Product Description: For more than 100 years, the world's leading chess players and teachers have told their students to study the endgame. Now, for the first time, a revolutionary, richly instructive endgame book has been designed for players of all levels. Silman's Complete Endgame Course, by famed writer and player Jeremy Silman, is the one and only endgame book you'll need as you move up the ladder from beginner to strong tournament player and finally to master.
Designed to "speak" to a player in a very personal way, Silman's book teaches the student everything he or she needs to know at his or her current rating level, and builds on that knowledge for each subsequent phase of the player's development. Starting at the beginner's level, all basic mates are clearly and painstakingly explained. After that, the critical building blocks that form the endgame foundation for all tournament hopefuls and experienced tournament competitors are explored in detail. Finally, advanced endgame secrets based on concepts rather than memorization are presented in a way that makes them easy to master.
The basic keys to a well-rounded endgame education--Opposition, the Lucena and Philidor Positions, Cat and Mouse, Trebuchet, Fox in the Chicken Coup, Triangulation, Building a Box, Square of a Pawn, Outflanking, the Principle of Two Weaknesses--are vital. But equally important is creating a love of the endgame, which is addressed at the end of the book with a look at chess tactics, minor piece domination, and a discussion of the five greatest endgame players of all time--all things that every fan of chess at every level can enjoy.
If you have found the endgame to be a mystery, if you have found that your confidence plummets once you reach an endgame, if you have searched for an instructive endgame book that will turn your weakest link--your endgame--into your personal field of power, your search is over. Silman's Complete Endgame Course is the key to a world of essential ideas, startling beauty, and stunning creativity.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Mostly sample endgames, not instruction
A little confusing with instructions like "whoever moves fails" and form a rectangle instead of simply move onto the same color.
Rating: - Worth getting this book
If you're like me and suffer from endgame ignorance and ineptitude, this book will guide you to better understand the endgame and play it successfully. The chapters are arranged by player rating, and therefore the material is introduced to you slowly and very clearly. As you progress through the book, the ideas and lessons become more difficult. But by that time, you already have built up the necessary knowledge to understand the more advanced ideas. Its a good book to have, but it does have some typos.
Rating: - Just a little too casual
I love the idea of progressive introduction of material, in the endgame and anywhere else, and adopting rating ranges as indicators is brilliant (like all simple ideas we didn't think of). I enjoyed the book, learned a great deal, and I think it is correctly well regarded and worth every penny many times over.
Why drop a point from a Book of the Year then? What is the most important single position in endgames? Surely most people would say Lucena, since almost all your rook and pawn endgame technique revolves around getting or avoiding the position. But the presentation of how to play the Lucena position as the attacker in the book is inadequate. Someone relying on this treatment alone could easily get foiled in time trouble by one of the swindles. I think Silman should have done a more thorough presentation of this one position at least. Emms' Survival Guide to Rook Endings covers Lucena pretty completely in 3/4 page (p17) including a diagram! Silman took 5 pages and doesn't mention a single swindle. It wasn't until I read Emms that I realized how vulnerable I would have been relying on Silman alone. That's it - my only criticism, but you might consider topping up this fine book with Emms' little gem for completeness. And don't resign a Lucena without at least trying a swindle - you're lost, but go down swinging!
Rating: - A Very Good Approach to Endgames
I like Silman's approach of teaching concepts based on your rating. This is much more helpful than the usual approach in the a book like Reuben Fine (Basic Chess Endings) where the book is organized by the type of endings. You may still want to have the Fine book, but I would highly recommend this book first.
Rating: - Good Book - missing some key points
I'm certain many will not agree with me, but here goes:
This book is good, not great. Karsten Muller, for example, does an explanation of key squares for the King to occupy to ensure promotion that is both much shorter and actually ~much~ more complete and useful OTB. Where Silman indicates be ahead of the P with the oposition to win, Muller shows you what squares win, and they are not just the one in front of the pawn. Maybe Silman includes diagonals as "in front" but that is ambiguous and clarified nowhere. Moreover, the Dvoretsky / Muller key square concept works whether you have the move or not.
Another important item is that many times Silman shows a line and tells you a move in that line, not pointing out that this is the ONLY move that does not throw away the advantage - Where the Nunn convention gives an exclam to indicate such, we see nothing here. A sentence or two would be usefull to say what is the only move and why that is the case. There is plenty of space in this large book for that, and some places where things are verbosely analyzed out to the end would have been good to trade for these key points. Run the positions through Fritz and you will see this, or anything else that implements the tablebases.
Silman has an easy-to-read style and does teach well, so please, I am not slamming the book overall with these gripes. Just no way it can earn 5 stars with some incompleteness mixed with some unnecessary repetition and verbosity.
It is a good book, but needs to be supplemented with other material, which seems odd given its large physical size.
The sheer amount of material makes it well worth the cover price.
Would I buy it again, yes, certainly.
Would I recommend it, yes certainly, and with the notes above.
- Mostly sample endgames, not instruction
- Worth getting this book
- Just a little too casual
