Popular chess author Steve Giddins presents 101 ideas that are vital to successful endgame play. By absorbing and understanding these concepts and methods, you will ensure that you will spot them when they are possible in your own games.
This is an ideal book to read without using a chess set, as the abundant diagrams guide you through the analysis and illustrate the key points. All types of endings are covered, including both simple technical situations and more complex strategic battles. The tips include both pithy rules of thumb and general thinking methods. The examples are drawn from an immense variety of sources and based on Giddins's experiences as a player, coach and pupil.
Steve Giddins is a FIDE Master from England who plays regularly in international events and has frequently contributed to the British Chess Magazine. This is his fourth book for Gambit. He has gained a reputation as a writer who provides useful, no-nonsense advice on topics of genuine practical importance.
Introduction
The endgame is probably the most neglected part of chess, especially from the point of view of the average player. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, many players take the superficially logical, but fallacious, view that it is better to study openings, since if one misplays the opening badly enough, one will not even survive into an ending. This may be strictly true, but only of very bad opening play. It does not need too much knowledge to enable one to play the opening reasonably well, and once one has achieved this, there is no good argument for ignoring endgames any longer.
Secondly, many players believe that endings are boring. I firmly believe that this is completely untrue, and, on the contrary, the endgame is the best and most enjoyable part of chess. I hope in this book to show why this is the case.
Thirdly, the traditional three-hour playing sessions in club and league chess have tended to militate against reaching very many endgames, and when one did get one, the chance to play it out was usually lost, due to the intervention of that dread figure, the adjudicator. Thankfully, this is one aspect of local chess which has changed for the better in recent years, and the replacement of adjournments and adjudication by quickplay finishes means that endgame technique is now more important than ever.
In writing this book, I hope to give the average player a good introduction to many important ideas and techniques in endings. The positions given include many basic, theoretical endings, and also a significant number of more complex positions, which illustrate more general points of technique. I hope that this material will not only improve the reader's endgame play per se, but also stimulate further study. The material I can cover in a book of this size is of necessity limited, but there is a wealth of fine books on the endgame, and any player who wishes to study further has no lack of opportunity to do so.
Important Endgame Principles
Many important endgame principles are illustrated in the ensuing examples, but it will be useful here to summarise the main points of endgames:
- Material matters in endgames. This may sound trite, but it is an important point. Whereas in the middlegame, sacrificing material to open lines and activate pieces is a standard device, it is much less common in the endgame. While we shall see that tactics and combinations have their role in the endgame, it is usually only in rook (and some queen) endings that piece activity is more important than an extra pawn or two. So, within reason, it pays to be a miser in the endgame.
- In similar fashion, pawn-weaknesses tend to grow in importance in endings. In the middlegame, it is frequently a good idea to accept an isolated or doubled pawn, in order to activate one's pieces and/or open lines. In the endgame, the simplified positions and (normally) absence of queens tend to make such dynamic play much more difficult to achieve, and consequently static weaknesses tend to be more important.
- We shall see much in this book on the subject of the 'principle of two weaknesses'. One weakness is frequently not enough, and the key to winning many positions is to create a second weakness in the defender's position, so as to stretch the defence to breaking point.
- The other cardinal endgame principle which I shall emphasize time and again is 'do not hurry'. The endgame usually has a somewhat slower and less dynamic tempo than most middlegames, and this means that careful and slow manoeuvring is often the order of the day. Numerous good positions are spoilt by the player rashing things, when a small piece of preliminary care would have eliminated all of the opponent's counterplay.
- Finally, it is important to have the right attitude to the endgame. There is a rather dreadful song, from the Hollywood musical Camelot, called How to Handle a Woman, the crux of the advice being "love her, simply love her". I don't know about women, but this is certainly the right way to approach the endgame. As I said above, the endgame is the best part of chess, containing a wealth of depth and beauty, and the more one studies it, the more apparent this becomes. Regardless of any specific knowledge it may convey, if this book helps the reader to appreciate and develop a love for endgames, it will have done its job.
