Why are endgame studies important?

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Ashvapathi

Beginners should not waste their time with end games. The order of a chess game is opening, middle and end game. Learning should proceed in the same order. Learn a few openings. Try them in games. Then, practice middle game tactics & strategies. Then, focus on end game. Then, repeat.

Anyway, the first priority of beginners should be to avoid blunders i.e. not drop material.

darkunorthodox88
DeirdreSkye wrote:
darkunorthodox88 wrote:

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.

The one who claims that you must start from edngames is no other than the World champion Jose Raul Capablanca.

The same is repeated by another world champion Vasily Smyslov in his book about Rook endgames. It is repeated by the best trainer of all times Mark Dvoretsky in his series School of Chess Excellence. He specifically mentions that starting from analysing endgames can greatly improve a strudent's analytical skill. In the preface Kasparov mentions that he did exactly that in Botvinik's school and that was the "foundation of his chess playing life". Mikhail Shereshevsky , another great teacher addresses some serious opening problems by examining endgame positions and Yusupov in the preface claims that studying these positions will make a player play the opening better. Jacob Aagard claims that endgame training improves calculation and he highly recommends it to his students.

   3 world champions  and a trainer that has created junior world champions and grandmasters among others. In contrast with them we have what? You? Give me a break!

 

 These guys understand something that on line patzers don't. What is it?

Endgames is not just fundamental endgames. It's endgame strategy which is very closely connected with everything you do in the middlegame and that is closely connected with everything you do in the opening. If you don't know endgame you don't know which pieces to exchange , you don't know which pawns to move and you lose several(actually almost all) chances to convert a small positional advantage into a winning endgame and  even if you accidentally land on a winning endgame, it's very doubtful if you can win it(you most likely depend on your opponent's mistakes and pray to be several).

    Without good endgame technique you are blind but you don't know it because you will never see the missed opportunities.

   Now if we are talking for on line patzers then nothing of all this is important. Absolutely nothing. But  for kids , it's a whole different story. There is no good  chessclub teacher that doesn't emphasize in endgame. I had the luck to meet one and I had the luck to attend several lectures by others and they all agree that the best study method for talented kids is:

1)Endgames and

2)Annotated games starting from classics.

 

Why not tactics? Because once a kid improves his analytical skill studying tactics will be much easier and much more beneficial(not surprisingly Dvoretsky claims the same).  Analytical skill is by far the most important skill for the novice chessplayer.

 

p.s. To those of you interested , on line tactics trainers are not recommended for kids. Books that explain the mechanism of tactics are considered much better. Mechanically solving tactics in an on line tactics trainer might have even negative results. In chess what matters is not finding the tactic , it's creating it. And if you don't understand it , you can't create it.

    

 

your source of authority here are two of the greatest endgame players and one of the products of the soviet school, which was very methodical and relied on viewing chess as a science. of course they will say that.

 

that is then this is now. the modern masters are not a product of the soviet school. long gone are the days everything yusupov and dovrestsky said was taken as gospel. 

 

by all means study endgames, in fact, given how little class players can reliably learn of endgames, it is pound for pound some of the easiest useful things to learn but "importance" is different from  convenient. the jump from class E to expert is 80% tactics.

dannyhume
Because of the mathematical logic in chess, quite a bit of analytical thinking, schematic thinking, endgames, and tactics can be learned with a simple approach... learn the concrete forcing variations and patterns that take only 1 move (e.g. mate-in-1, capture-in-1, and pawn-promotions-in-1), then work your way up to these sequences that take 2 moves, then 3 moves, etc.

It is not as easy as it sounds... Convekta’s Mate Studies Program rates the mate-in-3 compositions within that program at the 2050 ELO level... that is for a 3-move sequence where you know with 100% certainty that the final answer is checkmate! 20-effing-50 for a mate-in-3! (1750 level for the mates-in-2’s... more difficult than check—>(opponent moves) —> checkmate).
darkunorthodox88
DeirdreSkye wrote:
darkunorthodox88 wrote:

, it is pound for pound some of the easiest useful things to learn but "importance" is different from  convenient. the jump from class E to expert is 80% tactics.

  The easiest?

You really have no idea what you are talking about.

    Yes the jump from class E to expert is 80% tactics. That is also the "easiest" way to do only one jump in all your chess life.

  

what part of english is difficult for you?

 

it is by far the easiest of the 3 to learn at class level, unless you are not doing any opening work. the amount of positions you must learn at even class A is quite small. none of these even approach the difficult of say a  knight and bishop checkmate.

