100 Endgame Patterns You Must Know

100 Endgame Patterns You Must Know

When you recognise a pattern, you spot the key move faster, calculate more accurately, and remember what you studied far better. That insight drives this follow-up to Jesús de la Villa’s classic 100 Endgames You Must Know — but where the original covered theoretical endings, this book targets the phase just before them: the practical positions from which those endgames actually arise.

These are the recurring practical fundamentals that let you reap the benefit of theoretical knowledge — the distant and protected passed pawn, the breakthrough, king activity and the "bodycheck," reserve tempi, the opposition and corresponding squares, the good and bad bishop, blockades, and dozens more. De la Villa deliberately chose the 100 patterns with the greatest practical frequency, on the principle that studying a pattern only pays off if you will actually meet it.

Each is explained and illustrated with carefully selected examples, in the clear, myth-busting style that made the original a worldwide bestseller — proof again that the essential endgame is finite and learnable.

A high-value training book for club players and above. It pairs naturally with 100 Endgames You Must Know, but its practical focus makes it genuinely useful on its own.