Customer Reviews

Winning Chess Endings

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Quite simply, the absolutely best endgame book on the market today.

ALL my students love it.

I used to teach primarily out of "Pandolfini's Endgame Course." (This is an excellent book, and actually has much more overall material than the Seirawan book.) But this book is better. There is a lot more verbiage and explanations. GM Seirawan takes great pains to explain the moves and the GENERAL IDEAS of the ending you are trying to learn. Its almost as good as if you walked up to the GM, sat down by his knee and said, "Master, teach me everything I need to know to play the endings competently and well."

The Microsoft Press people have one of the finest teams of editors, proofreaders, etc. They have put together one of the best Chess Book series I have ever seen. I can heartily recommend the entire series.

I am sure if you buy this book and study it diligently, your understanding of the end phase of the game will increase 1000%!

(One minor note: The GM does a little bit of showing off in this book. Example: The ending where he has to calculate the win over 20 moves in advance is over the head of the average IM!! But I think you should expect a little of that from a player of Seirawan's capability. Remember, he was one of the country's strongest Master's well before he was out of his teens. He has won or tied for the U.S. Championship several times. He has been a Candidate for the World Championship and has won 1st Place at many International tournaments. So its not suprising to see a little chest thumping going on.)

This book does not replace an endgame manual, not even at the beginner level. You could, for example, read Pandolfini's Endgame Course in its entirety and still get some value from this book. It is not complete.

It is simply fun. Seirawan explains the ideas in words. He throws in anecdotes, tension, and humor. He goes over some of the basics in excruciating detail (for example, King+Bishop+Knight v. King, which is extremely rare in practice). He includes complete master-level endings so that you can see how it's done. His discussion of rook endings (extremely common in practice) is helpful. He finishes with a very interesting chapter on the difference between grandmaster play and the theoretically perfect moves in computer generated tablebases.

Another enthralling re-print in the Winning Chess series. Most appropriate to about 1300 level, even with no prior endgame knowledge.

I'm around a 1400 player, and I found this book to be useful, for the most part (although I *still* have trouble with kbn-k!), as it will give you the ideas behind many endings. Yasser takes a building block approach, and constantly builds upon prior knowledge in a very effective way.

This is, by far, the best endgame book I own.

This is a review of the early part of Winning Chess Endings by Yasser Seirawan. I just received Winning chess Enginds by Yasser Seirawan. I was eagerly anticipating this book, as the reviews were glowing about how great the explanations were, even if it didn't cover all important endgame theory compared to other texts. I didn't really care about coverage, as I know that's not really possible to cover all endgames and do it in the detail that a beginner requires. The main thing I expected and wanted from this book was getting deep understanding of different endgame types from what it did cover.

I dissapointed with the first chapter, Basic Endgames, and with the beginning of chapter two, King and Pawn endings. Pandolfini's Endgame Course is much better on the two bishops endgame: Pandolfini shows you stage by stage how you can rustle the enemy king into the corner with two bishops. This approach of breaking the solution down into different stages is in my opinion much more helpful to the beginner than showing just one example from start to finish, which is what Seirawan does for the two bishops. Pandolfini's two bishops is superior to Seirawan's.

Seirawan has a detailed discussion on knight and bishop vs. king, but again I prefer Pandolfini's approach of breaking down the ending from the final checkmate positions, then working backwards towards how to maneuver into the checkmate positions. Seirawan does have more text in knight and bishop compared to Pandolfini but I'm not sure it's more instructive in this case. So I'm neutral about knight and bishop with a nod toward prefering Pandolfini's organization.

In the beginning of the King and Pawn seciton, Seirawan introduces the critical notion of distant opposition without ever defining it or telling how the reader can calculate distant opposition himself. Silman's "Reassess Your Chess" has an exemplary distant opposition discussion, with many detailed diagrams and wording showing exactly how to calculate (distant) opposition along with very detailed examples discussing distant oppostion and showing how one king can outflank another king. Seirawan just breezes through this topic, missing an important teaching opportunity, leaving the beginningn reader confused. Now I'm starting to get worried: is the rest of the book going to be this way, too? My concern is: how will I know if Seirawan misses more important teaching opportunities in those areas I'm not already very familiar with?

In the section on the "tempo tester," (a pawn vs. pawn game Seirawan says is great for teaching tempo calculation), Seirawan gives no guidelines at all at how to approach playing it well or how the calculation should be done! He writes "I always beat my students at this game, white or black" without giving any insights into what his thinking is when he plays, or what techniques he uses, or just what kinds of calculation he does and just how to do the same yourself. I know that chess is all about doing the hard work yourself, but the point of buying chess books is to get direction and to prevent flailing around.

Again, this is just a review of the initial section of the book. I am really hoping the rest is better. Flipping through the rest of the book, the discussions do *look* like they are very detailed, and I see general principles are outlined, but my confidence has been shaken a bit by the bad beginning. I'm rating it 3 stars for what I see in the remainder of the book. I'd give it 1 or 2 stars at most based on the beginning, and recommend strongly that readers look elsewhere for the basics (Pandolfini and Silman referenced above).

