100 Endgames You Must Know, 2008 - free download

   The relative importance of the endgame
   In my first years in the world of chess, I used to read a lot about the importance of a good knowledge of endgames and the futility of studying openings. I used to find this kind of statement not only in Capablanca's works, but also in many articles from magazines of that time: sentences like 'Grandmasters' greater understanding is most clearly noticeable in the endgame' and similar things. Strategy used to receive the same, or similar, treatment when compared to tactics. You could read sentences like 'Grandmasters spend much more time in developing plans rather than in calculating variations' and so forth. That could be the reason why I, who spent almost my whole time during the games in calculating variations accurately, and devoted much more time to the study of openings rather than the endgame, could not even imagine that I would one day become a grandmaster.

   It took me a long time to discover that all those recommendations were fairly exaggerated, but perhaps I should be grateful to them, as I do not know whether, otherwise, I would have paid to the endgame the attention this stage of the game truly deserves. My concern about those statements by famous players led me to devote some time to the study of the endgame, which eventually I enjoyed.

Author: Jesus de la Villa
Title: "100 Endgames You Must Know"
Released: 2008
Format: djvu
Quality: good
Number of pages: 249
Size: 24 Mb