Why Chess Endings are FAR MORE IMPORTANT than Chess Openings

How do yo explain opening principles (center control, development, castling) with a series of endgame positions?

The first open tournament I ever won was due to my knowledge of the Lucena position.

In the last round, there were four of us, a master, an expert, and two A players fighting for first place. Incredibly, both A players reached won R + P endgames against their higher rated opponents. I knew the Lucena position and coasted to an easy win. The other A player didn't, and only drew.

As a result of that difference in knowledge, I won clear first. I also leapfrogged from 1899 to 2001 in the ratings. I never hit the 1900s until many years later when poor health affected my results.

That event reified the importance of endgames for me. I realise it also shows that one can become an A player without knowing the Lucena position. But life is much sweeter for the chess player who invests some time to learn the basic endgames.

Smyslovfan, (and other good endgamers). How many hours of studying do you think is necessary to learn the basic endgame?  (So far I spent ca 10 hours in endgameclasses and on a lecture).

uri65, castling isnt really an endgamerelateted trick, but center control and development is a lot about activicing pieces for endgamedominance. Active pieces with good mobility is  very important in endgames, and centercontrol plus development is much about making your pieces active. The same goes for spaceadvantage. Spaceadvantage is also moving the pawns closer to queening, and queening is an important endgametrick.

In one of my best games, beating a player Fiderated between 300 and 400 above me, I was able to transform my middlegameposition to an advantage in early endgame. It was possible because I played the middlegame with the goal of coming into the endgame with a good position.

I didn't count the hours. I was always a quick study, so I could go through one or two iterations to memorize new information. Most people need seven iterations to really learn the information. 

I strongly suggest you get out an actual physical board and make the moves from a book. The kinetic connection to pieces helps most people to learn better than if they just read a book. The next best method, which has the advantage of being convenient for most people is to play through book lines on a computer. The key though isn't just to parrot the information, but to use it. Set up key positions and play them against your computer!

Don't worry about a set amount of time to devote to x y or z. Just practice. And remember the addage:

The amateur practices until he gets it right. The professional practices until he can't get it wrong.

And as much as you study this position as a beginner, you learn NOTHING about surviving the opening and middlegame.

Seriously, I am only studying Dvoretsky now, and there is NO way you can expect <1200 rated players to gain opening and middlegame skills from studying endgames at their level. It's simply too hard for them.

Even at my 1600 blitz level here (per the chess.com survey, it's probably around 1700 UCSF), I am JUST starting to reach the level where I can study endgames that are complex enough to extrapolate to middlegame play. THe moment you're studying endgames with more than the minimal amount of material, they get complicated - FAST. No way that players <1200 can pull off getting stronger at openings/middlegames just by studying the endgame. 

These trainers that teach kids endgames are teaching them basic stuff, as I mentioned, like checkmates, and yes, basic oppositional stuff. But the kids who are good enough to make the transition to middlegame understanding through endgame study, are likely stronger than I am already (1700+ UCSF equivalent), even if they're under 8 years old.

Again, I'm probably a pretty realistic scenario of a more joe-average talent level player. I have a pretty good grip on the most common endgame positions, which includes the Lucena, Philidor draw, short-side defense, and the various mates, which I have practiced against the computer. I can even now do the KBN vs K mate against the computer. This arsenal of 'fundamental core' endgame knowledge is important stuff, but I will strongly assert has done very little for my middlegame play, and very little for my late middlegame play.

That's where Dvoretsky comes in - Dvoretsky has 'more than basic' endgame positions, that are very close to late middlegames. And they're NOT for players <1200! But if I learn these, I'll definitely make the important link between winning theoretical endgames and playing into them from the middlegame. But Dvoretsky has no business in a <1200 rated player's study plan, unless they're improving so fast that you expect them to be 1500+ very soon.

I'm just getting a grip on the endgame, but at least thus far, by FAR, the best way of learning the endgame after studying the position and answer, is to play it out against the computer set on max strength. 

Even with multiple answers to sidelines in Dvoretsky, I'm always still amazed with how many aspects of the position I miss, and that the computer mercilessly punishes me with - until I get it right. Very educational - far more than just pushing the pieces around without a ruthless opponent. 

I don't consider myself to have learned a position in the Dvoretsky manual until I can win it against the computer on full strength, against all the main sidelines. It's not as arduous as it seems - the positions in his book are 'clearly won' or 'clearly drawn' and thus if you don't achieve the result, there is a black and white move as to why you went wrong.

hhnngg1, you do realise that setting up the position on a physical board and playing it out against a strong computer aren't mutually exclusive, don't you?It takes a few extra seconds, but the act of making the moves on the board helps the memory for most people. Of course, a good coach is even better than an engine, but both work for these purposes.  

A coach once told me:

Endings are the foundation of chess.  Middlegames are the walls. Openings are the roof.  It doesnt matter how strong the roof is, if the foundation, and walls are  weak.    

But the great thing about chess is that you can learn in a way that benefits you.  It may not be the best way for someone else, but as long as it works for you and what you are trying to accomplish.

