Why Endgame Knowledge is so Critical to Improvement

1. Introduction

Let's get this straight. No one (at least not the large majority of chess players) enjoy and love studying endgames. There are so many reasons for this. Number 1 being how tedious it seems. Who wants to spend an hour learning whether my king and pawn vs king is a draw or a win or how to "build a bridge" or hold the philidor position to a draw or draw opposite colored bishop endgames down a pawn.

The second piece of this is the seemingly simple nature of endgames themselves. Shouldn't positions with the less pieces be the easiest to know what to do? This notion is completely wrong. Endgames are actually (in my opinion) the most complex part of the game. This is due to the fact that there are so many possible endgames that can show up, and they aren't usually intuitive. The problem with the lower amount of pieces in endgames is that one slightly inaccurate king move or some other inaccuracy can completely throw off and destroy the whole game you have worked so hard to get to a certain position in.

Thirdly, it doesn't seem appealing because it is very possible, especially at lower levels, that your games will not even reach the endgame because you found a great tactic in the middlegame to win a piece or got them with one of the 10,000 opening traps that are all over the place. If your games don't reach endgames, why study them? This mindset is the main reason I had not studied endgames at all earlier in my chess journey which held me back a lot.

2. My Own Experience

One of the biggest hindrances to my improvement over the 8 months or so I've played chess competitively (not just playing online and having 0 clue what I'm doing) is not having enough endgame knowledge. For my level, my tactical and opening knowledge has been much beyond my general level for sometime yet I would get into endgames and throw away the whole game I had played. The main reason for this is that my chess journey has been entirely self-funded, and being a teen this makes it difficult to have a large surplus of money to invest in the game, which means I have to carefully pick what I buy. One fortunate aspect of being a teen for my chess improvement is all of the time I have to work and study to get better which is why I've gained 800 rating online in 8 months. However, I had skipped over endgames in the content I had invested my limited funds in for a few reasons.

One, being a misguided little kid in the chess world I fell into the common mistake of thinking if my openings are great that I am an immortal chess player, and while openings are very much an important aspect of the game, it was not my problem. But when 90% of the content there is on openings, (I'll explain why in section three), it seems like it is clearly the most important part of the game to study which is why most of the time I studied as a lower rated player was dedicated to openings. (I still probably spend too much time learning Najdorf theory but that's a me problem)

The second one, I would rarely get into endgames as a low rated player because there are so many blunders made at lower levels by either side that it is unlikely to reach an endgame in the first place. Since I would rarely get to an endgame, I passed endgames off as something to do later, which was a bad mistake by me because my play in them was so terrible for so long (I still am not great at endgames I'll admit)

My coach, he's so kind to analyze my games, let me play him occasionally, and even give me some of the books he used as a kid for free, looked at some of my OTB tournaments games while I was playing them (he hosts a monthly tournament in my hometown, another thing I'm grateful for because I'm unable to travel far for tournaments currently) and would always get a puzzled face whenever he saw the result of me losing because I had been doing well the whole game and lose it in the endgame. So obviously, he told me I needed to improve them, and one of the problems I faced was figuring out how to do that. I first thought I should just play a bunch of games and try to transpose into endgames each time and learn by experience, and while this wasn't a terrible idea for me, it definitely didn't work out very well and I lost a decent amount of rating points with this strategy because I started taking non-beneficial trades and all of the endgames I would get into would be losing.

So after trying this and failing, I turned to the lichess studies. This didn't help me either because it is incredibly rare to find endgame studies that are useful on lichess. (I'm sure there are somewhere, but I couldn't find them at the time) At this point I figured I would learn them eventually and went back to focusing on other, easier things to train, such as openings and tactics. But endgames remained a problem for me, and I reached a point where I knew I needed to find something to practice endgames from, so I checked my local library, but there was nothing.

