Why Endgame?
So I’ve just restart a new personal blog and this is one of my first posts. That’s why I will jump right into something very important in Chess – yes, the Endgame. Some finds it interesting, the others find it painful, while a large number of people NEVER EVER mind it at all, especially kids. That is easy to understand, because when we first play chess, usually our games finish in the Opening or in the Middlegame and they hardly last until Endgame stage. Moreover, with full eager for checkmating the opponent, we tend to go all in right from the start. As a result, we easily get bored in the Endgame when we don’t have enough pieces to play, to attack and to pose some beautiful tactics.
When I was preparing for one term’s work in the Botvinnik School I had to spend a lot of time on king and pawn endings. So when I came to a tricky position in my own games I knew the winning method. – Garry Kasparov
So why Endgame is so important? In my opinion, there are some main reasons:
- We would have more than a choice to convert our advantages. In fact, when we get some advantages in the Middlegame, we can either improve slowly to the winning position or at some point make a decisive attack and bring home a win by tactics. Now if you have strong Endgame knowledge, you could force your opponent to exchange pieces and thus reach an Endgame position which you know you can easily win. Most of you must know Magnus Carlsen, the amazing World Champion, who holds many record in chess up until now. If you look at his games against some strong Super Grandmasters, they are often about equal in the Middlegame, but somehow Magnus shows us many interesting winning paths in the Endgame.
- Endgames requires much more accuracy since it is very easy to make mistake. Usually, Endgames phase is around 30th to 60th move, this is when your clock runs out of time and your body runs out of energy after a long hard fight. Facing this pressure, even strong Grandmasters lose their calmness and the possibility of making mistake increases extremely, unfortunately these kind of mistake is likely the last mistake of the game. By that I mean, if you make mistake in the Endgame, you may not have a chance to save the game anymore.
- Endgames is beautiful. It’s true. The more you study the Endgame, the more you find it beautiful. There are ton of Endgame problems, where it looks losing but just a move after that, the defender can hold. Those saving moves are not only beautiful but also very difficult to figure out over the board in real games if you haven’t seen the pattern before.
Openings teach you openings. Endgames teach you chess – Stephan Gerzadowicz
About this Fundamental Chess Endgames problem series
This is not a complete guide through all Endgames knowledge because it requires much more effort to do so. Besides, there are many Endgames books out there, so it’s very easy to get one and start studying. This is more of a revision and discussion. I will post the problem, along with the answers in another page. If by doing the problem, you find any gap in your knowledge, go ahead and fill it by yourself or you can jump into the comment section and start a discussion, I’m willing to help. Now, let’s go to next page and have fun with Endgames!