Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual

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To get the opposition means to achieve this standing of the kings one square apart with the opponent to move (that is, to place him in zugzwang); to fall into opposition means, conversely, to fall into zugzwang oneself. It’s difficult for the king to fight three connected passed pawns. It has no chance at all, if the enemy has any moves in reserve. If not, then a situation of reciprocal zugzwang could arise.

Some practical endings are introduced by the heading Tragicomedy. These are examples of serious errors committed by various players (sometimes extremely strong ones). The point is not to laugh at them: you know that there are spots even on the sun. These cases are simply excellent warnings against ignoring endgame theory. Additionally, experience shows that these cases tend to be very well remembered by the student, and are therefore very helpful in absorbing and retaining endgame ideas. His material matured over decades, and he extensively tested it in study sessions with countless students. You feel that in the book. On top of that it has a good mix of examples, explanations and a couple of anecdotes. Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual ... may well be the chess book of the year... It comes close to an ultimate one-volume manual on the endgame. Lubomir Kavalek in his chess column of December 1, 2003 in the Washington Post. In the foreword to the fifth edition, Vladimir Kramnik, an outstanding endgame player himself, describes Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual as one of the best books that were recently published. He claims that it is a book for professionals and amateurs alike. Is he right, is the Manual an endgame book for everyone?The first chapter is by far the longest and beefiest: the pawn endgames, and it makes perfect sense: you cannot hope to correctly simplify from a piece endgame into a pawn endgame if you have no clue where you stand in that pawn endgame. Therefore, that is where you start. In the chapter about knight endgames we also made a lot of discoveries, e.g. in the very famous example Lasker vs Nimzowitsch (3-7). If the square does not reach the edge of the board, then the king can hold the pawns. If there are two files between the pawns, the king can capture both; if the distance is any greater, he can only prevent their further advance. The kings were on d5 and c8 here; but we shall not place them on the board just yet - let’s deal with the squares of correspondence first.

It sometimes happens that a king outside the square of a passed pawn can still catch it. The win of the missing tempo (or even several tempi) is accomplished by the creation of accompanying threats, most often (though not exclusively) involved with supporting one’s own passed pawn. The following position is very important, both for itself and as an illustration of the characteristic logic of analyzing corresponding squares. Mark Dvoretsky; Artur Yusupov. Secrets of Positional Play: School of Future Champions 4. Olms. ISBN 978-3-283-00518-4. Emanuel Lasker, alert as ever, finds the best move. This is despite already having to defend accurately for a long time. The course gives a convincing explanations at to why the outwardly sensible-looking move 99 Nb2? fails to hold the position. Going through this book will certainly improve your endgame knowledge, but just as important, it will also greatly improve your ability to calculate variations... What really impresses me is the deep level of analysis in the book... All I can say is: This is a great book. I hope it will bring you as much pleasure as it has me." -- From the Preface to the First Edition by International Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard

On the queenside, the square doesn’t reach the edge of the board, so the pawns can be held: 1 Kc3 a3 2 Kc2. On the kingside, however, the pawns are already quite far advanced. True, the king can prevent them from queening - so far; but because of zugzwang, he will soon be forced to let them through. So this brings me to my question to you. You seem to know alot of these endgame books. Do you think it is a waste for me to buy Silmans book when I know everything up to the class A section or should I get it and refresh everything in my head (Might help in blitz games?) or should I buy an endgame book (one of your other suggestions?) that starts at a slightly higher level and/or has more detailed info for class A+ endgame? There are a lot of choices besides the two that reside on polemic ends of the spectrum (Silman/Dvorestky). To anyone that is 2000 and lower rated, the Silman book still remians an excellent choice and hard to argue against, despite my un-love for it (too much empty white space! and some mistakes in analysis that only 2200+ would recognize). For example, with three pawns against two or even with four against three, with standard pawn structures, the task of the defender is not too difficult (once in a blitz tournament I managed to hold two such endings, one against Tal and the other against Vasiukov). As for the case of five pawns against four, the probability of losing is much greater. This is where the players agreed to a draw, as there is little point in wasting energy trying to win such a position against Emanuel Lasker.

Pawn endings are very concrete - even the tiniest change in the position generally alters the shape and outcome of the struggle. Here you can rarely get along on general principles - you must know how to calculate accurately. Our subject is endgame theory. Some problems of chess psychology that belong to general endgame techniques are beyond our discussion. Interested readers may turn to the aforementioned Endgame Strategy by Shereshevsky, or to Technique for the Tournament Player, a book by this writer and Yusupov.Taking the distant opposition with 1 Ke1? leads only to a draw. The opposition on the e-file is meaningless: 1...Ke8! 2 Ke2 Ke7 3 Ke3 Ke8 4 Ke4 Ke7, and White cannot get any closer, because the e5-square is off limits. And if the white king leaves the e-file, his opponent will take the opposition forever, i.e.: 2 Kf2 Kf8! 3 Kg3 Kg7! 4 Kf3 Kf7!, etc. I consider it to be one of the very best chess books published in recent times and I am very pleased with the new enhanced edition that has come out. Starting with the white king at e4, the mate is delivered in somewhat different fashion: 1 Qb3+ Ka1 2 Qc3+ Kb1 3 Kd3! a1Q 4 Qc2#. The section which follows is devoted to those cases in which both sides queen simultaneously. In such situations, the game sometimes turns into a queen versus pawns endgame - so it makes sense to get to know its theory first. Queen vs. Pawns Many pawn endings are clearly defined tempo-battles. In these endgames, speed is everything: which pawn will queen first, will the king come in time to stop the passed pawn or get to the other side of the board in time. And there are other pawn endings in which a maneuvering war predominates, and in which zugzwang assumes paramount importance.

Practical training, by which I mean solving appropriate exercises, is essential. You will find a large number and wide variety of exercises in this book, from easy to very difficult. Some solutions are given directly after the exercises, other are placed in the special chapter that concludes the book.Qb4+ Ka2 2 Qc3 Kb1 3 Qb3+ Ka1! 4 Qe3 Kb1 5 Qd3 Kb2 6 Qe2!? Ka1!= (but not 6...Kb1? 7 Kc4! c1Q+ 8 Kb3+-). As can be seen, the overall format is superbly well-suited for studying on a computer, laptop, or Windows tablet, and the price and value cannot be argued. This is one of the greatest endgame manuals ever. One question the reader might ask is regarding the edition. After all, this is based on the first edition, and reading the prefaces of later ones, even the second, which I own, there is talk of corrections. Should you be concerned? Definitely not. The short diagonal: even with the “right” king position, the draw is impossible if one of the diagonals along which the bishop will restrain the pawn proves too short.