Steve Giddins,
Rochester, November 2006
Content:
006 Introduction
007 Symbols
007 Bibliography
007 Acknowledgements
Kings and Pawns
008 Tip 1 - Defying Euclid
009 Tip 2 - The Gentlemanly Art of Shoulder-Charging
010 Tip 3 - A Royal Pas de Deux
011 Tip 4 - The Breakthrough
012 Tip 5 - More Pawn Breakthrough Ideas
013 Tip 6 - Don't Forget about Stalemate Resources
Knights
014 Tip 7 - Simplifying into a King and Pawn Ending
015 Tip 8 - Knights Hate Rook's Pawns
016 Tip 9 - Deflections
017 Tip 10 - Pawns on the Same Side
018 Tip 11 - Space is Important in Knight Endings
019 Tip 12 - In the Footsteps of the Master
020 Tip 13 - Exploiting a Positional Advantage
021 Tip 14 - Activity is King
Bishops
022 Tip 15 - Barrier Reefs (Part 1)
023 Tip 16 - Barrier Reefs (Part 2)
024 Tip 17 - Bishop and Wrong Rook's Pawn
025 Tip 18 - King at the Rear
026 Tip 19 - Good Bishop versus Bad
027 Tip 20 - How to Manufacture a Passed Pawn
028 Tip 21 - The Principle of Two Weaknesses
029 Tip 22 - Not-so-Distant Passed Pawn
030 Tip 23 - The Crippled Majority
031 Tip 24 - Pawns Don't Move Backwards
032 Tip 25 - The Power of Two Passed Pawns
033 Tip 26 - The Power of Connected Passed Pawns
034 Tip 27 - Barrier Reefs (Part 3)
035 Tip 28 - Pawn Placement
Knight vs Bishop
036 Tip 29 - Knight vs Bad Bishop
037 Tip 30 - The Agile Knight
038 Tip 31 - Knights are Better than Bishops at Attacking Weak Pawns
039 Tip 32 - Knights are Better than Bishops at Attacking Weak Pawns (Part 2)
040 Tip 33 - Bishop vs Knight on an Open Board
041 Tip 34 - Fischer's Classic
042 Tip 35 - Knight on the Rim
043 Tip 36 - The Triumph of the Two Bishops
Rooks
044 Tip 37 - Know the Basics
045 Tip 38 - The Importance of King-Shelter
046 Tip 39 - Know the Basics, Part 2
047 Tip 40 - Know the Basics, Part 3
048 Tip 41 - When Two Extra Pawns Don't Win
050 Tip 42 - Pawns on the Same Side
052 Tip 43 - Defence from the Side
053 Tip 44 - The Strength of the Rook at the Side
054 Tip 45 - The Strength of the Rook at the Side (Part 2)
055 Tip 46 - Karpov's Masterclass
056 Tip 47 - Shoulder-Charging
057 Tip 48 - Keep the Furthest Pawn
058 Tip 49 - Passed Pawns Mean Counterplay
059 Tip 50 - The Exception that Proves the Rule
060 Tip 51 - More Chances with a Knight's Pawn
061 Tip 52 - Never Forget about Stalemate
062 Tip 53 - Triangulation
063 Tip 54 - New York 1924 Revisited
064 Tip 55 - Don't Get in a Huff
065 Tip 56 - The Active Rook
066 Tip 57 - Another Active Rook
067 Tip 58 - Yet Another Active Rook
068 Tip 59 - When Similar is Not the Same
069 Tip 60 - Seizing Space
070 Tip 61 - The Weakness of Weak Pawns
Queens
071 Tip 62 - Evading the Checks
072 Tip 63 - King Safety is the Key
073 Tip 64 - King Safety is the Key (Part 2)
Strategy and Technique
074 Tip 65 - Exchanges to Realize a Material Advantage
075 Tip 66 - Rooks are Better than Knights - Usually!
076 Tip 67 - When Two Pieces are Better than One
077 Tip 68 - The Value of Knowing Your Theory
078 Tip 69 - Drawing with Rook vs Rook and Bishop
079 Tip 70 - When Two Rooks Beat a Queen
080 Tip 71 - Transforming an Advantage
081 Tip 72 - Centralizing the King
082 Tip 73 - Transforming an Advantage
083 Tip 74 - The Perils of Passivity
084 Tip 75 - A Lesson in Not Hurrying
086 Tip 76 - Positional Alchemy
087 Tip 77 - The Importance of Calculation
088 Tip 78 - Concrete Play
089 Tip 79 - Schematic Thinking
090 Tip 80 - Bad Bishops are Often Good Defenders
091 Tip 81 - The Principle of Two Weaknesses Revisited
092 Tip 82 - Pawn-Structure Subtleties
093 Tip 83 - More Breakthroughs
094 Tip 84 - The Master at Work
095 Tip 85 - Workmanlike Technique
096 Tip 86 - A Two-Bishops Masterclass
097 Tip 87 - Appearances can be Deceptive
098 Tip 88 - Overcoming the Blockade
099 Tip 89 - Squeeze Play
100 Tip 90 - The Power of the King
101 Tip 91 - Calculate Your Way to Victory
102 Tip 92 - Fighting for Space
103 Tip 93 - The Importance of Playing On
104 Tip 94 - The Outside Pawn-Majority
105 Tip 95- Too Brutal
106 Tip 96 - The Minority Attack
107 Tip 97 - Attacking the King
108 Tip 98 - The Power of Zugzwang
109 Tip 99 - Passed Pawns are the Key
110 Tip 100 - Don't Forget Combinations!
111 Tip 101 - Positional Draw | 
