Customer Reviews

Mastering the Endgame, Volume 2

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have mixed feelings about this translation. The Russian original has twice the number of pages. Here, the translator gives references to the missing games and examples, that just coincidentally are to be found in other books by the same publisher. This is infuriating.

The Russian original is a masterpiece. Volume 2 is organised differently from Volume 1 in that the chapters are organised along thematic lines such as dark squares, light squares and so on. While some of the examples are well-known, the unified conceptual understanding the authors impart is invaluable. One's level of understanding rises to a new level. The book is a must buy for aspiring masters.

The nice thing about this book is that it skips to the most interesting part of the game, the end game. This Volume deals with positions arising from queen's pawn (d4, c4) structures. See Vol 1, for e4 structures. The authors discussed most common pawn structures and plans for a given opening first. They then take positions from actual games and skip directly to end games without annotations. The endgames are analyzed in depth with ideas discussed and some major lines. What I like is the different treatment of the book, versus the variety of others that deal with endgames. Unfortunately, this book is a little too advanced for me, me around 1800 strength. It is quite useful if your fundamental understanding of these positions is solid to begin to with. That is to say, you can get to the end games, without screwing up earlier or assuming both you and your opponent play solid moves to get into these type of positions. That rarely happens at my level. So even though I like the book and treatment, I will give it four stars since the target audience is very small.

Teaches you how to take a middle game position and carry it into the endgame. It give you the entire game,and shows you how to go from each phase of the game into the next phase.