1. So instead of endgame position you show middlegame

2. While your example is a valuable one I don't see why to use it for demonstration of opening principles. It's much more natural to discuss those principles with a student during first 10-15 moves in annotated master game or while playing training game against him.

Yes, I do, and if you have problems with the 3-d perspective of the wood board, then I could see someone preferring it.

As is though, for me, I've found that it's literally 3-5x faster, if not more, to fire up Fritz, load up Dvoretsky's manual in chessbase format (they sell it in .cbv format - awesome!) and start studying and drilling immediately. 

Before Dvoretsky, I started with the paper copy of Fundamental Chess Endings, another highly regarded book. I've stopped using it - not because it's bad, but because the act of transcribing the moves into Fritz is maddening. Some of these endgames have so many nonintuitive pawn moves that it's wayyy too easy to mistakenly enter one pawn move in a deep variation and spend awhile wondering why the solution doesn't work! Seriously, some of the pawn variations that aren't even considered 'advanced' in FCE take up nearly a whole page of subvariations.

Dvoretsky actually isn't any simpler, and in many cases MORE complicated, but because the moves are already entered CORRECTLY in the chessbase-format 'book' that I bought, it's a complete nonissue. And then I can go straight to the learning and trying out variations, rather than being lost in a morass of complex, nonintuitive pawn moves that are shockingly easy to misenter.  

In my busy life, even though I love chess, if you told me I had to do the rest of my endgame (and other) study without a computer/database, and had to play them all out over the board, from a paper book, I'd quit immediately, as I'd consider that an epic waste of time. Yes, I know GMs did it this way before computers and even now, but I'm not them, and I don't have hours on end to spend wasting verifying moves that I could have otherwise bought for a paltry sum in database format and thus focus on the learning.

Have to agree with you on this.  Call it lazy, but i much prefer using my laptop and Fritz, and or e-books to study, than setting up a board and pieces.  Is using a real board, and pieces better?  I honestly dont know.  I have read things that say it is, and i have read things that say it doesnt matter.  Im not motivated enough to use a real set to study i wont know, but if it works for you then use it.  

I did say using the computer is more convenient. And yeah, I have Dvoretsky's book, which comes with the software. Tbh, I'm lazy too, and use the computer screen most of the time these days. However, when I first learned endgames, there weren't any computers. I learned them thoroughly by going through the positions on a board.

Education philosophy is right though, tactile learning really does help almost everyone to memorize the lesson better. If you find yourself forgetting what you did on the computer, set up the position on a physical board. 

Yes, I agree there are many ways to skin a cat, but I would still strongly argue that while I agree with these coach's philosophy of 'solid endgame foundation' for strong or aspiring strong tournament-level players, I still strongly feel it's putting the cart before the horse for the vast majority of players on this website who aren't serious tournament players, are rated <1300 blitz here, and who are losing games mostly in the opening/middlegame, well before the endgame.

Good advice is good advice only if applied to the appropriate audience. And most of the audience here (<1300 rated, losing games in the opening/middlegame), is not who those strong coaches are addressing. These are coaches who get kids whom by raw talent alone, are 1800-2000+, with no formal training. I've seen these same (Russian) coaches say outright that they consider anyone <2000 rated as 'baseline competence for coaching', which implies that they expect their students to have talent sufficient that they'll reach 2000ish on talent alone, and from there, get coached to 2500, and 2500+. 

I'm pretty sure that 99% of chess.com doesn't fall into this category. 

And I still think specificity is always key for training. If you're losing games out of the opening, study the opening! If you're losing them in the middlegame, study that! Don't study the endgame to try and remedy opening game errors, and don't study middlegames alone to try and remedy endgame errors. 

That said, it's def true that the stronger you get (I'm not there yet for sure, but I'm getting a GLIMPSE of that level of strength from where I am), the more important your endgame ability and fundamentals become. 

I agree with you that if chess isnt something serious for you then yes start with openings.  But if ches is something you want to pursue seriously (Improvement, tournaments, etc) then i go with starting with endgames.  But to each his own :-)

Why are you posting these walls of text?

"Walls of Text" is the name of my Christian New Wave band.

Definitely.

Not even needing to go in depth on rook endgames, just knowing a few positions and general ideas, I've salvaged many half points, and won drawn endgamaes. I think many class players reach a rook endgame and go to sleep, thinking they can't possibly lose (or can't possibly fail to win).

Objectively my moves aren't always accurate, but like I said, knowing some basic positions and general ideas is worth it.

I'd argue that in the position above, for most players <1500, it will be substantially harder for them to survive as black despite it being a perfectly theoretically playable position, because of the difficulties in limited development and Q exposure. 

Even though a fair number of openings that were once thought as bad, are now found to be perfectly playable, it doesn't mean that the central core principles of openings can be ignored. It just means that there are exceptions, just as there are for endgames (many!) and unclear positions (also plenty of which are found in endgames.)

And the way to learn to play this as black isn't to study endgames. It's to study the specific best lines for black that lead to good play. Which will be along the lines of typical opening principles.

Jen Gaias is showing that she has a poor understanding of chess principles, and also of chess openings. The position she shows is a Sicilian Taimanov variation. The Qc7 move needs some explanation for novices, but it fits the needs of the position in part because of its flexibility.