 

silman's endgame book is a pretty decent guide of what you should now by rating area, and any decent class player can learn by heart everything until about class A in a month. in fact, the amount of edngame knowledge you need to reach 2400 is not even that MUCH more. most endgames are about general ideas, not concrete lines. (this is for example why Q vs R is such a hard endgame to win, many concrete sub-rules to follow)?

 

that's no where near the work of pattern recognition in tactics you need to develop to reach expert. almost  no one stays a class player for not knowing endgames,and so long as your repertoire accommodates simplicity, even opening knowledge to some degree can be bypassed at class level, but midgame tactics, and positional themes? that's what separates the men from the boys.

darkunorthodox88
DeirdreSkye wrote:
darkunorthodox88 wrote:
DeirdreSkye wrote:
darkunorthodox88 wrote:

, it is pound for pound some of the easiest useful things to learn but "importance" is different from  convenient. the jump from class E to expert is 80% tactics.

  The easiest?

You really have no idea what you are talking about.

    Yes the jump from class E to expert is 80% tactics. That is also the "easiest" way to do only one jump in all your chess life.

  

what part of english is difficult for you?

 

it is by far the easiest of the 3 to learn at class level, unless you are not doing any opening work. the amount of positions you must learn at even class A is quite small. none of these even approach the difficult of say a  knight and bishop checkmate.

 

silman's endgame book is a pretty decent guide of what you should now by rating area, and any decent class player can learn by heart everything until about class A in a month. in fact, the amount of edngame knowledge you need to reach 2400 is not even that MUCH more. most endgames are about general ideas, not concrete lines. (this is for example why Q vs R is such a hard endgame to win, many concrete sub-rules to follow)?

 

that's no where near the work of pattern recognition in tactics you need to develop to reach expert. almost  no one stays a class player for not knowing endgames,and so long as your repertoire accommodates simplicity, even opening knowledge to some degree can be bypassed at class level, but midgame tactics, and positional themes? that's what separates the men from the boys.

With proper study, endgame is by far the most difficult part to study and if it's not the most difficult, it's at least as difficult as all the others.If you ever study properly you will realise it.

how is that at all relevant to 99% of players? not even most masters study compositions to this level. in fact most would tell you its a waste of time where they could be coming up with opening innovations or get stronger with tactics and going over master games.

 

you wanna know whats even harder? 30 move helpmates. completely irrelevant. the point here is, the importance of endgame study to the improving player, not relative difficulty of benko's bafflers or very difficult compositions.

 

SmyslovFan

I have just gone through three pages of discussion without a single example. All these people who claim to have expertise in chess are not demonstrating their chess knowledge. 

Let's start with some basics:

If you're going to study endgames, you're going to study endgame studies. Mark Dvoretsky's first edition of Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual has an index of games that stretches just over ten pages. He also has a three page index devoted to studies and analysts. Jon Speelman starts his brilliant book, Analysing the Endgame,  with a study, and includes dozens of studies in his book. 

Here's one of the first studies in Speelman's book. I won't give the answer because the answer isn't a single line. It's an understanding of how to assess corresponding squares:

 
These aren't the only endgame books that use studies. Just about every endgame encyclopedia makes extensive use of studies. 
Here's the first diagram from Muller and Lamprecht's classic, Fundamental Chess Endings
 
Batsford Chess Endings (Speelman, Tisdal & Wade), Basic Chess Endings (Fine), Practical Chess Endings (Keres), and just about every other basic endgame manual uses endgame studies. If you want to get good at endgames, study endgame studies. The idea that you can't learn endgame strategy from endgame studies is just wrong. 
 
And finally, stop listening to people who don't play chess. There is no way to assess their understanding of the game. They may sound knowledgeable, but much of what they write is sound and fury, signifying nothing. 
SmyslovFan

Btw, my computer autocorrected Centurini. It's not Centurinin. 

SmyslovFan

Lev Alburt considers the following position the most important in all of chess. It's a study. It also almost certainly has occurred in practice too.

Don't get hung up on the false dichotomy of  a study vs a practical example.

zborg

John Nunn is great.  Dvoretsky is too dense for most players.

Buy a couple endgame books (lots of good books to choose from).

torrubirubi
catdogorb wrote:

Distrust anyone who says all you need is tactics to go to ____ level.

