Customer Reviews

Secrets of Pawn Endings

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a comprehensive and eminently readable treatise on pawn endings. The organisation is superb. Chapters titled 'Race of the Passed Pawns' 'Unique features of the Rook's Pawn', 'Fortresses' 'Breakthrough', 'Fight for Tempi and Manouevre', 'Corresponding Squares', 'Thinking Methods to Find the Right Move' (among others) are to be found. These chapter titles themselves attest to the excellence of this treatise. I use the word 'treatise' deliberately; the coverage is comprehensive. The work is a piece of scholarship written with Teutonic thoroughness and accuracy.

This is not to say that there are not other good pawn ending books around. The Averbakh book is quite good, as is the one by Hajenius and van Riemsdijk (The Final Countdown). The book by Fishbein is not a bad effort. But the title being reviewed here beats 'em all. I'd give the Averbakh book 4 stars and the other two 3 stars each. 'Secrets of Pawn Endings' deserves 5.

If you have already studied a basic endgame book and wish to embark on a careful study of pawn endings, this is the book for you

Unfortunately, explanations of pawn endings tend to be more mystifying than helpful to players of average talent (like me). Even single pawn endgames can seem so puzzling. However, with a little work even average players can understand this book. I suspect it would be helpful to unusually talented and experienced players as well.

I feel that for most player's purposes this book is a little better than Averbach's book, but it's most fun to have them both and compare their explanations. Averbach's book spends far more time on the theory of corresponding squares, while this book is more practical. In short, don't despair if you can't find Averbach's book; this one is very good.

If you've read a basic introduction to the endgame, and want to go deeper, this is the next step. All other endgames constantly threaten to reduce to pawn endgames, so these are fundamental concepts. As it says on the back cover, "Without an understanding of [pawn endings] it is impossible to master more complicated endings." That is absolutely true.

Many players will feel that pawn endgames are boring, but in reality they can be very beautiful. If you learn to enjoy them, then your enjoyment of the entire game of chess will increase.

This is the only books I found that covers all the basic concepts of pawn endings that are taken for granted in more advanced books. For example, if you've read books like My System, you're probably familiar with pawn breakthroughs. This book shows you how to engineer them.

Secrets of Pawn Endings is not an easy read. But if you want to take your endgame to the next level, you need this book.

Ok, endgame books are mostly raw facts and calculation. Accuracy is more important than writing ability. If you purchased this book, there is no doubt what you expected to take from it.

When I found the first typo on the first page of chapter one I thought I made a bad purchase. I don't care about excuses...poor editing, hard to translate from German, or anything else.

As I continued to read I found the book to be better than I had expected. Once I got used to the codes and symbols, the book was very enjoyable. The exercises were outstanding. They hammered home the critical ideas without wasting your time on exercises that would never occur in an actual game. And yes the book was very accurate. I learned a few new ways to quickly evaluate complex positions. The order of the exercises was perfect. Each exercise built on the previous exercises as they flowed smoothly through the book. You can not spend too much time with a book like this.

After living and playing in Germany for the past two years I am amazed at the strength of German players and their passion for the game. They are absolutely crazy about chess. I find chess everywhere I go in this country. These two authors are a direct reflection of chess in Germany today. I will look for more of their books.

I'm a class C player interested in seriously improving my game. My first endgame book was by Yasser Seirawan, Winning Chess Endings. I didn't really get enough out of the book's section on pawn endings. Due to this I decided to purchase this boook and I was amazed at what I could learn and how quickly. I believe this is the easiest to understand book on any aspect of chess theory I have ever read.

To get the most out of this book I highly recommend playing through the positions against a strong chess engine (Fritz, for example). Evaluate the test positions in your head and if you get any incorrect play through the positions against the engine.

I rarely reach endgames in my play, but I'm sure that I am able to correctly evaluate if I should trade off into an ending or not when I am faced with the choice.

This is a rather difficult book for us, C-players, to follow. The positions have only two types of pieces, Kings and Pawns. In order to win, some Ps must reach the 6th or 7th to demonstrate to us that game is decided. The King- and Pawn-moves are single squares; therefore to achieve this goal the game must take many moves. This makes the variations of many (sometimes dozen of) moves deep. Unless we have the visual ability like the masters or grandmasters do, we need a chessboard or program to follow the moves incrementally. To study and understand these deep analyses, the authors recommend us, average players, to use chessboard and play them through. I think this is good for even masters and GMs. For us, amateurs, with 10 percent of its knowledge we could hold ground fairly against our opponents. I need at least one year or so to go through all the details the book provides.
I just caught three major mistakes that I wrongly believed all these years.
1) Two isolated P's separated by 1 file against a King are an automatic win. Wrong.
2) Two connected passed P's with the rear P blocked by enemy lone P is an automatic win. Wrong.
3) In pawn ending with two P's each, the outside passed P wins always. Wrong.
Above are three of many simple rules I often aim for when reaching the pure P endings.
Diagrams 8.01D, 4.07 and 3.12 from this book debunks my beliefs. What is missing with my simple rules? The King-position. In the pure pawn endings, the K-position is the single most important factor. The list on the Crash Course page is very helpful. There are about 40 different themes. So far I could recognize and understand 3 or 4 of them, but not 100% certainty, unless I have to carefully and quietly study the book.
This book is worth 5 stars. Hope I could use what it offers in real games. At C-class, our games are often over during the middle-games by blunders. The fewer pieces on our endgames are, the stronger (or more equal) are we. Good luck to all.