My 5-year-old (soon to turn 6) started participating in the scholastic tournaments about half a year ago. He often seemed to do well in the beginning and the middle parts of his games but mess up in the end. A friend introduced this book to us because her kids' endgame coach used it. She thought the endgames introduced in this book were easier for kids to understand and apply to their own games. (Her own kids are 5 and 8 years old. Their USCF ratings are about 1200 and 1450.) The first day I got this book and gave it to my kid, he was all excited and started studying it by reading the book and playing it out on the chess board. Before his bed time, he had read through 86 pages. I guess the author's language must be easy to understand, or my kid who's still a kindergartener couldn't possibly go through it at such fast pace. I asked him how he thought of the book. He replied, "This is a cool monster book!" As to the result from reading this book, well, his ICC rating jumped from around 1200 to almost 1400 after studying this book on his own for just 3 days. He is still working on it and has asked me to buy all the other books by the same author. My kid's USCF rating is about 1100 so I guess this book is at least great for the advanced beginners.

Yasser saved one of the best of his Microsoft series for last. As in all his books, his style is easy to read and informative. It is one of the few endgame books around that doesn't bore you to tears plodding through it. It's also refreshing to see a top ranked player and author show how he blew an endgame against Kasparov, humility at its best.

What is nice to see his how he attempts to teach you WHY you make a move in the endgame versus so many other books which plod you through 100's of positions trying to show you the same concept.

For the advanced beginner of the lower intermediate player, this book is a fine addition to anyone's chess library.

When I received this book as a gift from my girlfriend I expected to be able to read it and master the areas of the endgame that were covered in the book. However, things are much more complicated than that. I quickly found out that volumes have been written concerning just king and pawn endings and that this book would only give me a good general understanding of the various types of endings. Now this in itself can improve your chess skills but it was not what I was looking for when I asked for this book.

Because I was looking to spend six months of serious study on the endgame this book did not match my needs but I was able to find two books that did: Secrets of Pawn Endings and the Survivor's Guide to Rook Endings. Then I was able to use this book as a review and later as an introduction to minor piece endings.

This is a great book but you should be aware of what you want before you buy it. If you are looking for a more detailed, technical introduction to endings I suggest you buy a book specialized on the ending in question and after you have studied several months you may wish to get this book as a review. Repetition and review are key in learning anything. But if you are looking for a good, very general introduction to the basics of chess endings then this book will be perfect for.

I only gave it four stars because I do not believe that the author covered the idea of key and critical squares in the opposition well enough. After playing through the positions of kings with multiple pawns several times and not feeling I understood it I purchased Secrets of Pawn Endings. It was only then, with the detailed treatment of key squares and critical squares in relation to the opposition, did I have a handle on the positions in question. This is such a fundamental aspect of the endgame that it certainly worth one star. After all, either player can simplify the endgame through exchanging pieces to a king and pawn ending and you must be aware if it is a win, loss or draw for you.

This book is great if you dont have much experience with endgames, which most people dont. Some of the types of endings discussed are mating with just a queen, rook, two bishops, or a bishop and a knight, and the concepts behind all of them. The concepts of the pawn race, multiple pawn endings, queen vs. pawn on the seventh rank, queen endings, and rook endings are discussed. Unlike most endings I have read, in this book you will learn the ideas behind the moves instead of just numerous lines of play. This has dramatically improved my overal chess skills, knowledge of the endgame teaches you much about the middle and opening, such as how important tempo and control of the center is. It is a great reference.

This book is 5 stars if you are relatively new to chess (below a B rank in the USCF), but 3 stars if you already know a fair amount about endgames because it doesnt go that in depth. Hence, 4 stars.

I can honestly say that I have never disliked a single book in the Winning Chess Series. Yasser Seirawan is a brilliant author. He combines his good writing skill and humor, his entertaining personality, his good chess skill, and his good teaching skill all into his winning chess series.

Winning Chess Endings is a great book. After just a few hours of studying king and pawn endgames from this book, I felt like I had mastered it. My hypothesis was correct when I went to a big national tournament and was undefeated! 3 out of 5 of my games were king and pawn endgames, and I was able to effectively win them thanks to this book. I have yet to complete the other chapters, Queen and pawn endings, Rook endings, bishop endings, knight endings, Bishop vs. Knight, Rook vs. Minor pieces , and the rare and the perfect. My only complaint is that in the basic mates chapter, where he teaches you King and rook vs. King checkmates(which I already knew), King and Queen vs. king endgames(which I already knew), King and two bishops vs.kings endgames (which I didn't know before, but now do know because of this book) and King andn Bishop and Knight vs. King. That last one is a very difficult one, and I don't feel that Yasser Seirawan teaches it well.

Overall this book was ideal for my level(USCF 1236) and probably good for ratings between 1000 and 1400.

Well Yaz gets around to the important endgame phase of chess which is so important. Yaz presents a nice work on the endgame which enables the reader to have an understanding of this phase of chess. It prepares the reader for more advanced works on the endgame (all of Yaz's books accomplish this feat). One needs to really give this book the going over since the concepts here in are very important. A strong International Master was quoated as saying 'Studying the endgame in chess is like cheating!' after reading this endgame book which was followed by some other more specialized (advanced) works I could not agree more!