Computers" is too vague, in the context it seemed you meant computers as chess playing programs eg Fritz, Rybka, etc.  In this case it's well known that the one area computers are worst at is endgames.

Apart from chess playing programs there are databases which store positions in memory with evaluations attached.  In this case, obviously, there exist stored positions with correct evaluations.  This is not playing chess but retrieving information.

I hear a lot of arguments for not studying endgames or nor studying a particular endgame because they seldom reach it OTB.  That's not the only reason to study endgames.  Studying endgames gives a player a fundamental understanding of their peices.  You might never reach KBB vs K but, you might end up trapping someone's queen or rook in the middle game using techniques from that endgame.

Knowing endgames, allows a player to make decisions in the middlegame that they otherwise might not have considered.  For example, I have had instances where I traded a queen for a rook or a rook for a bishop just so I could get the last peices off the board and go straight into a winnable King+Pawn endgame.  As far as I see, endgames are the beginner's introduction to strategic chess. 

Beginners should understand why trading pawns is better than trading peices when down in material.  Beginners who know the endgame will draw more positions that they may have lost without the knowledge.  Knowing that a king and two knights cannot force checkmate can lead a player to seek a drawn position where it might have seemed hopeless otherwise.

My chess improved quite a bit when I discovered that I could find a tactic that won a peice and then trade trade trade into a winning endgame.  As a Chess game progresses, the player with superior endgame knowledge is moving toward his strength, whereas the person who focuses mainly on openings is becoming weaker as the game progresses.

I think that tactics should be number one, but I think that a player should begin learning endgames right from the start.  That way, when they get that rare opportunity to reach an endgame, they don't have to watch their advantage disappear due to lack of understanding. 

No later than last Saturday I had a position on the board where my basic endgame study helped me a lot :

 I did try to explain why in my post (the one where I replied to NM Tony Dal) but, here it is in a bullet point form

Within the first 75%, one should learn openings and the theory behind them.

When practising the middlegame (also in the firt 75%, obviously), the player should (in my opinion anyway) learn the strategy, tactics, to an extent pawn structure ect...

This is actually quite a lot to learn and would need that 75% (possibly more).

Actually from what I read earlier in the topic you already said your why was just your opinion.  You re-state it here but you hide it in parentheses

beginners should study end games only if they want to win.............

yes basic pawn endgames, how to build the "bridge" and promote a pawn, things like that

Beginners that arent reaching endings on a regular basis, or who are reaching endings in which they are already lost are wasting their time to study endings. I am not speaking of  basic endings like how to do the basic mates but more advanced endgame concepts. I made it to A class with only basic endgame knowledge and spent the least amount of my " chess time" on endings.