Why are endgame studies important?

Why are endgame studies important and more valuable than Middlegame and opening studies?

The endgame is the most decisive part of the game, and requires a certain precision to play. For example, an slight inaccuracy in the middle game probably won't lose you the game, whereas putting your king on the wrong square in a king pawn endgame can lose you the game. 

Endgames are where you win, draw or lose a game.

Why are putting in golf, submission moves in jiu-jitsu, and the jump-shot in basketball important?

What’s the difference between endgame studies and endgame study?

Just technical English jargon...

Endgames are important for several reasons.

You learn how to coordinate your pieces. The value of learning how to mate wit K, N and B versus K is less to use this mate in a game (I had this only twice, playing the weak side, and my opponents were not able to win), but to know how these three pieces coordinate.

You learn to think logically and to play according to a plan. This is of course also useful in all phases in the game.

You learn the transpositions from middle to endgame that are winning, and those which draws or losing. For instance, with a minor piece up in the middlegame you will go for pieces exchanges, but avoiding exchanging too many pawns. A lot of weak players simply don’t know that exchanging everything to win with a single pawn is often the safe way to go.

You don’t have to learn a lot of endgames if you are under 1800. What you need is basic stuff. But you should analyse all your endgames and understand well how you should have played them. Doing so you will learn a lot of stuff in a very natural way.

But if you are the kind of player who likes to learn an endgame book cover to cover, just do it. Try the books on endgame in Chessable, they are great. And one is for free!

But it wrong to think that openings are not important at a beginner level. You will have much more fun if you have at least a basic repertoire for white and black.

But tactics are by far the most important thing for beginners and intermediate players.

They’re a lot like tactics in the fact that they convey a certain motif within them, or several.

It's a difference without much of a distinction. If you study endgames, you will sooner or later study endgame studies. 

 

 

Because the endgame, you have to play extremely precisely. In a technical endgame, one king move might be a draw, another a loss, and another the win. You have to play them exactly, no margin for error, unlike the opening where you can play e4 or d4 or even na3 and it doesn't really matter much. There are so many complex endgames where you have to know exact positions, patterns, and procedures to force wins, as opposed to the middlegame where you have many different options. Every tiny move in the endgame matters, and even computers are needed to calculate very subtle wins, like in 2 bishops vs knight, or rook+bishop vs rook endgames, where even grandmasters fail to force mate.

 Endgame study is not important if you are under 1300 rating.

Fixed.

endgame is not important if you are under 2000 ( or at the very least not necessary) i reached past 2000 without knowing about key squares and opposition in basic king pawn endgame

I have to disagree strongly - I'm not at 2000 yet, and endgame knowledge is enormously important in most of the games I play against A/B/C level players.

 

There's an enormous amount of confidence which comes from being able to simplify to an endgame you know how to win/draw.  The more endgame knowledge you have, the more endgames you know how to win, and the fewer wins you leave on the table.

 

If two players are roughly equal in skill, and just one of them is positional in style, the vast majority of the games played between them will get to a near even endgame.  Endgame study is the study of turning small advantages in to wins, and salvaging draws from small disadvantages, and is useful at all levels of play.

Endgame study is important for beginners, infact it is the first thing they should study thoroughly.

Beginners would get quickly overloaded with too much memorization and calculation and (almost useless) guessing if they tried to learn opening and middle game first.

But ending game is different. The number of pawns in ending game is always much much fewer than in the opening. The game become much more simple in endgame, but in exchange for that every move counts, even the smallest mistake will cost a game.

That's why beginners should study endgame first. Because most endgames is simple enough for beginners to comprehend it quickly. And also it gives good lesson for them, since bad endgames will definitely cost them a game, but even if you have bad opening or bad middle there's still a little chance that you can make a comeback.

After they understand how endgame works, middlegame and opening game study will become much much easier.

Because they'll understand which middlegames are leading to more favourable endgames and which ones aren't, and also which openings are leading to more favourable endgames or middlegames and which ones aren't.

Endgames should absolutely be studied first!

 

First off, the concept of piece coordination between 2 or 3 pieces is a lot easier than understanding piece coordination between 16 pieces.

 

Secondly, for you clowns that think knowing endgames under 2000 isn't important, I kid you not, I witnessed a game in South Carolina between a guy that was somewhere near 2000 playing White and a woman that was about 1800 playing Black.

