101 Chess Endgame Tips by Steve Giddins

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 tech-
nique. 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.

 

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