How can you improve your chess? It' not by chance that grandmasters say 'Study the endgame!' This is because a great number of encounters reach endgames, and studying these positions will teach you how to convert winning positions, and how to save or even overturn inferior ones. Moreover, it's a well known fact that studying endgames undoubtedly enhances your skills in other aspects of the game.

Practical Endgame Play - Mastering the Basics is a comprehensive guide to all fundamental chess endings, and a godsend for those looking to improve their endgame play. Crucially, the emphasis is just as much on practical play as it is on theoretical understanding. Whenever an idea is introduced, Grandmaster Efstratios Grivas immediately illustrates it with a number of entertaining and instructive examples, a considerable number of which are drawn from his own over-the-board experiences.

• All the fundamental endgames are covered
• Full of practical tips and opinions
• Written by an prominent endgame expert

Efstratios Grivas is an experienced Grandmaster from Greece who has represented his country on many occasions, winning an individual gold medal at the 1989 European Team Championship and an individual silver medal at the 1998 Chess Olympiad. He's a Senior FIDE Trainer, a federal trainer for the Greek and Turkish Chess Federations, and also a highly regarded writer with many books and articles to his name.

Introduction

by Sotiris Logothetis

The third World Champion, the Cuban Jose Raul Capablanca, once expressed the opin­ion that the study of chess should commence with the third and final phase of a chess game: the endgame. The Cuban himself was a renowned master of this stage and his ad­vice was undoubtedly based on his personal experience. Many words have been spoken about the significance of endgame knowledge and experience in practical play — there is no point in repeating them here. The book you are holding aims to arm you as well as possi­ble for this phase of the game.

Many people think that the qualities of a grandmaster, compared to an ordinary player, mostly consist of superior opening preparation, greater calculating ability and deeper un­derstanding of typical middlegame positions. If you, however, take a closer look at games from, say, a strong open tournament, you will notice several cases where the grandmaster outplays a weaker player (or even a fellow grandmaster) in the endgame from more or less an equal position. You are often left wondering how on earth one could lose such a simple position with so few pieces on the board.

And yet, in my personal experience, the last part of the game is where a well educated player can set the opponent the most problems. As the weight of each move increases, any mistake can prove very costly and great accuracy is required. In our times, with the aboli­tion of adjournments and increasingly faster time-controls, endgame knowledge has ac­quired greater significance than ever before.

Many games never reach the endgame. However, every good chessplayer, even in the heat of the battle, must consider the endings that can possibly arise in the course of the game. Our opening moves must take into account the consequences they may impose on a future ending. Doubled, isolated, immobilized or passed pawns, strong and weak squares - in general, all the positional elements, positive or negative, must be considered and evaluated. Anticipation of a favourable ending or fear of an inferior one will often influ­ence our decisions in the middlegame, in the sense of selecting or rejecting certain continuations. When dissatisfied with a prospective ending we will often opt for unclear com­plications or serious material or positional concessions. In the end, our evaluation of the endings that may arise will affect the entire course of the battle.

I have known Efstratios for many years and consider myself his student, although not perhaps in the strictest sense of the term. From our endless conversations on chess over the years, I have learned many things about all aspects of the royal game. In recent years I have also had the pleasure of collaborating with him on his writing projects. A pleasure it is indeed, because he takes this work very seriously and tends to be meticulous and very accurate. Having spent countless hours with him, checking and rechecking every single variation and position presented in his books, I can assure you that the writer has worked conscientiously to produce the best possible result.

Efstratios has always been considered an endgame authority, as can be observed by a detailed look at his games. He has possessed a deep and detailed education on the end­game ever since I first met him, which was many years ago. Now he has taken this a step further. The preparation of this book has stretched over several years, during which time Efstratios has delved deeply into existing endgame theory and has discovered — and cor­rected of course! — several important errors. Use has been made of every modern analysis tool (particularly tablebases), in order to get closer to the absolute truth. At the same time, with his usual thoroughness and perfectionism, Efstratios has sought to organize and pre­sent the material in this book without leaving any black holes. I would like to draw your attention particularly to the section on rook endings, arguably the most difficult type of endgame, which can justifiably claim to be the most informative work on the subject ever.

Content:
005 Bibliography & Acknowledgements

007 Foreword by IM Georgios Makropoulos

009 Introduction by Sotiris Logothetis

011 The Golden Rules of the Endgame

Section 1: Pawn Endings

013 Introduction and The Opposition

020 Key Rules

027 Important Techniques

034 Further Practical Examples

Section 2: Rook Endings

040 Introduction and Rook vs. Pawn(s)

050 Rook & Pawn vs. Rook

058 Rook & 2 Pawns vs. Rook

069 Rook & 2 Pawns vs. Rook & Pawn

077 Rook & 3 Pawns vs. Rook & 2 Pawns

083 Rook & 4 Pawns vs. Rook & 3 Pawns on the same wing

094 Rook & 5 Pawns vs. Rook and 4 Pawns

100 Rook & 4 Pawns with a passed a-pawn vs. Rook & 3 Pawns

110 Rook & 4 Pawns with a passed b-pawn vs. Rook & 3 Pawns

118 Rook & 4 Pawns with a passed c-pawn vs. Rook & 3 Pawns

123 Rook & 4 Pawns with a passed d-pawn vs. Rook & 3 Pawns

131 General Rook Endgame Technique

Section 3: Minor Piece Endings

148 Bishop vs. Pawn(s)

154 Same-coloured Bishop Endgames

173 Opposite-coloured Bishop Endgames

179 Knight vs. Pawn(s)

187 Knight Endgames

202 Good Bishop vs. Bad Knight

211 Good Knight vs. Bad Bishop

Section 4: Rook and Minor Piece Endings

223 Rook vs. Bishop

241 Rook vs. Knight

251 Rook & Bishop vs. Rook

257 Rook & Knight vs. Rook

262 Rook vs. Minor Pieces

Section 5: Queen Endings

272 Queen & Pawn Endgames

292 Queen vs. Various Major & Minor Pieces

315 Index of Players