Studying the endgame: need some help

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Testje

I've just started studying the endgame (i have silman's Endgame book). After reading the theory and doing the tests, i started to look for an endgame workbook. But i fail to find any. How is it we have a lot of puzzle/tactics workbooks, but none on the endgame. Sadly i don't own Fritz or another chess engine, so i the option of practicing against an engine is out. I saw some 'training dvds' on the endgame, but they seem to lack in the numer of problems (+ i don't like workouts on the comp)   My question therefor is this:

How do you train your endgame after you absorbed the (basic) theory? For openings, people recommand playing blitz games. For tactics people recommand solving puzzles. And for the endgame? I'm utterly lost... 

I have no problem with the learning of theory and i have great study material for that, but i just want to practice it more and I can't find any book that can help me with that. It's either theory with some tests or nothing.

MV_NY

Probably playing basic checkmates with

  • King and Rook
  • King and 2 Knights
  • King and 2 Bishops
  • King and Queen
  • King and Bishop and Knight

Then some tactical checkmate like swallow-tail mate, smothered mate, suffocation mate, etc.

alec39
Testje wrote:

no problem with the learning of theory and i have great study material for that, but i just want to practice it more and I can't find any book that can help me with that. It's either theory with some tests or nothing.


Find a strong human sparring partner who's much better than you at a chess club or online and play the endings out again and again that's the best way to get hands on experience and practice they'll beat you and you'll make mistakes but you'll improve and get results if you work at it consistently and really study.

orust

Chess Endgame Training, Bernd Rosen

http://www.gambitbooks.com/books/endtraining.html

Metal-Gerd
TheKidProdigy wrote:

Probably playing basic checkmates with

King and 2 Knights 

Chuck Norris can.

kwaloffer

Chesstempo.com has Endgame theory problems.

uri65
I've found a way to train endgames that I like a lot: I use free Arena interface with some free engines. Then I enter all the positions from book into Arena and store them in a file (pgn or epd). Usually I create separate file for each type of ending (pawn, rook etc.) but that's really up to you. Most important - to each position I add a comment regarding expected result (e.g. "white to win", "black to draw"). And this is my training database. You go through it and play each position against an engine. Nice thing is often the engine will make moves not discussed in the book and then you have to really understand what is going on. For many books such databases can be found on the web and then it saves you tedious work of entering positions manually but you still have to add the comment and to hide the list of moves in order not to get hints.