Endgame Books

An old Soviet quip has it that Western amateurs “play the opening like grandmasters, the middlegame like experts, and the endgame like beginners.” Soviet-trained players would fearlessly steer the game toward the final phase, confident of their superior endgame skill. Ilya Rabinovich’s Russian Endgame Manual is a major reason for this. Rabinovich raises the beginner’s understanding of the endgame to a sophisticated level, starting with elementary checkmates and then moving on to the principles for handling complex endgames and advanced concepts in king-and-pawn endings, such as the theory of corresponding squares. The author pays special attention to frequently neglected endgame themes such as rook vs. pawns, rook vs. a minor piece, and queen vs. rook. First published in 1927 and updated in 1938, this classic work – featuring more than four hundred instructive endings and over three hundred exercises for self-study – served a generation of players at the height of the Soviet School’s dominance. Mongoose Press now makes it available to the English-speaking public for the first time.

Enhance your positional understanding in chess and sharpen your endgame skills with Johnathan Hawkins’s book, Amateur to IM. In this informative work, the author shares invaluable insights learned from his transformative journey from an average tournament player to the cusp of securing the Grandmaster title. He explores foundational concepts and key areas for focused study of the endgame.

Through in-depth analysis and practical exercises, players are guided toward enhancing their proficiency and developing a deeper understanding of crucial endgame elements. This will enable them to outplay opponents with weaknesses in this area and strengthen their overall game, paving the way to victory. 

By studying Hawkins’ insights and approach, readers can replicate his strategies and adopt his mindset and methodologies that will lead to tangible improvements in chess. 

Mastering the endgame is a fundamental aspect of chess proficiency, and Jesús de la Villa’s 100 Endgames You Must Know is an invaluable resource for achieving that milestone. The author has taken the 100 most frequently encountered endgames and broken them down into concise, easy-to-digest concepts. His clear explanations focus on building a deep understanding of the material rather than relying on rote memorization. 

By the end of studying and practicing the exercises in this book, you will significantly enhance your endgame skills, be able to navigate your games toward favorable endgame positions, and improve your performance.

The book is highly regarded among players ranging from intermediate enthusiasts to grandmasters because of its exceptional clarity, practical content, and comprehensive coverage. It also has a companion volume, The 100 Endgames You Must Know Workbook, which provides additional exercises that reinforce the covered concepts. 

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The most hated cliché in chess is: And the rest is a matter of technique. In A Matter of Endgame Technique Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard deals with one of the few things chessplayers hate even more – losing a winning position. No serious chessplayer is new to the misery of spoiling hours of hard work in a few minutes...

A Matter of Endgame Technique offers the second-best happiness – the misfortune of others – as well as deep explanation of the underlying patterns of how and why we misplay winning endgames. At just under 900 pages, this book is actually six books in one, explaining the technical and practical areas of chess endgames plainly, simply and deeply. Endgame theory is well covered elsewhere; this book is all about technique and devoid of material to memorise.

Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard won the British Championship at his first and only attempt. Aagaard has won more awards than any other chess author, and is co-founder of Quality Chess and the online academy killerchesstraining.com.

Aagaard’s students have won school tournaments, national titles, FM, IM and GM titles, international opens, the US Championship, the World Cup, the Candidates Tournament and Olympiad medals of all denominations.

Study brings wisdom. Practice brings perfection. Following his highly acclaimed Mastering Chess Strategy and Mastering Opening Strategy, this book completes a trilogy of strategy books by Grandmaster and renowned chess teacher Johan Hellsten. In his new work Hellsten focuses exclusively on endgame play and covers every type of endgame: pawn, minor piece, rook and queen endgames. He examines not only the many fundamental positions that everyone needs to know, but also the key themes and characteristics of successful endgame play, including activity, creating and exploiting weaknesses, active and passive defence, fortresses and technique. Just like his previous two books, Mastering Endgame Strategy is a product of Hellsten's many years' work as a full-time chess teacher and is specifically designed as part of a structured training programme to improve strategic thinking. In addition to the many examples there's an abundance of carefully selected exercises which allow readers to monitor their progress and put into practice what they have just learned. Following such a course is an ideal way for players of all standards to improve. Although designed mainly for students, this book is also an excellent resource for chess teachers and trainers.

