Endings teaches endgame strategies in an exciting new way - by putting you in the middle of the action with firsthand stories from the world's most exciting chess endings. Become an endgame master!
Approach every endgame with a winning strategy!
Good books about endgames for beginners are few and far bet\i Winning Chess Endings is a great one - a gripping introduction to what you need to know to win chess endings, taught by American Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan. His entertaining, easy-to-understand style, incisive stories and insiders advice will help you develop a solid grasp of proven principles that you can apply with confidence whenever a game goes the distance. You'll learn to prevail time and again in endgames with common and uncommon combinations and pieces.
Winning Chess Endings explains how to:
- Relentlessly find checkmates, from easy to hard, in all basic endgame patterns
- Master the intricacies of King and Pawn Endings
- Win consistently in the most common endgame -the Rook ending
- Master the pros and cons of Bishop vs. Knight Endgames
- Seize the advantage in Rook Pawn and Queen Pawn endings
- Play like a grandmaster in solitaire endings
Winning Chess Endings teaches endgame strategies in an? exciting new way - by putting you in the middle of the action| with firsthand stories taken directly from famous matches. Pull up a chair and watch the worlds most exciting chess endings. Then become an endgame master!
Studying the ending is like cheating. This is what Michael J. Franett, three-time Washington State Champion and editor of Inside Chess Magazine, once told me. It rather stuck in my mind, and I'd like it to stick in your mind as you read this book.
No one likes to study endings. Often the work is solitary and overwhelming. Where do you begin? Which books should you study? Even the most determined and enthusiastic players can be driven nearly to tears with the tedium of trying to study endings. Why? Because most books on endings are insipid, dull, horribly dry tomes. They seem designed to wring out all the joy one could have for chess.
The worst offenders are those works that are written without much explanatory prose, but that force-feed the poor readers reams of variations, leaving them- intelligent players-befuddled as to why a series of moves had to be played in the first place.
Then there are those works with explanatory prose. Grueling explanatory prose. If it isn't the reams of analysis putting us to sleep, it is surely the pedantic way the variations are described that do the job! The philosophy of athletes, "No pain, no gain," has been adopted by these pedants of chess and taken to the limit, each page offering us a new and painful agony.
The bad books have a lot to answer for.
Then there are the endings books that are good. Genuinely good! It was Grandmaster Yuri Averbach's classic Russian series on endings that I liked best. This series contained just the right balance of variations and explanatory prose that made a satisfying and edifying mix. Although still a bit dry, it was meaty and readable. By the time I found the Averbach series I was already an accomplished Expert player, and that series undoubtedly helped me over the hump from Expert to Master player. So how did I become a "master" in the endings? Read on.
Despite the tens of thousands of books on chess, and hundreds, if not thousands, that are devoted to the endgame, books on endings for beginners are few and far between. The reason for this is partly economic. Books on endings, in general, simply don't sell as well to a wide audience as those devoted to openings, because beginning players just want to get in there and go for the gusto. They are like kids who think they know what's good for them. They want sugar! Lots of sugar, in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Beginning players want to jump right into the heat of battle, hack away, combine with a tactic or two, and then gracefully resign so that they can do it all over again. Exciting titles that promise the moon, like Scintillating Short Victories, or Attacking Like a Grandmaster, or Tactics, Combinations, and Brilliancies for Geniuses Only, feed a beginner's ego, stimulate that sugar craving. On the other hand, mundane titles like King and Pawn Endings or Learning the Endgame (all these are fictional titles) tell the novice one thing utterly and completely: Run! This book is boring!
In short, books on chess endings suffer a bad reputation. Naturally, such a reputation makes publishers rather nervous. But thanks to readers like you, and the success of my last book, Winning Chess Openings (Microsoft Press, 1998), my publisher's fears were assuaged, and I was given an enthusiastic go-ahead to make a book on endings that we hope will be used by generations of players to come.
However, fulfilling such a task wasn't easy. Because endings have traditionally been presented in such an unpalatable manner, the beauty that is inherent in this part of the game is too often lost.
But the beauty won't be lost to you in this book because, in a certain sense, I've won your trust from the other books in the series. To keep your trust, I've tried to make the material entertaining and easily digestible. That's where I've had to be a bit crafty by taking an unusual approach that resonates well with me, as I think it will with you. Much like in Winning Chess Openings, I'm going to walk you through the exact same approach that was taught to me when I started learning endings. After getting through a number of basic points, you'll be challenged to think through the strategies for yourself. You'll "take sides" in some classical endings-just as I did. The challenges will be hard, but I guarantee, if you apply yourself, your game will improve dramatically.