 

White had the opportunity at Lucena's position.  He was utterly clueless and looked like a clown trying to play the position.

Black then had the opportunity more than once to set up Philidor's Draw, and she was completely clueless.

 

It was back and forth constantly until about 40 to 50 moves later when a mad time scramble eventually occurred and White won.

 

What a TOTAL JOKE!

 

I learned Lucena's Position and Philidor's Draw when I was 1300.  I ended up executing Lucena's position for the first time about 2 weeks later in early 1998.

 

All told, in over 2700 games, I've had Lucena's position between 5 and 10 times and Philidor's Draw a good 50 times or so.

 

Also, knowing these things helps you in the earlier stages in figuring out whether or not certain trades will get you down to a winning endgame!  If you are up an Exchange and a pawn, and you see that the Exchange Sacrifice allows you to cut off the King and execute Lucena's position, why look for something more complicated?  Sacrifice the Exchange!

The Endgame has been the strongest part of my game ever since I read Reuben Fine's old book.

Endgame studies are important for two reasons:

1) They give you a better understanding of how the various pieces work together.

2) They give you the ability to convert a small advantage into a win or prevent a small disadvantage from causing a loss.

Tactics in the middlegame are as important as endgame studies and more important than detailed, beyond the principles, opening studies.

what in the world are you talking about? all that knowledge you speak of , i learned fairly quickly at about 2100 (the top 100 endgames you should know, silmans endgame guide etc). idk what waste of talent you speak of.

 

the question involves how important something is. endgame is a part of the game even strong masters often botch. which clearly says you can get away with a lot of not knowing.  you even see it in top GM play where they often botch precise tecnique in tecnical endgames. 

 

the truth is, the vast majority of endgames are not that precise. so long as you can calculate variations, and keep certain "basics" in mind (triangulation, key squares, active kings, creating two weaknesses etc) the rest is playing on.  the amount of precise endgames even strong masters know by heart is actually relatively small.

 

the importance of it though does vary by style. if you play those openings that give you "an endgame edge" or those that rarely produce knockouts, endgame importance is much higher. most club players really only need the first half of silman's endgame guide, they let past way too many mistakes to "need" that much endgame knowledge.

FWIW, I picked up Tarrasch's book "The Game of Chess" yesterday at a used books store, and the very first thing he teaches is the Elements of the Endgame.   I also went on Amazon to read the reviews, and it's a pretty well-reviewed book.  Tarrasch is known as being dogmatic and of "The Classical School" of Chess, a popularizer and expositor of Steinitz, and the archenemy of "The Hypermodern School" of chess, but it makes sense to start out with a study of the endgame.

 

Moreover, "The Soviet School of Chess" also starts out with learning the Endgame.

 

However, I am well aware of many young scholastics who are very good concrete calculators and tacticians who love to play blitz, and they also do very well in OTB tournament chess with impressive results.

 

It was DeirdreSkye who taught me from a previous thread about the proper question being, "How far do you want to go in chess?"

 

And I inferred from that instructive aspect of that question that it's incumbent to set a good foundation, and therefore, a good foundation is built on endgame study and all the associated benefits that come from endgame study.

 

Peace and joy (and bloody yet bloodless conflict) on the chessboard!

 

Gru

the one who claims "you must do X" or "you must do Y" are fairly easy to refuse. show them one counterexample! the rest is chess dogmatism or necessities of certain levels. 

 

the more knowledge you have the better you will be, and i do agree with some of the people above, that having confidence in simplying a position into a win or draw is very useful but i can guarantee you, most games by class players are decided on mistakes (or mistakes not penalized) way before the endgame. "the endgame is important" school is usually old chess orthodoxy, which has its merits, but the burden of proof is on the one claiming absolute statement "this is essential" or even "This is important".

 

most noobs are noobs bc of lack of tactics, or positional understanding and to a lesser degree opening ignorance. no class player is at that level bc they didnt remember centurini's rule in bishop endgames, or memorized key squares in all pawn formations in K and P vs K endgame. hell even the number of games you will botch from not knowing how to build a bridge in practice at the class level wont be nearly as high as you think.

 

Just because you can name one person that did something without going through normal protocol means ZILCH!

 

It's called the 80/20 rule.  For 80% or more of the people, the NORMAL people, studying endgames is an absolute necessity if you want to be any good.