Tell them to look at games played by 800 rated players, and ask them if the moves are random... they are not. EVERY player (other than true beginners) know about basic opening ideas, strategy, endgames, etc. To compete you have to know a little bit of everything too.

I agree. Knowing well endgames without a basic repertoire is not very useful,  the same with knowing a lot of tactics but with few ideas on strategy or opening or endgame.

A little bit from everything is the best way.  If you play daily chess you will have time to learn while playing.  

mini_VAN

The reason for study endgame is you know what to do to reach the final position that lead to lose/draw/win. Just like using a GPS, you input your final destination and Google/Garmin will show you different routes to get there, which means that you have to choices/options as well as the initiatives. Let's say you want to have a Rooks endgame, then there are some requirements you need to ensure a successful rook endgame for you. I believe superGM thinks about the endgame as soon as their first move because they know their repertoire and their opponent's extremely well, thanks to preparation.


Endgame studies/study are huge topics but they have an easier strategy to study. I think it involves less memorization but more intuition as well as analytical skills, which means that it benefit also your middlegame study/studies. For example, in the first book of the comprehensive chess ending series by Yuri Averbakh, section 1.1 Bishop against one pawn, he wrote:

The bishop is a long-range piece, and can restrain a pawn from afar, by attacking the square in front of it. The side with the pawn can win only in two exceptional cases:
1) If the bishop is prevented, either by its own king or the opposing king, from stopping the pawn.
2) If the pawn can cross a square of the colour of the enemy bishop before the bishop can attack that square.

 

In section 1.2, Bishop against 2 pawns, he wrote:

The normal result here is a draw. We will consider the three possible types of pawn formation.

1.21 Doubled Pawns
With doubled pawns it is possible to win if the opposing king is unable to come to the assistance of the bishop, and the bishop can be won for one of the pawns, resulting in a won pawn ending.

1.22 Connected Pawns

It is natural that, the nearer the pawns are to queening, the more dangerous they are. Thus if two connected pawns have reached their 6th rank, the bishop can stop them only with the help of the king.

 

What I suggest is, don't solely study the endgame topics because it is very dry and vast. I suggest you to have endgame books as the reference. When you play the game against human (I suggest daily game) or against computer, when it comes to the endgame phrase, take out the books and read. By doing that, you are not slowing down in opening and middlegame and you also gain more knowledge as well as playing experience.
Sincerely grin.png

TuckerTommy

It was not  my intent for this thread to become an argument on whether or not endgame study is important to the <2000 or >2000 player. I just wanted to know why is it deserving of more focus than the opening or middle-game. I can think of at least two practical situations where the end is more beneficial. 1) Teachers plan with what they want their students to know at the end (goals and objectives) 2) I read someplace that movie writers already know how the script is going to turn out so they work off that. Can you think of any situation outside of chess which demands the same kind of thinking or focus on the end? This helps in realizing the importance of endgame study. Also, I have the Silman endgame book which focuses on a particular set of endgame studies for specific ratings. I have the Dovertsky manual which I'll get to once I absorb Silman.

pranav_2_0_0_4

7 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD STUDY ENDGAME!!!

1. You will learn a true value of pawns and pieces.

2. You will start calculating variations deeper.

3. You will understand the importance of pawn structure.

4. You will be able to transpose from equal middlegame into the winning endgame.

5. You will save many otherwise lost games.

6. You will understand both middlegame and opening better.

7. You will gain confidence which will convert to a higher rating.

IMKeto
TuckerTommy wrote:

It was not  my intent for this thread to become an argument on whether or not endgame study is important to the <2000 or >2000 player. I just wanted to know why is it deserving of more focus than the opening or middle-game. I can think of at least two practical situations where the end is more beneficial. 1) Teachers plan with what they want their students to know at the end (goals and objectives) 2) I read someplace that movie writers already know how the script is going to turn out so they work off that. Can you think of any situation outside of chess which demands the same kind of thinking or focus on the end? This helps in realizing the importance of endgame study. Also, I have the Silman endgame book which focuses on a particular set of endgame studies for specific ratings. I have the Dovertsky manual which I'll get to once I absorb Silman.

While it wasnt your intent, this is what these types of discussions devolve into, along with the age old discussion of "tactics vs. strategy"

Go with what works for you.  While i am a supporter of the "start with endgames first" as it seems to have worked for Capablanca, and the Russians.  Its not a universal rule.  Two quotes i have always like that support this:

A mistake in the opening, you can recover from.  A mistake in the middlegame can hurt you.  A mistake in the endgame will kill you.

