The 100 Endgames You Must Know Workbook

The 100 Endgames You Must Know Workbook is the name of a book by Spanish Grandmaster Jesus De La Villa.

This book is based on games played on tournaments. There are actually 300 (not 100) games featured in this book. Many of them involve mistakes by intermediate level players. Some are mistakes or good examples by expert players. I have found those games by expert players in the chess.com games database. Many but not all games missing from the chess.com database can be found on chessgames.com

The first 24 exercises are from the first chapter: Basic endings

Villa introduces this chapter saying "It only seemed logical to make this the easiest chapter in the entire book. But don't be fooled: you will find some examples of blunders taken from high-level tournament play. It's hard to tell from database info alone whether these mistakes were the result of fatigue, time trouble, or some such psychological factor as mentioned in the introduction. But let me just remind you that superficial knowledge of endgame theory, so common in the chess world, is also an important factor that should not be underestimated."

When I first got this book I was well below 1000 rating and knew nothing about endgame theory, so even these "basic" endgames were too hard for me. Several months later these are starting to make some sense to me.

So some very rough guidelines for this first chapter (let me know if you agree or disagree):

<1000  come back later
1200+  should be able to solve some of these
1500+ should be able to solve most of these
1800+ should be able to solve all of these

Some of the later chapters are for 1800+ or even 2000+ level only.

In the introduction to the first book "100 endgames you must know" (not the workbook), Villa says:

"In the first stage, it is enough to master the basic checkmates, King + Pawn vs King engames, and to know which main material relations are winning or not; in addition, a few exceptional and frequent situations, such as Bishop + Wrong Rook's Pawn ending etc.

A second step in this first stage would involve Philidor and Lucena Positions in Rook + Pawn endings, as well as some more ideas in pawn endings and opposite colored bishop endings."

There are many lessons on this site for learning endgames see https://www.chess.com/lessons/endgames

If you find these exercises too hard to calculate in your head, solve them by moving the pieces around, either on a real board or using analysis mode on this site.

Exercise 1, Based on Jung Min Seo 2389 - Monica Calzetta Ruiz 2233, Stockholm 2017 (4)

Does White have time to capture the g4-pawn?

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1908169

Exercise 2, Klaus Rhein - Eshan Ali, Mallorca 2004

Is exchanging Queens a good idea for White in this position?

Exercise 3, Joachim Olbrich 2390 - Petra Krupkova 2215, Germany tt 1994/95

Can White save the game?

Mistake 79. Kg4?

Exercise 4, Yivi Pustina - John Reid, Varna ol 1962 (2)

Choose between 94...Bf5 and 94...Bc4

Mistake 94...Bf5?

Exercise 5, Hans Ulrich Raabe 1297 - Horst Skocz 1202

Find four mistakes in this sequence of moves:

Exercise 6, Martin Hrivnak 2177 - Josef Veselsky 2204, Slovakia tt 2001/02 (5)

Can White force an entry for his king with 60.Qe5?

Exercise 7, Daryn Smith - L Brady, Detriot 1994 (2)

Exercise 8, Thordur Gudmundsson - Leif Reinert Fjallheim 1667, Reykjavik 2017 (5)

Exercise 9, Jean De Lagontrie 2085 - Therry Poesson 2080, Cannes 1995 (9)

Exercise 10, Mihail Marin 2583 - Romain Edouard 2597, Benasque 2009

https://www.chess.com/games/view/13019360

Mistake is made by Edouard on move 102...Bd6??

Villa calls this "right corner catastrophe"

Exercise 11, Pavel Maletin 2571 - Ivan Bocharov 2476, Berdsk tt 2009 (2)

Exercise 12, Mark Condie 2430 - Murray Chandler 2595, Bath zt 1987 (8)

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1095723

Exercise 13, Valerij Filippov 2595 - Loek van Wely 2635, Elista (Russia) 1998

https://www.chess.com/games/view/871500

This examines the pawn sacrifice on move 53

Exercise 14, Marta Michna 2357 - Dominya Batkovsyte 2111

https://www.chess.com/games/view/13315973

Villa labels Black's move 82...Rxe6?? "abysmal, yet it is a common mistake. All too often often, a player's desire to shorten the suffering by simplifying is the cause of defeat."

Exercise 15, Michiel Bosman 2356 - Espen Forsaa 2331, Ohrid tt 2009 (2)

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1558447

Exercise 16, Laurent Fressinet 2633 - Hikaru Nakamura 2664, Turin of 2006 (10)

https://www.chess.com/games/view/1354446

A strong endgame by two grandmasters results in a draw

Exercise 17, Anthony Wirig 2418 - Jean-Pierre Le Roux 2480, Guingamp 2004 (1)

https://www.chess.com/games/view/1225666

Villa criticizes Black's move 90...Bc4, recommending Bd3 instead

Exercise 18, Tiberiu Georgescu 2388 - Adrian Petrisor 2349

Exercise 19, Aleksey Goganov 2609 - Dmitry Gordievsky 2471, Khanty-Mansiysk 2014 (3)

https://www.chess.com/games/view/13654687

Move 63. Bxc4 is a mistake according to Villa.

Exercise 20, Igor Glek 2576 - Alexander Grischuk 2712, Des Hermanas INT blitz 2003 (4)

https://www.chess.com/games/view/1215599

Exercise 21, Svetovar Gligoric - Bobby Fischer, Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade ct 1959 (25)

https://www.chess.com/games/view/87355

This and similar examples ended in a draw

Exercise 22, Predrag Nikolic 2623 - José Carlos Ibarra Jerez 2513, Budva Ech 2009 (3)

https://www.chess.com/games/view/4476847

Even expert players can make mistakes. Villa highlights mistakes on 95...Ka3? and 96. Ra7+? and 102...Ka2?

