Customer Reviews

Pandolfini's Endgame Course: Basic Endgame Concepts Explained by America's Leading Chess Teacher (Fireside Chess Library)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Study endgames first! This seems counter-intuitive, but it is the best way to make your brain understand how the pieces move. A combination of tactics and endgame training is the quickest route to success for the average player. Don't waste time on the openings until you are a Master, rated 2000+.

This book is perfect for learning, as opposed to simply memorizing. The reason is that each page builds on the previous page, and each section on the previous section. You don't need to wade through pages of variations because, by the time you get to a given lesson, you have already learned the positions which result from the alternate moves. That moment of Eureka makes the book great fun!

For example, he shows you how to mate with various pieces, so that you know a won endgame when you see one. In these lessons, he'll show you what a King-Bishop-Bishop v. King mate looks like in the corner. Then he'll show you how to roll the King into the corner across the edge of the board. Then he'll show you how to get that bishop-roll started. Each lesson typically ends with a position from a previous lesson, so you can play it out to reinforce what you had learned earlier.

Later, he shows you how to turn a pawn into a Queen in various pawn endings. Again, some lessons end in previously learned positions. Others are simply new positions to learn, but of gradually increasing difficulty. At appropriate times, he shows you the stalemate opportunities to watch out for. And it's all at a beginner level (around 1000-1400 USCF) avoiding deep variations to keep track of in your head.

The way to use the book is to play a lesson out on a board, to test all possible refuations yourself. When you get lost, refer back to the book. I've been going over this book that way with a friend, which is a great way to learn ALL tries and refutations!

I have several other endgame books. I wish I could obtain the Out-Of-Print Seirawan book, but this is by far the best beginner book in print. Silman's Essential Chess Endings Explained Move by Move is a good second book, with some overlap, if you can find it.

Some people complain about the many typos in Pandolfini books. To me, finding the typo is just part of solving the problem. Since he always explains in words where the pieces are generally headed, then follows with lines of chess notation, it's very easy to spot his mistake. Still, only 4 1/2 stars, because of the typos.

I think this book is a great start to learning the endgame. Pandolfini explains each position and the ideas behind most of the moves. It is true, some of these positions are very simple, but this book is geared towards people who have never studied the endgame. I got this book when I just started playing chess competitively (around rating 1000). I went through this book step by step, as it is ordered from easiest to more complex. This helped increase my understanding of concepts such as opposition, corresponding squares, and maneuvers with the rook. I think the most important sections in this book are the rook and pawn and king and pawn sections, as these come up very often in actual play. The format is easy to follow and it is a good book to read from front to back if you have little or no knowledge of the endgame. As you get better, you can practice your visualization by looking at the diagram and visualizing the moves without using a board while reviewing the position. After you have studied this book, you can move onto more advanced endgame instructional books.

I've just written a review on Lev Alburt's book, "Just the Facts", which is not, as I point out, "just the facts". That book is cluttered with trivia and weighed down by style and format; therefore it's very confusing to the targeted reader, the amateur chess player. Panolfini's Endgame Course, by happy contrast, is indeed "just the facts".

This wonderful book simplifies all the intimidating endgame principles that other endgame books only make more intimidating! He starts out with basic mates and all their fine points, such as "closing in" with a queen, "cutting off" with a rook, "taking away" squares from the opposing King, and so on. . .then advances on to basic King and Pawn principles, and in so doing, Pandolfini covers concepts, in plain English, that most other books do not cover, such as "critical squares" (a critical concept!), "corresponding squares", "outflanking", getting the opposing King to block his own pawn via clever maneouvering, and many others, including, of course, the "opposition". After about 100 pages of King and Pawn concepts, Bruce throws in the other pieces to illustrate how they change the situation, but still keeping an eye on how to "boil down" the position to a simple King and Pawn.

A great example of neat stuff in this book could be demonstrated by Position #176 on Page 223, where White sacrifices his Knight in order to bring the position down to your basic King and Pawn elements. Bruce shows how White, in this position, forces Black to cooperate and in so doing the White King ends up occupying one of Black's "critical squares". . . therefore Black is neutered and White ends up promoting his pawn.

In fact, you'll find that much of winning endgame play involves the concept of "critical squares", and getting your King and pawns to occupy them, and preventing your opponent from occupying his. Bruce spends many pages on these concepts, and another key example is Position #107 on Page 143, where he demonstrates sacrificing a pawn so that your King can occupy one of these squares. Another beautiful concept is discussed in Positions #93 and #94, Pages 125 and 126, where White is defending because he has the weaker position. . .he therefore sacrifices his pawn so that the position has now changed with the White King now occupying one of Black's critical squares, preventing Black from winning and leading to a draw ("Changing the Critical Squares").

Also discussed is the tricky "corresponding squares" principle, which is a complicated version of the "opposition", where both Kings maneouver around each other attempting to take the opposition. This is illustrated, among other places, in Diagram 113, on Page 149.

On the downside are, of course, all the typos that you've been reading about, such as Diagram 97, on Page 130, where the entire diagram is off by one file (White has a pawn on the g-file but the text and move lines talk about advancing the h pawn). . . and all the other typos. In my opinion, these typos demonstrate sloppy and amateurish editing, but do not significantly interfere with the author's explanatory skills. In other words, you will benefit greatly from this book if you study it conscientiously, and in the process the typos will only be a slight annoyance which you'll be able to deal with easily. As you can see, I have not "marked down" my rating for this book because of the typos; I have given it 5 stars because you will come away with a 5-star understanding of endgames if you concentrate on the material at hand. Besides, you'll be able to figure out the author's intentions as you delve into the concepts.

