Encyclopedia of Chess Endings

It came out in the 1980s by the same people in Yugoslavia who produced ECO. It is 5 volumes. I got it partly because it was useful to study whatever ending I was playing in correspondence chess, back before software ruined correspondence chess. What do people here think of it? Is it still useful?

Hi, I am sure that endgame knowledge/lessons from a 2571 elo would be very good for me at 2100 as well as anyone under 2000! No joke. 

The editors who put the book together were all Yugoslav (which used to be a country). They list bigger name contributers who did the analysis, including Karpov.

It uses the multilingual symbol approach of ECO etc., and there are not that many comments, mostly alternate lines.

I got out the 3 volumes I could find. I am going to play some of the positions against Stockfish or Tarrasch, maybe both sides and repeatedly. Most of the database endgame positions seem like clear wins or dead draws.

It is five volumes.

The first two ones have a second edition, from the nineties.

There are quite a few mistakes, especially in the first edition (which is not surprising in such a large piece of work).

All the top players from that time contributed, including Kasparov and Karpov.

About Ljubojevic, his current (inactive) rating is 2571, but he is 70 years old! Way past his prime.

His peak rating was 2645 (in january 1983), at that time over 2600 meant elite player. Actually, number 3 in the world (number 1: Karpov at 2710; number 2: Kasparov at 2690).

He won tournaments over Kasparov (when Kasparov was in his best years), which was not an easy feat. So, more respect for his chess!

Absolutely right! What's the point of studying something if only gets you playing endgames at a FIDE 2571 level? Just useless.!

Is opposite bishops with pawn same colour as promotion square a draw or not ?

e.g. Black : LSB + f-pawn (bishop same colour as promotion square) + king

vs White : DSB + king

One pawn is not enough to win, unless it promotes immediately or the opposing bishop is lost immediately. With two pawns, it can be a win in some scenarios.

As soon as TradeKingsAndParty gains another 1200 rating points we can start taking this Ljubojević diss a little more seriously.

Then we will have to beat him in the first 15 moves.

Hi, I remember when I played Go I found a serie of books full of exercices, but it was in Korean and I am French! Believe it or not I found it excellent and it helped me a lot, even losing all the comments.