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Chess Endings Made Simple Reviewed by Carl Tillotson
This book is designed for those players who wish to improve their endgame play, and are not afraid to put in some work. The author, Ian Snape, is a relative newcomer to the realm of chess publishing, but he does a decent job of covering essential knowledge about chess endings considering the rather limited page count. The book is designed around the presentation of patterns, concepts and plans rather than relying on memorizing or calculating long-winded endings. The book also aims to focus on those areas where the scope for improvement is likely to be the greatest. The book itself is split into two distinct parts. Part One concentrates on the 'theory' whilst Part Two contains 100 exercises to solve. The actual exercises are taken from real games, no compositions here. For once this is a good thing, as many books on endgames contain many examples of contrived positions to demonstrate the concepts. Part One itself is split into a number of Chapters as follows:
As you can see Rook & Pawn endings, being fairly common, take up two chapters themselves. As one would expect, Snape covers many classical endgame themes that have stood the test of time. For instance both the 'Lucena' and 'Philidor' positions are covered, but also some positions the average chess player may not be so familiar with such as the 'Vancura' position. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the position, here it is.
This is a defensive position that you should have in your armoury! The key is the placement of the defending king and rook to ensure that the 'swinging rook' threat is not possible by White! Each chapter is introduced with a number of themes, and Snape explains each 'motif' in some detail and then concludes each chapter with well considered examples of practical play, some containing examples from Grandmaster play as well as examples taken from Snape's own games. The exercises themselves are well thought out and do contain practical examples from real play, some also giving us an indication that even the best of us can make mistakes in the endgame. An illustrative example is the following game where Shirov playing Black loses a drawn endgame!
The losing move played by Shirov was Rc6! If you want to know how to play the ending correctly, then the answer is in Snape's book! Going into the endgame with confidence is a key to winning games. Snape's book attempts to take away some of the mystery surrounding endgames by providing practical examples of positions, which you are likely to face across the board. I for one have noticed that on occasions I accept the draw too easily because I didn't want to find out how the endgame would turn out. I found the book to be an interesting read, a book which one could not read in large doses admittedly, but nonetheless a book that I was able to come back to from time to time to refresh my memory of those positions and techniques that I am sure will help improve my chess skills particularly in the endgame. As to my endgame play, well I am certainly playing my games into the endgames now. My tendency to draw games has now been replaced by a tendency to lose more games, albeit I am also winning some more games! Certainly not a book for the beginner, I feel the beginner would simply get lost and become easily muddled. The improving player will find the book a challenge, but so long as you continue to work hard and your game, and come back to the book as a companion, then you will not be disappointed. Overall, a good attempt at putting Endgame Theory into a more meaningful and practical manual from an author who I am sure we will hear more of. My only concern is that the book is yet another example of where the prices are seemingly going one way - up, and the number of pages are going the opposite direction - down. Whilst this is not a problem with a quality book, I am finding that a lot of books on the market are very much overpriced for what they are. I think both this book would be rated as a definite buy, if the price was somewhat lower.
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