Introduction Solve Your Endgame Problems with 450 Endgame Exercises There are already many endgame books, so why this one? Well, most books deal with elementary endgames, or are very advanced and contain no exercises. But you have only really learned something when you can do it over the board with the clock ticking. And solving exercises is very close to this. Mark Dvoretsky included exercises in his excellent Endgame Manual. Our book is meant less as an endgame manual but more as your endgame proving ground. By selecting many exercises of diverse themes, we have tried to give you the chance to become comfortable with each theme as you solve more positions. We have also added a scoring system, which will measure your endgame strength, allowing you to track it over time. Your "Endgame ELO" (the meaning of which should not be overestimated, by the way) will help you find weak spots, guiding you to study the relevant chapter of Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual ("DEM5") again.

Themes which we consider most important (practically or theoretically) have an abundance of examples. There are also many positions which specifically train calculation and visualization. Before describing the scoring system in detail and offering more specifics on how to work with the book, we want to say a few words about the content, structure, and format. All these positions are from actual games and come from Karsten Müller's files, which contain many exercises geared for players at all levels. Most of them were already published in his ChessBase Magazine column, which started in 2006. Alex Fishbein selected and tested them, included the notes needed for this book, and added the scoring system. The exercises comprise nine chapters. We start with theoretical positions, most of which are useful to remember.

We proceed directly to pawn endgames, which are the foundation of everything, as well as the best resource for calculation training. Rook endings are the most important, and the chapter dedicated to them is a third of the book. After that, we cover minor piece endings and endings with material imbalances. We conclude with a chapter with a mix of all types of positions. The solutions are at the end of each chapter. Although they are not meant to teach you endgame theory, the solutions usually contain some verbal explanation of the ideas behind the position. Some important and recurring ideas like "bodycheck" and "change of the leader" are introduced in italics.