Worried about the task ahead? Good! So was I. If any of you are being "forced" to read this book by your chess teacher, coach, or parent, I feel for you. That's a bad break. The only thing that I can say is, let's trick them. Instead of slogging our way through a boring book on endings, let's determine to enjoy ourselves!
Studying the endgame will teach you how to land those "won" positions and to avoid the bad ones. Although some middlegames or openings end in a decisive checkmate or perpetual check, most games come down to an ending in which the game is well balanced and ends in a draw, or one in which the stronger side tries to force the advantage and gain victory. You will have a decided advantage if you have a good grasp on ending strategies. Furthermore, your skills in all facets of the game will improve. By learning in advance all those positions that are won or drawn, you'll be better able to steer your way through the middlegame. The more experience you have in the ending, the better your own middlegame play becomes. Then, as you get better in the middlegame, you learn to choose openings that suit your middlegame tastes. In short, improving your endgame improves your whole game.
Learning the endings will also allow you to become much more familiar with the power of the pieces. In endings, boards are usually wide open. The Rooks and Bishops can swoop down the board, and Kings often emerge from their protective lair to become powerful pieces. The concepts of centralization, active pieces, and passed pawns are no longer principles; they become real, tangible strategies. Questions such as why a Rook is worth 5 points and a Bishop is worth 3 points get answered. (In openings, Bishops are often more powerful than Rooks, which are clumsy. In the middlegame, the relative value between the Rooks and Bishops has evened up, with the Rooks, for the most part, being a bit more powerful. In endings, there is no contest, as Rooks dominate Bishops and Knights.)
After you've become a bit more familiar with the power of the pieces, suddenly you'll find your game is getting a bit better. Why? Because then you'll know with complete certainty that the ending you're heading for is a win. Or, you'll know it's dead lost. If that's the case, guess what? You will struggle mightily to avoid those lost endings and peddle like heck toward those winning ones.
Much of my success in learning endings can be traced to these key habits:
I had many chess coaches.
I studied best-game collections, which all feature well-played endings.
I played often against strong opponents who pointed out my mistakes.
This book is by no means intended to be your one and only endgame book. No, not at all. I shudder when I think that there are books on endings devoted solely to certain endings! For example, when I was in Riga, Latvia, in the old Soviet Union in 1979, a kindly white-haired gentleman came forward and presented me with a special gift. It was a 200-page volume exclusively addressing the position of the Rook and Bishop vs. the Rook. Sadly, this treasure in Russian has been lost in the intervening years, yet I still recall the gist of the author's parting thoughts-in essence, "Much remains to be written about this ending..."
A huge amount of published information has been devoted to the endgame, and you are encouraged to take your studies as far as you'd like. This book will teach you the ending basics of what every serious player absolutely needs to know. There will be guidelines and principles espoused for nearly all endings, but there is one thing that you should know and steel yourself for right away: Endings involve calculation. Intuition takes a back seat and you'll be forced to think hard to discover the secrets of many positions. It is here in the ending that your ability to accurately calculate moves will be most severely tested. One thing I can promise: This book will point you in the direction of calculating the right moves and speeding up those calculations.
If you are one of the few progressive females making your way into this traditionally male-dominated sport, I hope you won't mind chess players being referred to as "he" throughout this and, as far as I know, all chess books. I encourage you to master the endgame and take your new skills into competition. In fact, I'll make a pledge: When the World Championship title (as opposed to the Women's World Championship-why use different standards when the medium is brain, not brawn?) is won by a woman (or a precocious girl!), I will officially break tradition and make whatever book I am writing at the time perhaps the first chess book in history with inclusive language. The challenge is yours, women and girls, to change history on two fronts!
Throughout the book, I've given the advantage to the White side for simplicity. In some cases when I've used positions from tournament games, I've reversed the colors. That is to say, if the winning player had the Black pieces in the game, I've turned the board around and set up the winning position as White. Don't be troubled by this-in real games, Black wins his share of endings, too!
I've also used some chess terms (placed in italics the first time they are introduced) that you are probably familiar with already, but if not, there are good glossaries in Winning Chess Openings and also in Winning Chess Strategies (Microsoft Press, 1994). Strategic principles and rules of thumb, also in italics for easy reference, pepper the book, and you will find solutions to the quizzes at the end of each chapter. You have all the tools. Just add a little mettle and you are on your way.
Studying the ending is like cheating. It's like knowing the answers to a test that you know you're going to have to take. The silver lining? The opposition is usually so ill-prepared.
Yasser Seirawan Seattle, Washington, Introduction
Pages 240
Everyman 2003
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