A few months ago I bought a copy of Silman’s Complete Endgame Course, and I’m finally starting to dig into it. I think I’m going to learn a heck of a lot from it. The only endgame book I have really studied before was a slim book by Averbakh called Chess Endgames: Essential Knowledge, and I really do not think that Averbakh’s book takes you through to master level the way that Silman promises to. I decided to jump into Silman’s book at the class “A” level, because it looked as if I knew everything in the chapters up to class “B,” but already in the class “A” chapter there were some things I didn’t know. (Are you scandalized? Does this mean I have to give up my National Master title?)
The class “A” chapter starts out with rook and rook-pawn versus rook positions, and already it has some great stuff. How many open files do you need to free your king if it is stuck on the eighth rank in front of the pawn? (Four.) How do you draw the game if you have the rook and your opponent has the rook and rook-pawn, and his rook is in front of the pawn? If the pawn is on the seventh rank, you want your rook behind the pawn, of course — that much is obvious. And you have to keep your king on the opposite side of the board from the pawn — something that is not obvious to a lot of players. I actually talked about this in my lecture on skewers.
The thing I didn’t know is what to do if the pawn is on the sixth rank. Silman shows that in that case you want your rook attacking the pawn from the side, not from behind, and he shows something called the Vancura position that I had never heard of.
This is all really cool stuff, but I do have one slight reservation. I’ve gone my whole chess career, I believe, without playing a single game that went down to rook and rook-pawn versus rook. So it’s unclear that knowing these endings will make a big practical difference to me (or to you). Also, the problem with learning rules like “you need four files between your king and the enemy king” is that in a game, you usually don’t have control over this. The main thing to know is that you want to cut off the enemy king as far away from the passed pawn as possible. If you can get four ranks, then great. If you can only get three, then knowing that you need four is not going to be a big help to you.
I think that the most valuable thing I will learn from this book is not the rules but the ideas — the winning or drawing plans. I just hope that I can remember them all!
How much have you studied endgames? What books did you find useful? How often do you find yourself calling on the specific knowledge you read in an endgame book?
