Victor Korchnoi, one of the greatest experts in the field of rook endings, now documents his own experiences in tournament play. His main purpose is to inspire readers with a deep interest in rook endings, and he promises that anyone who thoroughly masters the given material will raise his Elo rating by 100 points or more!

Basic Chess Endings involving rooks and pawns

An updated edition of Paul Keres' classic endgame instructor, designed specifically for practical players with over 500 extra diagrams to facilitate learning and memorisation of critical lines of endgame play. It is an essential practical book, for all chess players, from one of the world's greatest grandmasters. Keres remained an elite grandmaster throughout his life and is widely regarded as one of the s strongest ever players not to have won the world chess champion. His book is a comprehensive guide to the precise handling of all basic endgame positions. It features logical step-by-step explanations of procedures required to obtain the best possible results from frequently occurring queen, rook, bishop, knight and pawn endings. It includes commentaries on the final stages of selected tournament games, which demonstrate the art of favourable transposition from complex to clear-cut endgames.

Written by one of the world's foremost endgame experts, this book unravels the secrets of rook endings, carefully dealing with both the theoretical and practical factors which make the difference between winning and losing. Each position has been carefully tested on a high-tech computer chess database to ensure that the analysis is as accurate as possible.

Endgames with rooks and pawns are the most frequently occurring in chess, arising in about 1 game in 10. If you learn an important technique in this endgame, chances are you will end up using it sooner or later. And there are a great many methods and concepts that can be mastered with a little effort. This book highlights the key themes in rook endings, and at each turn invites the reader to test his knowledge and skills with abundant exercises. Rook endgame theory does not stand still. New practical examples illustrate novel approaches as players seek to pose problems to their opponents - Magnus Carlsen has shown that even the driest-looking positions can feature deadly traps. The ongoing creation of new endgame tablebases - of which co-author Yakov Konoval has been at the forefront - enables new classes of positions to be assessed with definitive certainty. Using six-man and the brand new seven-man tablebases, the authors re-examine many of the old evaluations and reach new and enlightening conclusions about classic rook endings. You will be startled and amazed, and soon discover that you are becoming a far more effective endgame player. German grandmaster Karsten Müller is arguably the world's foremost writer on chess endgames. His 'masterwork', Fundamental Chess Endings, is a modern endgame 'bible' and was studied intensively by current World Champion Magnus Carlsen in his youth. Yakov Konoval is a Russian chess-player and programmer who studied at Mikhail Botvinnik's chess school. He has written programs for solving chess problems and has pioneered new techniques for generating endgame tablebases.