Winning Chess Endings (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess)

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Customer Reviews:

Initial early impressions: bad beginning [Posted on 2006-05-10]
This is a review of the early part of Winning Chess Endings by Yasser Seirawan. I just received Winning chess Enginds by Yasser Seirawan. I was eagerly anticipating this book, as the reviews were glowing about how great the explanations were, even if it didn't cover all important endgame theory compared to other texts. I didn't really care about coverage, as I know that's not really possible to cover all endgames and do it in the detail that a beginner requires. The main thing I expected and wanted from this book was getting deep understanding of different endgame types from what it did cover.

I dissapointed with the first chapter, Basic Endgames, and with the beginning of chapter two, King and Pawn endings. Pandolfini's Endgame Course is much better on the two bishops endgame: Pandolfini shows you stage by stage how you can rustle the enemy king into the corner with two bishops. This approach of breaking the solution down into different stages is in my opinion much more helpful to the beginner than showing just one example from start to finish, which is what Seirawan does for the two bishops. Pandolfini's two bishops is superior to Seirawan's.

Seirawan has a detailed discussion on knight and bishop vs. king, but again I prefer Pandolfini's approach of breaking down the ending from the final checkmate positions, then working backwards towards how to maneuver into the checkmate positions. Seirawan does have more text in knight and bishop compared to Pandolfini but I'm not sure it's more instructive in this case. So I'm neutral about knight and bishop with a nod toward prefering Pandolfini's organization.

In the beginning of the King and Pawn seciton, Seirawan introduces the critical notion of distant opposition without ever defining it or telling how the reader can calculate distant opposition himself. Silman's "Reassess Your Chess" has an exemplary distant opposition discussion, with many detailed diagrams and wording showing exactly how to calculate (distant) opposition along with very detailed examples discussing distant oppostion and showing how one king can outflank another king. Seirawan just breezes through this topic, missing an important teaching opportunity, leaving the beginningn reader confused. Now I'm starting to get worried: is the rest of the book going to be this way, too? My concern is: how will I know if Seirawan misses more important teaching opportunities in those areas I'm not already very familiar with?

In the section on the "tempo tester," (a pawn vs. pawn game Seirawan says is great for teaching tempo calculation), Seirawan gives no guidelines at all at how to approach playing it well or how the calculation should be done! He writes "I always beat my students at this game, white or black" without giving any insights into what his thinking is when he plays, or what techniques he uses, or just what kinds of calculation he does and just how to do the same yourself. I know that chess is all about doing the hard work yourself, but the point of buying chess books is to get direction and to prevent flailing around.

Again, this is just a review of the initial section of the book. I am really hoping the rest is better. Flipping through the rest of the book, the discussions do *look* like they are very detailed, and I see general principles are outlined, but my confidence has been shaken a bit by the bad beginning. I'm rating it 3 stars for what I see in the remainder of the book. I'd give it 1 or 2 stars at most based on the beginning, and recommend strongly that readers look elsewhere for the basics (Pandolfini and Silman referenced above).

Another great installment to the winning chess series [Posted on 2006-06-27]
I can honestly say that I have never disliked a single book in the Winning Chess Series. Yasser Seirawan is a brilliant author. He combines his good writing skill and humor, his entertaining personality, his good chess skill, and his good teaching skill all into his winning chess series.

Winning Chess Endings is a great book. After just a few hours of studying king and pawn endgames from this book, I felt like I had mastered it. My hypothesis was correct when I went to a big national tournament and was undefeated! 3 out of 5 of my games were king and pawn endgames, and I was able to effectively win them thanks to this book. I have yet to complete the other chapters, Queen and pawn endings, Rook endings, bishop endings, knight endings, Bishop vs. Knight, Rook vs. Minor pieces , and the rare and the perfect. My only complaint is that in the basic mates chapter, where he teaches you King and rook vs. King checkmates(which I already knew), King and Queen vs. king endgames(which I already knew), King and two bishops vs.kings endgames (which I didn't know before, but now do know because of this book) and King andn Bishop and Knight vs. King. That last one is a very difficult one, and I don't feel that Yasser Seirawan teaches it well.

Overall this book was ideal for my level(USCF 1236) and probably good for ratings between 1000 and 1400.

Yaz tackles the important endgame..... [Posted on 2006-08-03]
Well Yaz gets around to the important endgame phase of chess which is so important. Yaz presents a nice work on the endgame which enables the reader to have an understanding of this phase of chess. It prepares the reader for more advanced works on the endgame (all of Yaz's books accomplish this feat). One needs to really give this book the going over since the concepts here in are very important. A strong International Master was quoated as saying 'Studying the endgame in chess is like cheating!' after reading this endgame book which was followed by some other more specialized (advanced) works I could not agree more!

Good Book for Anyone! [Posted on 2008-01-08]
This book is exelent! It will improve the game of anyone that plays on a level lower than a master. It is chalenging, yet at the same time fun and easy to read. He will teach you tactics like using stalemate as an offencive wepon when you are behind. The only person I would not recommend this book to is someone who is an absolute beginner simply because of it's extencive use of notation.
Once again a great book form someone who is truely a chess player, not just a smooth talker.

Excellent book for learning endings for novice and intermediate players [Posted on 2008-07-17]
This is an excellent book for novice and intermediate chess players!
In this book, the author teaches the chess endgame principles by providing real-life game situations and summaries. For example, what to do when you have one bishop and a pawn Vs. the lone king?
This is so far *the best book* I have seen for learning chess endgames.
I have just started to learn chess and this book has been a great help.
If you would like to learn strategy, tactics, and other aspects of a chess game, try his other books, they are very good too!!!

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