|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
Chessville
Advertise to Single insert:
|
What wishful thinking! We amateurs all talk about it, but nobody seriously works on endgames! However, if I were going to stick with my goal… I would certainly need some kind of a teacher, one who knew what he (or she) was doing. It would be nice if he were a master, but in any event he would have to have read or have access to different endgame resources. It would be helpful if he knew from experience, or some kind of database, how other top players handled different endgame situations. On top of it all, I would probably need some quizzes to keep me honest in my study. Remarkably, this puts me in mind of John Emms’ Starting Out: Minor Piece Endings. Emms has previously written The Survival Guide to Rook Endings (check) and is a Grandmaster to boot (double check). His book has an impressive Bibliography, including books, periodicals, databases, programs – and even a website (check). He’s compiled a database (including Mega Database 2004, The Week in Chess, Chess Informant and Mega Corr 3) so he can say interesting things like “We’ll begin with bishop and pawn against three pawns, which produced a win:draw:loss ratio of 35%:46%:19% – the draw being the favorite result” (check). Starting Out: Minor Piece Endings contains 195 examples, and 32 exercises to be solved (check). Emms is writing about knight and bishop endgames for club players like me: "The material comprises mainly of basic positions and examples from real games, ones that are much more likely to crop up in practice…" Unlike a person, a book cannot talk to you, react to your puzzled looks, or encourage you to persist in your analyses. However, a well-designed and well-written book (such as this one) can anticipate some of the reader’s reactions and address them. With Emms’ work you will have to keep your own nose to the grindstone and shoulder to the wheel, but the cost of this book full of lessons, mind you, is less than an hour of a Grandmaster’s time. I found Starting Out: Minor Piece Endings to be well laid-out (an average of two diagrams per page) although in ten years or so some of the print type might be a bit small for my eyes. The regular “starting out” icons (clipboard for a “note,” lightbulb for a “tip,” and skull and crossbones for a “warning”) pop up here and there in the margins, but Emms usually lets his text do the teaching. Bolding, fonts and white space, as usual for an Everyman production, are well utilized. The chapters march through in expected manner, with many sub-sections to keep things organized:
Bibliography How does Emms’ work stack up against other endgame tomes? A trip to my bookshelf reminds me of my Aunt Marie’s closet – she claims to have almost every weight loss or exercise device ever hawked over the airways; almost all of them remain in pristine, unused condition. Well, Fine’s Basic Chess Endings (1941) is more inclusive than Emms’ book, covering more than just Knight endgames and Bishop endgames – but it is not very user-friendly for study, and the original is in outdated descriptive notation. (I have not seen Benko’s updated and algebraic 2003 edition, but there would have to have been some serious rewriting to allow it to challenge Emms.) Euwe and Hooper’s A Guide To Chess Endings (1959) is more approachable than Fine, but is not as deep as the Starting Out book; and both of the older books suffer from some dated analysis. Müller and Lamprecht’s Fundamental Chess Endings (2001) is comprehensive and up-to-date, but is more of an encyclopedia than a lesson book. (Still, some people have been known to read and study encyclopedias for pleasure…) On the Endgame (2003) is written in C.J.S. Purdy’s inimitable style, but is a bit thin on Knights and Bishops. Mayer’s Bishop v Knight : the verdict (1997) rarely strays into simple endgames (spoiler: the bishop wins). The comparable Secrets of Minor-Piece Endings (1995) by John Nunn is probably flawless, but I find it drier and a bit too clinical for my taste when matched up with the subject of this review. That leaves Mednis’ Practical Endgame Lessons (1978) and Soltis’ Grandmaster Secrets: Endings (1997), both of which are warm and approachable – but, again, don’t have the depth of Emms’ book.
Here are a couple of examples to give you a sense of things:
Exercise 1 - White to play
Example 119
You can see from these examples that Emms mixes well his words and his moves, and he doesn’t let the lines of play go too far without tossing in a clarifying comment. I found this very helpful: like whistling while passing the graveyard, I find reading real live words keep me from being spooked by too much naked endgame analysis. The longer I stay with the book, the more I learn.
The author believes that “minor piece endgames are the most difficult
both to explain and to master”, but in Starting Out: Minor Piece
Endgames I think he has done a superlative job in the former. If
you want to get down to work and not only improve your endgame play, but see
additional benefits in your middlegame pyrotechnics, this book is the one to
tackle. It’s not going back to my bookshelf any time soon.
|
The
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||