By the way, another good endgame book to read, after Pandolfini's Endgame Course, would be Silman's Essential Endgames Move by Move, published by, I believe, Chess Digest. This is another book which indeed discusses "just the facts".

And one more thing: I am a rank amateur, probably around a "D" class, maybe approaching "C". But this is what I feel gives me the right to be critical with these books. I know what an amateur needs, because I am an amateur myself. I've learned that sometimes these grandmasters have difficulty explaining concepts to us plain folk. . . kind of like Einstein trying to explain his Theory of Relativity.

As a player of modest ability who only played in two tournaments (probably a year or two apart), I found the book quite useful. Some of the other books that I had tried to read on the endgame just seemed too darn difficult for beginners. The difficulty was that there was just so much information to memorize. Pandolfini's book made the memorization of the themes much easier by giving each technique a catchy name. Then, you are led step by step to more complicated techniques by successively building upon the ones you have just learned. This is good pedagogy. I would recommend this to any beginner to get a good understanding of what you need to know to play the endgame.

This is a book that has numbered and named ("Queen and Rook Roll" , "Diagonal March" etc.) endgame problems on each page with a solution directly beneath the diagrams.

The problems are very instructive, practical and clearly explained.

It starts at the very basic mating problems and covers all 5 piece endgames.

The problem with this book is that some endgames that are complicated enough to require several pages to explain (like KBN vs K or KQ vs KR) are chopped up into seperate problems which makes it harder to read.

Overall: There are a lot of books that cover basic endgames like this one. If you need to learn the basics of 5 piece endgames and you like the one page one problem setup this is a good book for you.

The best book to use to learn common practical endgames from simple examples.

The format makes it easy to use without a board.

Pandolfini covers the essential endgame knowledge to reach chess expert level with the minimum effort. It's what you need to know for over-the-board play with no extra fluff.

Useful for beginners up to at least expert level. I'm a USCF Expert but still find this book useful. I just bought a copy for my nephew (11 years old; about USCF 1000 rating) -- some of the book will be beyond him right now, but not all of it.

There are some minor typos and errors. As for the typos, you can search the internet to locate one of the online errata lists for this book. I give it 5 stars despite that due to Pandolfini's great selection and presentation of material.

I'll start off by saying that I'm not a great fan of Pandolfini's books -- I own about a half dozen of them and a lot of times I find his method of presentation somewhat awkward. This isn't a criticism of Pandolfini's work per se, it's just that they don't really work for me.

That said, I picked up this book the other day and almost couldn't put it down. The examples (about 230) are very clear with good explanations and cover a wide range of situations. While I would hesitate to call this a "course" (more like a collection of scenarios/puzzles), it is (in my opinion) one of the best two endgame books out there for beginning and intermediate players (Chernev being the other one).

So even if you're not a fan of Pandolfini's books, I would recommend taking a look at this one ... it was definitely money well spent.

First, download the errata as mentioned in other reviews and get that much over with. There *are* more errors than there should have been (1/2 star taken right off the top).

That said, this should be your *second* endgame book. Why? Because the writing style is terse and laconic. The book is made up of a long series of endgame positions, one per page, with a paragraph of descriptive text and a nearly, if not completely, un-annotated list of moves below the paragraph. It's up to you to digest the text, and relate it to the moves as you play them out. I believe that to do this effectively, you need some basic endgame background, hence my statement that this should be your *second* endgame book.

The book is quite complete, providing at least one example of all important endgame situations. It is not an exhaustive text, such as Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual or some others, but it leaves out very little, even if what is covered is at times brief (a single example) or at a high level.... but that is not a bad thing. At this stage of learning, you want clear examples, not problem-like esoterica.

Four stars overall. (Another half off for the at times difficult presentation style of text/move list.)

(What would be the first endgame book? Briefly, I'd use Robertie's "Easy Endgame Strategies" or even better if you don't mind an older book in descriptive notation, Horowitz's "How to Win in the Chess Endings.")

I found the best way to study this book is to use my computer.
Unless you've read tons of chessbooks, or can play blindfolded, you probably could use some help with thinking through the moves in the book.

The author recommends sitting at a chessboard, and that works fine too, but your computer has some advantages. With your computer you can set up the position, make the moves, and then start at the beginning again. You can't "rewind" your chessboard like this! Also, some examples have two different variations, with your computer you can go to the starting position and then make the moves for the next variation.

Any computer chess software should be able to do this for you, I just use the free blitzin software that I use to play online at ICC (chessclub.com).

I think Pandolfini's Endgame Course is a great book. Most other reviewers have stated the nuts and bolts of the book, but I wanted to share the best method I found for studying it. Don't get me wrong, it's nothing super difficult, but using your computer can save you time and make it a little easier. Also, don't feel the need to go through the book in one sitting. There are 240 examples, you could go through 24 a day and be done in 10 days. That's better than trying to cram or never reading through the book at all!

I have most of Pandolfini's books, while all of them are good, some are better than others. This is one of the better ones. Weapons of Chess is also very good, it's an encyclopedia of chess strategy, very helpful.

Not on the level of Silman's endgame manual, but I'd probably recommend this book first for a sub 1400ish player. (although they should move on to Silman's manual after this) The information is presented in a clear and logical fashion and is pretty easy to digest. Beginner's to intermediates who have not done much endgame study will find something of value here.