Customer Reviews

Rook Endings (Tournament Player's Collection)

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Levenfish & Smyslov have written as impressive a chess book as I have ever seen. It looks like a Master's degree thesis written at a graduate university program in Chess (tho it is a lively read). It is a testament to the brain power and hard work of its authors.

The key to this book is its *progressive* teaching approach. KRP v. KR positions are discussed first. The pawn is discussed on an edge column like 'h', then on 'g', then 'f', then 'e'. Then the pawn is discussed on an early row like '4', then '5', '6', '7'.
Then KRPP v. KRP positions are discussed, with part of the discussion focused on how to *reduce* to a winning KRP v. KR position studied earlier.

The material is both advanced and not. It does go into extreme detail, but I never had any difficulty understanding the reasons for the moves, after I read the authors' explanations. So in that sense the material is not advanced. Yet there is so much detail, the kind grandmasters need to know, that I could never hope to remember it all a few weeks later. That is not the authors' fault, it is just the harsh truth about chess.

It is fun to understand deep endgame play, if only while reading the book. Thus this book is surprisingly entertaining and fun.

Perhaps the authors did not write the book for us, perhaps they wrote it for themselves, and then published it for whatever extra benefit that might bring.

This book also has an excellect summary Conclusion section, with 22 rules that may stimulate our memory of the sections we read. For flavor here are excerpts for some of those summarized rules:

"7. The possibility of sheltering the king from checks in the immediate neighbourhood of the passed pawn (the principle flight square) often determines the outcome of the game."

"10. A rook and two connected passed pawns generally win against a rook and passed pawn. If the passed pawns have reached the 6th rank there is the possibility of sacrificing the rook for the pawn, transposing into a won ending of..."

"11. With two disconnected pawns against one passed pawn important roles are played by the bridge and diversion."

The matial in this book can only be absorbed by numerous re-readings. If the endgame is the part of chess that excites you the most, or if you are a master who works hours per day at chess, then this book could help your tournament results.

For club players, this book is NOT over our heads. But for us the true purpose of buying this book is for enjoyment, and this it WILL provide. But this book is aiming for great depth in areas that might not be our highest priority, and it is demanding a lot of our time and discipline which we realistically cannot give.

I have the older Descriptive (yuk) notation edition of this book. If the 2002/05/05 claims by reviewer gm_extraordinaire that the newer algebraic notation edition contains too many errors, that could be a serious problem.
That problem could have been avoided by use of a more informative kind of algebraic notation, one that included the origin square. Such notation enables the reader to correct notation errors in the book. Since this book chose the nice format of displaying moves in two columns (White & Black), there is far more then enough space to include origin square info without the printer consuming any more pages.

Here is the Table of Contents:

English translation 1971, 224 pages, ISBN = 0 7134 04493, Descriptive (yuk) notation.

Preface
1. Introduction
-- The properties of the rook
-- King and rook v. king and rook
2. Rook and pawn v. rook
-- Defending king restrains the pawn's advance
-- Pawn on 7th: king is cut off
-- Pawn on 6th: king is cut off
-- Pawn on 5th: king is cut off
-- Pawn on 4th, 3rd and 2n ranks: king is cut off; defense by frontal attack
-- Rook's pawn
3. Rook and two v. rook
-- Connected pawns
-- Disconnected pawns
4. Rook and one v. rook and one
5. More pawns
-- Rook and two v. rook and one
-- Rook and two v. rook and two: Rook and three v. rook and two; Rook and three v. rook and three
6. Numerous pawns
-- Pawns on one wing
-- Extra outside passed pawn
-- One pawn advantage and better position
-- Material equality with positional advantage
-- Insufficient material advantage
-- Slight positional advantage
7. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index of Names

Unfortunately, the earlier edition is the gem that you should get, which is also out of print.

This algebraic edition is FULL of typographical errors in transcription and you should not wish it upon your worst enemy.

As far as I know, no corrections were attempted on this one time revision...

The descriptive notation (e.g., 1.P-K4 N-KB3) is not as easy to read as the algebraic (e.g., 1.e4 Nf6) but this original work is STILL the best work on the subject, though with one or two errors or ommissions that Dvoretsky and others have discovered.

ALWAYS INSIST ON THE DESCRIPTIVE EDITION.

El final mas comun es el de torres, tambien es tremendamente complicado y un error con ventaja puede ser una derrota y un acierto en desventaja puede significar vovler al juego e incluso ganar. Este libro nos muestra muchisimos diagramas que mas que memorizar hay que comprender y reconocer, por ejemplo las casillas criticas, el posicionamiento del Rey, los peones y su avance, etc. Se los recomiendo ya que es un libro que me ayudo a comprender mejor el medio juego para llegar al final.