Openings are the roof.  Middlegames are the walls.  Endgames are the foundation.  It wont matter how nice the roof is, if the foundation cannot support it.

dannyhume
The goal-oriented part makes sense for arguing in favor of endgames. What are you playing for if you don’t know the endgame?... The hope that your opponent will mess up while you shuffle your pieces around, therefore giving you an overwhelming forced-winning advantage that can be simplified?

But this neglects the most granular of chess concepts... calculation is primary, and “checkmate” (the goal for the game of chess, the end position of all winning endgames) and “captures” generally fall under “tactics”, which are based on shorter sequence calculations.

But it is weird how folks recommend to beginner and crappy players like me to stare at a “simple” endgame and see that the technical move sequence is 22 moves long to checkmate (excluding positions where opponent is just a lone king without counterplay). How does that help? Why not work your way from 1-move calculation to 2-move to 3-move, etc, with emphasis on various goals (concrete: checkmate and material gain; abstract: positional goals)? Hardly any chess literature covers this, as if it assumes that the typical reader can consistently do this 3-4 moves ahead.
yureesystem

 In club level tactics and attacking abilities rule, not endgame; tactics is extremely difficult to master. Silman's Endgame book is the best for club player, you go through from E-class (900-1200 up A class ( 1800-1999) you will have ALL the essential endgame knowledge, tactics is much more difficult to become proficient. I know a very strong expert who was 2160 uscf and drop to 2125 uscf, I have more endgame knowledge and mine highest was 2110 uscf; this expert who was 2160 is extremely strong in tactics and attacking ability and my positional understanding and endgame abilities and my rating drop to 2011 uscf. Siegbert Tarrasch said it best, " Before the endgame, the gods placed the middlegame." ; tactics and attacking abilities is king. When a GM plays against a strong FM who solid positionally and great endgame skills, the GM goes tactically and wins; when  I played against lower than expert and I play tactically and I have a sure win, too many 1700 uscf and 1900 uscf play too solid but they are very weak in tactics and that is where their weakness lies in and strong player advantage is. When a older expert or master the first ability that declined is tactical abilities. 

EndgameEnthusiast2357
lord_of_india wrote:
7 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD STUDY ENDGAME!!! 1. You will learn a true value of pawns and pieces. 2. You will start calculating variations deeper. 3. You will understand the importance of pawn structure. 4. You will be able to transpose from equal middlegame into the winning endgame. 5. You will save many otherwise lost games. 6. You will understand both middlegame and opening better. 7. You will gain confidence which will convert to a higher rating.

Add to that also learning how to make EXACT precise moves. In the endgame, one king move might be a win, another a draw, and another a loss, and the squares might be all next to each other.

kindaspongey

"... in chess, just like in any complex creative practice, there are no universal solutions, no universal rules that work in any situation - because the situations in which chess trainers work vary enormously. ...

... I am skeptical about any attempt to introduce a rigid methodology, rigid rules telling us what to do and how and in what order to do this or that. What should one begin with? Openings or endgames? Should he play open or closed openings, should he concentrate on main lines or 'subsidiary' variations? What is more important: a tactical mastery or a positional one?Opinions of respected specialists, grandmasters and world champions differ greatly. Some claim that chess is 95% tactics, while others hold that the basis of chess is positional play. We should not take such statements seriously, they are worthless and only disorient people because each one reflects only a single facet of the problem. ... any unambiguous answer like 'we do this or that' will be a wrong one. The truth lies in skillful combination of the opposite approaches, in search for an optimal proportion between them. And this proportion is individual for every particular case. ..." - IM Mark Dvoretsky (~2003)

"... This book is the first volume in a series of manuals designed for players who are building the foundations of their chess knowledge. The reader will receive the necessary basic knowledge in six areas of the game - tactcs, positional play, strategy, the calculation of variations, the opening and the endgame. ... To make the book entertaining and varied, I have mixed up these different areas, ..." - GM Artur Yusupov

"... The game might be divided into three parts, i.e.:- 1. The opening. 2. The middle-game. 3. The end-game. There is one thing you must strive for, to be equally efficient in the three parts. Whether you are a strong or a weak player, you should try to be of equal strength in the three parts. ..." - Capablanca

EndgameEnthusiast2357

Quantum Computers might be fast enough to solve chess.

dannyhume

Okay, how does one study endgames?  What is the order?  How do you know when you have learned enough from one endgame and can move on to another?