|
||||||||||
“I do
not know what I may appear to the world,
“‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all Ok. I’ll come clean. I realize that you may be wondering why the above quotes have been chosen. Well, you see, it’s like this: over the past several months your intrepid reviewer has, by various disparate forces, been drawn inexorably towards what now seems to have been an inevitable conclusion: endgame books are different from any other type of chess book. Here’s why: there is, it seems, a definite trend with respect to nearly every type of chess book, be it about tactics, strategy, an opening monograph, a player biography, whatever…. The trend is this: generally speaking, the older the book, the better written (and therefore the more easily understandable) it is. There are exceptions, of course. For example, GM John Nunn is an excellent writer. So is GM Andrew Soltis. So is.... Endgame books, however, are (as I have hinted) the proverbial exception which proves this rule. There is, perhaps, a great number of reasons for this, but the chief reason appears to be the development of tablebases. With the advent of these databases, endgames which previously had not been properly understood have now been solved, for all eternity, by computers. In other words: if the tablebase says that it’s true, then it’s true. Regardless of opinions about the implications of this, it does represent a major step in the understanding not only of the endgame, but of the game as a whole. There is, as you may know, a view held by many players that in order to reach GM strength it is essential to understand completely some three hundred positions. A number of books concerned with variations on this theme have been published relatively recently. The Chess Training Pocket Book by GM Lev Alburt (C. I. R. C. 1997) is one. Tactical Chess Training by GM Leonid Shamkovich and Jan Cartier (Everyman 1995) is another and GM-RAM by GM Rashid Ziatdinov (Thinker’s Press, Inc. 2000) is a third. While the first two of these concentrate on middlegame tactics, Ziatdinov’s book devotes more space to endgame positions, placing them before the middlegame positions which, the book contends, need to be understood by anyone wishing to master chess. To this patzer, however, it seems that Laszlo Polgár, (father of the famous sisters) is nearer the mark, citing over 5000 positions to learn. One suspects that the contention is that embedded within the 300 positions which one needs to know, are a further 5000 or so, as L. Polgár evidently maintains. According to Ziatdinov, 19 of the 300 positions are “simple” pawn endings. Your intrepid reviewer has, over the years, been involved in several--often heated-- discussions about the relative merits/demerits of this book or that book. It was once put to me, for example, that John Nunn’s “Secrets of….” endgame books are basically useless, inasmuch as a significant amount of the information which they contain is concerned with configurations of forces which can force checkmate only in more than 200 moves. My adversary suggested that anything over 50 moves is a draw, and therefore it wasn’t worth knowing these. My retort to this was that it is impossible to understand too much about endgames. That said, there is a sensible order which should be followed, starting with the basic checkmates. Starting Out: Pawn Endgames (SOPE) begins, somewhat unusually, not with a KPk position, as one might expect, but with a KPkp, viz:
…the point, presumably, being that it quickly becomes a KPk position after 1...Ke7 2.Kf5 Kf7 3.Kxg5 etc. The writing style is engaging, and the layout helpfully emphasizes key bullet points by placing a clipboard icon next to them. Occasionally, the bullet point is itself somewhat vague, e.g.:
Which squares in front of the pawn, Glenn? All squares on all files on the ranks in front of the pawn? Those on the same file? Those immediately in front, whether diagonally or on the same file? Two ranks up? Three? What is it that affords a square the status: "key"? The book fails to provide a satisfactory explanation of the concept of key squares, notwithstanding that key squares constitute an essential element of many of the examples given. In addition to this, SOPE contains two examples purporting to illustrate “Bähr’s rule”, but it neglects to tell us what “Bähr’s rule” actually is. Fortunately, an excellent (if not exactly succinct) explanation is to be found in Fundamental Chess Endings by Karsten Müller and Frank Lamprecht (Gambit 2001):
* "A bodycheck" is the term applied here to describe the technique of deflecting a king from its desired path by exploiting the opposition. (If you are unsure what is meant by: "the opposition", then this book provides a series of examples illustrating the concept). So, now you have an explanation of Bähr's rule which should help to illuminate Flear's writings on the subject. These quibbles (significant though they may be) aside, SOPE certainly provides an excellent introduction to intricacies of pawn endgames, paying particular attention, as it does, to the concrete nature of these endgames. One particularly nice feature of this book is that each chapter ends with a section headed "Try it yourself!" which consists of one or more puzzles pertaining to themes covered in the preceding chapter. Speaking from experience, there is no better way to improve both understanding and analysis skills than by analyzing such endgame positions, or tactical middlegame positions, or what you will. Flear's bibliography is what one would expect. He readily acknowledges examples common to many sources, e.g. Fahrni-Alapin, Karlsbad 1911 (some sources, such as Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, give the date as 1912). To summarize, then, (as I hinted already) this book
represents a definite improvement upon, for example, Chess Endings for
Beginners, edited by J. H. Blake and published in 1901. Endgame
theory has definitely advanced since then. From the Publisher's website: Grandmaster Glenn Flear is one of the most popular figures on the European tournament circuit. He's an experienced trainer and has many chess books to his name, including Test Your Endgame Thinking and Improve Your Endgame Play. Download PGN
|
Advertisement
The
Advertise to Single insert:
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
