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Queen and Pawn Endings
Book.
- GenresChess
144 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1976
2 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
Yuri Averbakh
41 books9 followersYuri Lvovich Averbakh (Russian: Ю́рий Льво́вич Аверба́х; born February 8, 1922) is a Russian chess player and author. He is the oldest living chess grandmaster. He was chairman of the USSR Chess Federation from 1973 to 1978.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 18, 2009
Why is Smyslov and Levenfish's Rook Endings a masterpiece, but this book only so-so? Is it the exposition or the subject-matter? Averbakh was certainly a great endgame expert, and the book is quite competently put together. Yet, for whatever reason, I can't feel any trace of enthusiasm.
(A day later)
Having thought about it a bit, I think the main difference is in the subject-matter. If you study rook endings seriously, you start to understand them a lot better after a while. You feel you've made progress towards learning what chess is about, and that's satisfying.
Queen ending are too damn hard. The Queen is such a mobile piece, and there so many ways it can run around checking the enemy king, that humans can't keep track of what's going on. Top grandmasters often screw up in queen endings, and only computers really seem to know what's going on a lot of the time. Even a carefully written text like this one isn't much help.
Moral: if you write a book about something no one understands, it won't be widely appreciated.
(A day later)
Having thought about it a bit, I think the main difference is in the subject-matter. If you study rook endings seriously, you start to understand them a lot better after a while. You feel you've made progress towards learning what chess is about, and that's satisfying.
Queen ending are too damn hard. The Queen is such a mobile piece, and there so many ways it can run around checking the enemy king, that humans can't keep track of what's going on. Top grandmasters often screw up in queen endings, and only computers really seem to know what's going on a lot of the time. Even a carefully written text like this one isn't much help.
Moral: if you write a book about something no one understands, it won't be widely appreciated.
Displaying 1 of 1 review