Re: Endgame Strategy Shereshevsky Pdf Download
Franziska Alcini
This book - as its name implies - is about the endgame. However, it is not really about basic endgames (i.e. rook and pawn against rook). It is not a book of endgame theory, but rather is a manual of how to play complex endings, or even - you could say -queenless middlegames. Most examples begin with several sets of minor pieces, rooks; others are heavy piece endings with each side having two rooks and a queen.
The aim of this book is to improve a player's "class" in the endgame - to fine-tune his judgment of positions, to introduce him to common methods, and to teach strategy. In other words, it helps a player to better "feel" a position - who stands better and what needs to be done.
Teaching - or learning - chess is complicated. Unlike other fields, most of it is not specific knowledge. If you teach a language, for example, the student needs to know that this word means this, that the correct sentence structure is this, that the ending for, i.e. accusative case is this. And then they just apply their exact knowledge. With chess, exact knowledge is only valuable in openings and theoretical endgames. And in the case of openings, it is disputable exact knowledge, since a verdict on a specific line of play could be overturned.
Often people have said that I am not very good at endgames. I do think there is some truth to that, even if their assessment might be based on some blitz games, and not tournament games where I have more time to figure things out. In particular, one Russian friend loved to tell me that I am terrible at endgames. I think the idea is that - since I never had a coach - I would have less understanding of the type of chess that is based on general understanding, for which a more experienced player can hand down the "tradition". Thus my chess level would be composed more of those things which are easier to learn by oneself - i.e. tactics, openings, attacking methods, etc.
Endgame Strategy is considered to be one of the most important endgame manuals. In comparison with the 1981 publication, this new edition has been thoroughly revised and the author has added dozens of new and inspiring positions.
Hi! I'm currently rated about 2000 FIDE. One of my big weaknesses is that I mess up a large number of endgames before they become theoretical endgames. For instance, I recently lost a rook endgame with five almost-symmetrical pawns for both sides. Are there books that can help me improve in the practical decision-making in endgames? Something like "Reassess your chess", but for endgames? Here's what I have looked at so far:
I learned endgames long before those books were available, and although it was a lot of work, I loved Ruben Fine's "Basic Chess Endings". In it, there would be a base example, but then often, many other similar examples. By going through it, I saw multiple examples that were similar, thus reinforcing the main ideas of each.
A lot of these books focus on theoretical type positions, but you will also want books that pick more positions that are from practical games, as they transition from middlegame into the endgame. You need both types. For example, Shereshevsky's "Endgame Strategy". He also wrote a two-volume series that covered typical endgames from both open and closed games, called "Mastering the Endgame".
Yes, I think like in chess, the two more important skills to improve and be a better player is pattern recognition and overall, the thought process. So studying the endgame can be very beneficial but theoretical endgames are mostly boring and even if they are present in one of your games, maybe you won't recognize it since the pieces mostly will be in different positions than the diagrams of 100EYMK or whatever. So I think the endgame must be studied like other parts of the game. Analyze many endgames and you will improve your understanding as it happens with middlegames. Two books I would recommend to go from cover to cover are Silmans Endgame book and The Greatest Ever Chess Endgames, this one is by Steve Giddings. If you want to back up your practical study with the theory behind it, I think the best book is not De la Villa 100EYMK, or Dvoretskys Endgame Manual but Muller and Lamprecht, Fundamental Chess Endings (FCE).
(4) Strong endgame knowledge can frequently save you at least a half point, particularly if it allows you to find good simplifications in the middlegame, so it\u2019s worth studying classic endgames because they often appear in high leverage situations;
I find the discourse around the endgame to be kind of whacky, even by chess standards. The standard cliche seems to be that endgames are boring, but good for you. I don\u2019t think endgames are boring, but I also haven\u2019t seen any clear evidence that studying them is better for your overall results than studying any other part of chess.
Your points 1-3 get at the difference between theoretical and practical endgames. Theoretical endgames are those with few enough pieces on the board that the game can be reduced to a known solution or method that can be learned and executed; practical endgames have more pieces on the board and don\u2019t have a cut and dried solution. They must be played, much in the same way you\u2019d play a middlegame, with plans, tactics, and so on.
