how to play chess endgames book
In this companion volume to Fundamental Chess Endings, Müller and Pajeken focus on the practical side of playing endgames. They cover all aspects of strategic endgames, with particular emphasis on thinking methods, and ways to create difficulties for opponents over the board. Using hundreds of outstanding examples from modern practice, the authors explain not only how to conduct 'classical' endgame tasks, such as exploiting an extra pawn or more active pieces, but also how to handle the extremely unbalanced endings that often arise from the dynamic openings favoured nowadays. All varieties of endgames are covered, and there are more than 200 exercises for the reader, together with full solutions.
In this companion volume to Fundamental Chess Endings, Müller and Pajeken focus on the practical side of playing endgames. They cover all aspects of strategic endgames, with particular emphasis on thinking methods, and ways to create difficulties for opponents over the board.
Using hundreds of outstanding examples from modern practice, the authors explain not only how to conduct 'classical' endgame tasks, such as exploiting an extra pawn or more active pieces, but also how to handle the extremely unbalanced endings that often arise from the dynamic openings favoured nowadays. All varieties of endgames are covered, and there are more than 200 exercises for the reader, together with full solutions.
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17 Typical Mistakes
The mistakes are all there, waiting to be made.
SAVIELLY TARTAKOWER
"I was totally winning!" 'Tm so stupid; that
was completely drawn!" "One more good move
and he would have immediately resigned!" If
we are honest, each of us has complained some
time in this sort of way to our team-mates, lamenting
a missed opportunity or a stupid blunder.
For some of us, moaning like this might be
a way of coping successfully with our frustration.
However, this generalJy does nothing to
help us avoid making similar mistakes in the future.
Instead of trying to elicit the sympathy of
your team-mates, it is considerably more profitable
to ask yourself about the reasons for your
mistakes, to think about whether you have particular
weaknesses (psychological, physical or
chess-educational) which are responsible for
these mistakes and to consider how (not if!) you
can eliminate them. In this chapter we shall catalogue
typical mistakes and their causes and
thus make our contribution.
A) Deficient Knowledge of
Endgame Theory
The successful conversion of a superior position
or the precise defence of an inferior endgame
very often requires liquidation into theoretical
known positions. It is obvious that in such situations
a deficient knowledge of endgame theory
can be the cause of fatal mistakes. How can
you expect to reproduce in a few minutes at the
board, just by calculating variations, the same
analytical work that famous endgame theorists
achieved over several centuries?
We warn readers: to avoid mistakes in this
area it is not sufficient just to have examined
the relevant theoretical positions once, superficially.
It is absolutely essential to become so
familiar with them that you can actually reproduce
and apply your knowledge off pat in each
situation, even when short of time. But as so
often in chess, mere knowledge alone is not
enough; it is of critical importance, at the critical
moment, to be able to remember it. And the
probability that you can manage to do this is
all the greater, the better you have studied endgame
theory.
In Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, Mark Dvoretsky
says that there are about eighty relevant
theoretical positions which every player should
know. We recommend that readers put together
a database of these positions and study this
'Endgame-ABC' regularly, similarly to what
you already do perhaps with a favourite opening
variation.
Let us now consider a practical example.
We can safely assume that both players possessed
the necessary endgame knowledge to
solve the problems of the position. But at the
critical moment, under pressure and possibly
in time-trouble, neither player succeeded in
applying their theoretical knowledge.
B
17.01
Zhu Chen - M.Taimanov
Roquebrune (VeteransWomen) I 998
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