Athough accurate opening play is satisfying and the middle game can be exciting, for most chess players victory is the aim. This book boils down the essential wisdom of the endgame, and gives the player ideas and the ability to recognise when to play them.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
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The right endgame knowledge is the magic key to chess mastery. This book gives you that key! -- World Chess champion Vassily Smyslov
About the Author
Grandmaster Lev Alburt, three-time US Champion and former European Champion is one of the world's most sought-after chess teachers, famous for providing aspiring players easy access to master-level ideas. He is the only top-echelon GM to develop time-efficient, maximum-impact lessons for those below master strength. Grandmaster Nikolai Kroglus is a famed endgame expert, and a renowned trainer and chess psychologist so highly valued that World Champion Boris Spassky, in his 1972 defense against Bobby Fischer, insisted on Krogius as a special coach. Krogius trained a famous and dominant generation of Russian grandmasters. Now you have access to his special insights and techniques.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book,
This review is from: Just the Facts! Winning Endgame Knowledge in One Volume (Comprehensive Chess Course Series) (Paperback)
As a sub 1200 player, I have always found the endgame a mystery. This book lays out the basic principles in a manner that is easy to remember--an obvious key to putting the them to work on the board. I would highly recommend it to those who have found endgame books in general difficult to follow, and hey let's face it, boring. Alburt's book is actually fun to read. I'm finding that I remember the material and have put it to good use in club and tournament play--where it counts!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
endgame knowledge in a nuttshell,
By
This review is from: Just the Facts! Winning Endgame Knowledge in One Volume (Comprehensive Chess Course Series) (Paperback)
I've been playing for about 10 years now, but after my studies no longer at a club (just occasionally for about 5 years).
A year ago I picked up club-chess again. And I wanted to climb the elo-ladder as quickly as possible. So the question was how to make forward progress??? (rating 1483 elo at the time). The answer was pretty simple: I lacked some basic skills and the few books I bought so far (in a very distant past) were completely useless (eg. Batsford chess openings)! It was clear that I had to learn to understand chess, in stead of merely calculating moves. "Just the facts" was the first book of Alburt I purchased. It's concise and to the point: it clearly states what is and what is not important. For a married working man with little time, a nice bonus. Some critics say that the analysis is sometimes incorrect. Personally, I don't care! The book explains how to treat a certain type of endgame (and therein Alburt is not wrong); so what if Fritz or whatever program doesn't agree with a certain move. Let's face it : all our games are incorrect at some point, and will be for a long time. I didn't like the ads in the (back of the) book. These books are also quite expensive if you compare with the series of Seirawan for instance. A final drawback is that is not so much fun to read like Silman, Nunn or other chess writers (who really write a story as well). But overall speaking: great book! great series! Clear cut advice for players who don't want to lose (on) time. To give you an idea, i read the whole series by now and I'm beating players of +1800 elo at my club. Filip Hellemans.
21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Too Much Clutter to be "Just the Facts" - not for beginners,
By michael thomas (lynnwood, washington United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Just the Facts! Winning Endgame Knowledge in One Volume (Comprehensive Chess Course Series) (Paperback)
An earlier reviewer stated that the book's design and layout is distracting and that the colored diagrams are confusing. I completely agree. . . Mr. Alburt, with all due respect, has written a very confusing book, because all those "facts" and nothing but just those "facts" are buried under all the styling! In his forward "Note to the Reader" he explains that the blue diagrams illustrate "the most important positions and ideas". Well, I'm sure they are important, because he's a grandmaster and I'm not, so he ought to know, but my complaint is that he doesn't explain why these are "important positions and ideas". He just breaks them out for you to notice them, along with all the other flash and pizzazz! What about those special "analysis" diagrams that are presented to us in standard gray diagram form, but are labeled "analysis" in blue type. Because the author does not, are we the readers supposed to analyze these? Then there's all the other "blueness": the blue-boxed footnotes and headers on many of the pages. . . the occasional blue, full-page explanation of topics such as "Most Winnable Endgames" on Page 41, or "Fortress Building" on Page 235. . .the exercises in each chapter, presented in standard gray diagrams but labled "Exercise" in blue. . .the various blue cartoon drawings of chess pieces scattered throughout the book, and so on. It appears as though the author (and maybe the editors) decided initially to select the color of blue to highlight the important ideas, but then allowed their chosen color to get out of hand and become "prostituted" with overuse, to the point where the eyes get confused over just what's important and what's not. Quite frankly, Mr. Alburt wouldn't have to break all these diagrams out into color if he had followed the format of Bruce Pandolfini, in the latter's book, "Pandolfini's Endgame Course", because Mr. Pandolfini's book is the one that presents "just the facts", not Mr. Alburt. In Bruce's book, there's one important position on each page, with a concise explanation of exactly what to do and why to do it. . . each idea and line of moves is all on one page. Variations of these ideas are on the subsequent pages that follow; again, with the slightly-different-idea and its corresponding slightly-different-starting position all on one page. In fact, Bruce Pandolfini's book is the one that should be entitled "Just the Facts", not Lev Alburt's book. A better title for Lev's book would have been, "A Wonderful, Meandering Stroll Along the Road to Endgame Understanding", with maybe a subtitle such as "Stopping Along the Way to Appreciate Various and Sundry Assides", such as all the biographies of famous endgame masters, and all the other trivia contained in this book, which only serve to help clutter the mind of the average amateur trying to comprehend "just the facts." No, "Pandolfini Endgame Course" is the one you want to get for basic endgame understanding. A wonderful Lev Alburt book to purchase would be his "Pocket Training Book", containing those 300 positions you need to master. I highly recommend this book, which goes over the importance of pattern recognition as it's related to tactics. As a matter of fact, it's worth noting that in the introduction of this "Pocket Training Book, Mr. Alburt himself explains that you don't need to know hundreds of endgame positions to be a strong player . . . you only need to know about a dozen or so to be a strong tournament player, and about 50 or so to play at master strength! And all 50 are included in this pocket book. Just make sure that you disregard the cover of the sexy grandmaster himself posing with his fashion model/chess student. So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth: you don't need "Just the Facts" after all! You don't need a 400 page volume of facts buried under clutter and wrapped up in trivia that you the readers have to sort out! Get yourself the following: Pandolfini's Endgame Course... and Lev's Pocket Training Book, for not much more than that, brand new, also here on Amazon.
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