Generally I\u2019d say theoretical endgames are a bit overrated, and practical endgames a bit underrated. This fits with the overall trend of many players preferring to study discrete, defined topics, where it\u2019s clear if you know them or not (theoretical endgames, opening variations), as opposed to fuzzier parts of the game, where it\u2019s harder to measure progress, but which ultimately may be more central to your skill as a player (tactical alertness, time management, etc.).
If you try to do an expected value calculation of how many points you\u2019ll gain by learning a particular theoretical endgame, it will probably come out looking like a waste of time, because you\u2019re just not going to get any specific endgame that often as a percentage of all the games you play. The most common ones do come up fairly often: K+Q vs. K, K+R vs. K, K+P vs. K, and maybe some more advanced ones like the Philidor position. But if you go much beyond that, you\u2019re getting into some stuff that you might only see once in your lifetime, if that.
Confession time: I do not know a lot of the endgames in 100 Endgames You Must Know. There are even some pretty basic ones like K+Q vs. K+R that I\u2019ve never learned. But I honestly can\u2019t recall a single game where failing to know one of those endgames cost me even half a point. There could easily be some games I\u2019m forgetting, but it can\u2019t be very many. I\u2019m not trying to knock 100 Endgames You Must Know, which by all accounts is an excellent book, I\u2019m just saying that if you take the title literally, there\u2019s no sense in which you \u201Cmust\u201D know all these endgames. You can definitely get to grandmaster level without knowing all of them. Having said that, it\u2019s also a perfectly reasonable thing to study. It won\u2019t take that long to learn, and once you know it, you don\u2019t need to devote much time to management to stay on top of it.
Another reason to study theoretical endgames, which I rarely see mentioned, but might be the best reason, is it\u2019s a way to get tangible wins. As you\u2019ve probably noticed, it\u2019s hard to make meaningful improvements to your overall skill as a chess player. You often experience long plateaus or setbacks before seeing your rating increase. This can lead to burnout, discouragement, or even quitting chess altogether. For that reason, there\u2019s value in getting small wins, even if they may be somewhat contrived. Something like learning to mate with bishop and knight might not happen very often on the board, but you can learn to do it in a relatively short amount of time. That visible progress can boost your confidence.
As far as learning endgames giving you \u201Cineffable insight into the coordination of the pieces\u201D... I actually think there\u2019s something to this?! When I was studying Domination in 2545 Endgame Studies I did have the feeling that I was gaining a deeper feeling for the powers of each piece. Of course, it\u2019s hard to measure this in any quantitative way. Maybe a more mundane way of getting at a similar idea would be to say that the endgame offers a simplified arena to practice the game. In particular if you\u2019re still relatively new to chess, middlegames with all the pieces on the board may seem like an impenetrable jungle. It\u2019s common sense that when learning something new it makes sense to start with a simplified version. With fewer pieces on the board, endgames can be seen as a simplified version of chess, where you\u2019re more likely to be able to answer your own questions in a way that makes sense to you.
There is also something to the idea that endgames are \u201Chigh leverage situations.\u201D I think of endgames as \u201Cwinning time,\u201D as basketball coaches call the last few minutes of the game. I recall a Fabiano Caruana where he said he takes endgame decisions especially seriously, because if you make a mistake, there is no time left to right the ship. If you go into a losing endgame, you probably won\u2019t be able to play your way out of it. For those reasons, the impact of decisions in the endgame is magnified.
So where does that leave us? There are some good reasons to study endgames, the best in my opinion being to practice in a simpler and therefore clearer arena, and to make tangible progress that fuels your confidence and enjoyment of chess. And you will of course win some points by outplaying opponents in the endgame. All of that makes the endgame a worthy object of study, but doesn\u2019t show that it\u2019s particularly more important than the opening or the middlegame. Which leads us back to a maddeningly simple conclusion: study what you like while maintaining some balance between different parts of the game.
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