Exercise 23, Laszio Szabo - Viktor Korchnoi, Leningrad 1967

https://www.chess.com/games/view/148304

Typo in the book, Black is Viktor Korchnoi (not Kortchnoi)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Korchnoi

Exercise 24, Alexey Suetin 2460 - Sergey Gorelov 2415, Moscow 1981 (7)

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1135172

Just in case you don't know: that book is a followup to "100 Endgames you must know" from the same author. You might want to study this one first.

Hi Sred, I have been considering buying the first book as well. As I understand it, the workbook is a set of examples based on the principles that are taught in the first book.

Yes, that is true. If you are new to chess, you might want to study these principles carefully and the first book is an excellent choice.

I found this very useful. Now to remember the moves.

I didn't know that second book, thanks for the info.

This has also been made into a chess course on chessable. There is an interesting video of Magnus Carlsen doing the 100 endgames basic test at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1SCXb2WA2U

The biggest takeaway for me was how a lot of these moves are counterintuitive, and even Magnus agrees that they are counterintuitive, but you can learn them.

Magnus also messed up on Exercise 24, so this proves that some of these "basic" exercises are pretty hard. According to De La Villa, the correct Exercise 24 move is paradoxical.

At 25:22 Magnus stops looking at the board and closes his eyes to picture the board in his head instead. This is a technique that seems strange to me but clearly works very well for him.

The final endgames tests is done by Jan-Krzysztof Duda at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdwbzxjjiQg This video is entirely spoken in the Polish, but without knowing any Polish you can still see and learn from the moves.

Most of games are found in 365chess.com

Search google: just type one of the players name, then 365chess, then navigate through the page.

Google is much efficient than using search tool of these original sitess: 356chess.com or chessgames.com.  

I suck at endgames the most, this will prolly help me

Most of games ~ 90% can be found in:

-365chess.com

-chesstempo

-chessgames

-fide (but included within multigames pgn instead.)

less than 10% of games in the book are almost impossible to find.

This book has been sitting on my shelf for some time now but I have decided to have another go at it. The following is from Chapters 2 onwards.

Chapter 2 is Knight vs. pawn

Exercise 25, Ivan Cheparinov 2681 - Peter Prohaszka 2617, Croatia tt 2015 (6)

Exercise 26, Edmar Mednis 2405 - Robert Fontaine 2300, Cannes 1996 (10)

Exercise 27, Maria Petraki 2102 - Athanasios Papadimitriou 1869, Nikea 2005 (4)

Exercise 28, Ari Dale 1085 - Joshua Devarajh 1151, Sandy Bay ch-AUS jr 2010 (11)

Fatal blunder on 63...a3??

Exercise 29, Graeme Spain 2200 - Antony Ker 2330, Wanganui ch-NZL 2006/07 (6)

Mistake on 64...g3?

Chapter 3 is Queen vs. pawn

Exercise 37, Carlos Barrero Garcia 2302 - Oleg Korneev 2649, Dos Hermanas 2006 (6)

"The correct result is a draw, but in practice, even grandmasters have lost this position"

Exercise 38, Dolfi Drimer - Leonid Stein, Havana 1968 (8)

Dolfi Drimer was a Romanian chess player and engineer who reached IM level. Unfortunately only two of his games are in the master games database, but I found the pgn for this game (and all Leonid Stein's games) on pgnmentor.com and uploaded the analysis to https://www.chess.com/a/35cMLNW5c2DRoU

Exercise 43, Marcel Kanarek 2471 - Gil Popilski 2500, Warsaw 2014 (7)

https://www.chess.com/games/view/13587355

This game ends in a draw because of the mistake 83. Qh4?

Exercise 45: Sokhib Djuraev - Stephen Solomon, Instanbul ol 2012 (9)

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1689014

Mistake on 58. Rd7?

Exercise 46, Satea Husari 2307 - Leonid Voloshin 2423, Koszalin 1999 (5)

Blunder on 50... Qxb2+?? and mistakes on 56. Qc8? 56... Qg7? Another blunder from White with move 58 spells defeat for Husari.

Exercise 47, Gata Kamsky 2762 - Wang Hao 2737

https://www.chess.com/games/view/13272356

Hao giving a chess masterclass here.

Wang Hao had a great career and I am still sad about his retirement. You can read more about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Hao_(chess_player)

Exercise 48, Aleksander Mista 2562 - David Navara 2710, Czechia tt 2012

https://www.chess.com/games/view/13274241

Blunder on 52. Kf5??

Chapter 4 is Rook vs. pawn

Exercise 49, Mirjana Maric 2291 - Gabriela Olarasu 2283

https://www.chess.com/games/view/4396780

Exercise 50, Chanda Sandipan 2579 - Csaba Balogh 2616, Beijing blitz 2008

https://www.chess.com/games/view/4454732

Chapter 5 is Rook vs. two pawns

Chapter 6 is Same-coloured bishops

Chapter 7 is Bishop vs. knight: one pawn on the board

Chapter 8 is Opposite-coloured bishops: bishop + two pawns vs. bishop

Chapter 9 is Rook + pawn vs. rook

Chapter 10 is Rook + two pawns vs. rook

Chapter 11 is Pawn endings