Customer Reviews

Tactical Chess Endings: Improve Your Chess by Unlocking the Secrets of the Endgame

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This is my initial book review for amazon.Previous to reading Nunn's opus,I've always assumed endgames were of a strategical nature.Kotov in "Think like a grandmaster" tells a story about Capablanca's endgames.He claims to have met him at some chess event where a lecture was being given about endings.Capas basic claim was that planing the optimum location for the chess pieces in the ending was more important than the tatical variations.One gets the impression that the tatical variations just become automatically apparent once the strategical plan via piece place comes to fruition.Therefore the endgame can be fathomed intuatively with only a minimal effort of analysis.Nunn's book dispells that notion entirely by claiming endgames can be tatical.They can also be strategical like any other part of the game.Many strong grandmasters overlook many combinative possibilities in this part of the,because of such sterotypic thinking as mentioned above.This book can help one approach the ending with a fresh pair of eyes.From a personal perspective I have always over looked opportunities in combinative endgames assuming they do not exist.Now I know better.This book has freed me of such generalized thinking.A paradox I have seemed to stumble across is that apparently simple end games even appear to be more tatical than complex ones.Nunn by accident in his introductory statement seems to have also made a beautiful distinction between strategy and tactics. The former being the creation of plans and the latter being it's execution once it's apparent.The games are classics.Many include ideas such as mates, Stalemates, Promotion, Positional draws,fortresses ect.

This book is good, but not great. It covers many common endgame themes such as zugzwang, and how to draw, etc. There are a few good examples on tactics, but more examples on common endgame themes. This book is more for the advanced begginer/intermediate player.

I like this book. It is not required reading or anything, but it contains unusual endgame positions (some bordering on the bizarre!) and it is fun to work through while on-the-go (or at least that's how I used it). Of course you could set up the positons, but I preferred to go through it in my head to practice my visualization skills.

Endgames CAN be tactical, and this book, if anything, is a reminder of that.