This book is simply amazing. If you commit the time to study it in depth, you will learn subtleties that would possibly be forever lost to you. One thouroughly awesome example is from the ending of the game S.Ludwig-A.Klauser (Bad Ragaz 1990), where White had an extra pawn (3 vs.2 on the queenside), and it was White to move in the following position: W:Kd3, pawns on a4,b2,c2, B:Ke6, pawns on a7,b7. You would intuitively think that the winning procedure would be to simply blow the pawns up the board a la Capablanca/Nimzovichs' "candidate in front" rule and just win with your extra pawn. However, since there is a deep subtlety (only found through intense study of this book!) of the fact that White's rook pawn has **already moved**, Black will be able to draw in a study-like fashion with a bishop and rook's pawn vs. rook's pawn setup by preventing the opposition and moving his king to the same color as the square of the rook pawn if it be on a4/a5/a6, etc. White wins this position by moving his king up and then advancing his c-pawn, leaving his b-pawn for reserve tempos, losing his c-pawn for Black's b-pawn (likely with check), then using the last reserve tempo from the b-pawn to outflank Black. Not something that is intuitive, and immensely helpful!

This book is chock-full of things like the last example, and you will learn the subtleties and exceptions to things like Bahr's rule (concerning fixed rook pawns and a passed pawn), with other many counter-intuitive winning or drawing procedures. The authors have also done an incredible job with back-linking positions in later chapters with material from previous chapters when variations translate into something already learned, all of which is easily referenced for the reader.

I can now see why everyone has rated this book 5 stars. Highly, highly recommended.

I bought "Secrets of Pawn Endings" by Muller and Lamprecht because (1) I'm a chess book addict, because (2) I already had (and was impressed by) "Fundamental Chess Endings" by the same authors, and mainly because (3) I have decided on a program of self study/improvement, the secondary emphasis of which was endings (For the curious: tactics and the CD CTART-3.0 by Convetta receives primary emphasis). I am fairly reluctant to buy ANY chess book at this stage of my life: because of (1) I have enough already to keep me busy...

If you want to study endings (or ANY aspect of chess) there are a lot of good books on the market. The problem I had (and am still having) is trying to get myself to FOCUS on a directed organized program of study: I can't read them all -- or even any substantial fraction thereof -- in detail. I won't live that long...

So: Given the you've decided to study/learn chess endings which book(s) should you buy?

The most obvious choice is "Basic Chess Endings" if for no other reason because it is the seminal work on the subject, and so much the more so because the mistakes have been culled out and it's been translated into algebraic by Pal Benko.

And Benko's revision of Fine's "Basic Chess Endings" is a fine piece of work, no question. But somehow I never got very far reading (or attempting to...) go through it cover to cover. So being forever hopeful and because everybody spoke so well of it, I got a copy of "Fundamental Chess Endings" by Muller and Lamprecht when it first came out on 2002 of so.

And what I saw in "Fundamental Chess Endings" I liked: The examples where somehow more explicit and more structured than BCE and there were exercises that forced you to participate, which I guess is my main "beef" with BCE: It's an outstanding book, but you can't learn this stuff by just reading. What makes Muller and Lamprecht's more suitable as a learning tool is their more structured approach and the exercises at the end of each section.

But: After completing the chapter on king and pawn endings in "Fundamental Chess Endings" I still felt "light" and that I needed more practce/instruction on that particular topic. And Fine himself begins the chapter on K and P endings in the original BCE with, "this chapter is in every sense fundamental..." And it makes sense: All endings ultimately reduce to K and P endings.

So when I found out Muller and Lamprecht had done a book on King and Pawn Endings I knew sooner or later I was going to break down and buy it.

And it's everything it thought it would be: It's done in the same style and layout and their larger endgame work, with a very structured approach and lots of exercises.

It is clear that IF I have the WILL to go though it (well, at least least the first 12 chapters) and learn well the material therein, I'll know everything I need to know (about pawn endings at least) to hit that 2200 mark in the sky that every class player dreams of.

But whether I stick with it is a character issue involving me which is in no way the fault of the book...

So back to work now...but not before today's hour with CT ART 3.0. Tactics are my PRIMARY focus. Endings are secondary...

Despite being a novice player and owning other excellent end game books, in this book there is much material that is not out of my intellectual reach. It feels like I will be learning from this book for decades to come!! The accuracy and clarity of the text with the numerous diagrams makes the book excellent to even the weaker players. Doubtless this book has even material useful to grandmasters. Enjoy reading it, I do.

This book starts with the basic concepts of King and Pawn against King, gives a thorough tour of the situations arising with progressively more pawns, and ends with general advice about finding plans in complicated situations. The whole exposition is given in clear, logical prose supported by valuable and well-diagrammed game analyses and exercises. The authors do not shirk giving clear explanations of the basics, while there is enough advanced material to give food for thought, I suspect, to much stronger players. In short I was delighted with this book, and strongly recommend it.