So, I did what any American teenager would do in my situation and I turned to AI to find me books or other content to study. I wasn't expecting much from Gemini, (I've played chess against it before) but it recommended me Silman's Complete Endgame Course. So, just recently I put it on my Christmas wish list, and got it. Surprisingly, without even investing much time into the book, only a couple hours in total, my endgames have improved drastically, (I was a 1550 who didn't understand opposition before this) This book isn't sponsored, (I don't see any reason an IM would have any reason to sponsor me on my second blog) but I am blown away by how much it helped me improve my endgame skills and even my skills overall. Since receiving the barely 2-3 weeks ago (at the time I am writing this), my rating has gone up over 70 points in rapid, without playing very many games. I believe this book is so much more helpful than many other chess content books because it has content aimed towards every single level, and since I was behind on my endgame knowledge, I could learn both the less advanced or complicated endgames, and then go straight to the ones I also need for my level, and the best part is that I'm not done. It has endgames for people to use and learn all the way up to the 2400 OTB level, and since each chapter builds onto the next chapter, the content is much easier to learn. I've improved drastically since getting this book, because not only am I just simply better in endgames, but just like I discussed in my last blog about how stopping engine analysis right away helped my confidence, having a better endgame knowledge helped me too because I could focus more on the game I was playing right in front of me, rather than worrying about an endgame that might not even happen.

Another thing I have noticed from playing OTB and looking at the gap between the players of certain levels in the tournaments I play in, the biggest differences between 1300-1400 players and 1000-1100 players has nothing to do with openings or tactical knowledge or even strategy or calculation. The higher rated players may be slightly better at those things, but the biggest difference I see is endgames. Lots of the games I see between these players of different rated players are decided in the endgame by a blunder by the lower rated player who doesn't have the endgame knowledge to win or draw a position that is equal or possibly even winning.

(The Lucena position is show above, a winning position for white because the famous saying "Building a bridge" is possible)

3. Why It's so hard to find good endgame content

Think about the way people want to win their games, do they want to win a long grinded out game that took them 30 minutes to wear their opponent down, or do they want to get a win in 3 minutes and go along with their day? The answer is the quick one, our brains (at least here in the west, and ESPECIALLY if you're a teenager like me) have been wired by society to want everything fast. A great example of this is microwaves. Microwaves are probably doing things to our food that isn't great for us to be able to cook that fast, but we don't care because we get that quick satisfaction of the food we wanted cooked. This is why you'll see that 90% or maybe even more of the studies or instructional YouTube videos are towards "Crushing your Opponent In Ten Moves With THIS Gambit!!" and while you may sometimes win games with those tricks, they won't get you very far. (I'm not saying all opening studies are bad, not even all of the opening trap studies, you just have to discern whether or not they are important to know for your improving) Think about why why the Stafford Gambit is so popular. 1. Eric Rosen, and 2. The very likely possibility of winning in 8-12 moves. However, what people don't look at the fact that if their opponent knows the refutation that it's almost +2 according to the engine. They want that quick satisfaction of a win just which is the reason bullet and blitz are so popular. While there are many great opening studies by people on this platform and other platforms, lots of them are just dubious openings targeting that part of the brain desiring that quick dopamine hit from a quick win.

So obviously if people are attracted to the quick and easy wins, what are the book writers or study and blog makers going to want to make in order to get the most views or likes? Opening studies of course. If people think that their opening book or blog or study will win them every game, they are obviously going to click on it and try to learn how to "crush every opponent in 10 moves". In reality, especially in slower time controls such as rapid and classical, these opening traps are not going to work, and they are going to find a hard time getting past a certain point because all of their traps are getting refuted and they are getting into worse positions. This is why I only play solid openings such as the Ruy Lopez, Najdorf Sicilian, and Nimzo-Indian, because while these are all sharp openings that have tactical opportunity, they aren't dubious either, so I can expect at least a solid position from the opening.

4. Solutions to Lack of Endgame Knowledge

My first answer to where to get more endgame knowledge is is Silman's Complete Endgame Course*,*** but the large majority of the chess community likely doesn't want to spend money on a chess book. I will say though, that while this book is extremely helpful (at least in my case) it is definitely not the only way to improve endgame knowledge. Specialized searches on either lichess studies or even just the web can be great ways to find decent content to learn things like Lucena positions or just basic King and Queen checkmates.

5. Conclusion

Thanks so much for everyone's support on my last blog, I am so surprised to see how much attention it received and am so thankful for the support. If you want me to continue creating blogs please leave a heart. Also, if you want to find more great blogs and studies, join these teams, https://lichess.org/team/study-creators--friends and https://lichess.org/team/blog-creators-hangout, they are both great places to find good new content. I hope you all enjoyed and I'll see you all next time.