Technical Decision Making in Chess

Most players find the same moments slipping away: the endgames and the positions where one side holds a structural or material edge but the win (or the save) refuses to come. In this book — part of his acclaimed Decision Making series — former World Championship Challenger Boris Gelfand opens up his own thinking in exactly these technical situations.

This is not a manual of memorised positions but a window into how an elite grandmaster actually decides. Gelfand explores the recurring questions of technique: when to defend passively and when actively, why a bad plan beats no plan, when it is right to "run" with the king, and how to choose the correct transformation of one advantage into another. His concept of the "Zone of one mistake" — the danger zone where a single slip squanders everything — is likely to be a revelation.

The examples range from Rubinstein’s classics to his own battles with players like Karjakin, and include fascinating chapters on stalemate, geometry, opposite-coloured-bishop endings, and the practical value of studying endgame compositions.

Demanding and deep, it is best suited to strong club players and above who want to understand technical chess from the inside. A serious book that repays serious study.

This ebook is a part of Bundle: Gelfand Decision Making

The unique concept of Monster your middlegame planning received a very good feedback from our readers, therefore we decided to continue the series by keeping the same concept for endgames in two volumes. The author GM Efstratios Grivas is going through the most important endgame topics in a testing format, so the reader not only masters endgames, but also tests his actual knowledge.

This ebook is a part of Bundle: Monster Your Planning

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.

Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual - FastTrack Edition

Since 2003, Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual has been widely regarded as the finest single volume ever written on the endgame — but at 400-plus pages of dense analysis, it can intimidate. This FastTrack Edition is the answer: a streamlined route into the same material, designed to get you to practical endgame competence faster.

The original always used bold type to mark the text every player simply must know. This edition builds on that idea, foregrounding the essential knowledge — the key theoretical positions, rules, and methods — so you can absorb the core of each topic without first wading through the deepest variations. It is a parallel edition rather than a replacement: the same Dvoretsky wisdom, repackaged for efficient study.

Coverage spans the whole subject in the classic Dvoretsky order: pawn endings, knight and bishop endings, the notoriously tricky opposite-coloured bishops, rook endings (the heart of practical endgame play), queen endings, and general endgame principles. New introductory material by Karsten Müller and Alex Fishbein, and a foreword by Ian Rogers, frame the edition.

Best suited to club players who want the indispensable endgame knowledge in a more digestible form — and a strong on-ramp to the full Manual later.

Endgame Play - GM Preparation

Part of Jacob Aagaard’s award-winning Grandmaster Preparation series, this is endgame training pitched at the level where it actually decides games among strong players. It is not a theoretical manual of memorised positions but a workbook for building genuine endgame skill.

Aagaard introduces a small set of key endgame concepts and then puts the reader to work, with a large body of carefully chosen exercises drawn from recent tournament practice. The progression runs from pawn endings and simple minor-piece and rook endings through the notoriously tricky opposite-coloured bishops, challenging rook endings, queen endings, and on to tactical endings, fortresses, and strategic endgames — with a foreword by endgame authority Karsten Müller.

The emphasis throughout is on doing rather than reading: you train your calculation, technique, and judgement on real, difficult positions, the way a professional prepares. The exercises are genuinely hard, which is the point.

Best suited to strong club players, experts, and aspiring masters who want to turn endgame knowledge into practical strength. Demanding, rigorous, and highly rewarding for the committed improver.

This ebook is a part of Bundle: Grandmaster Preparation  

Club players all over the world who wish to improve their game have now access to Shereshevsky’s famous training program in one volume and can learn how to build an opening repertoire, how to work with the chess classics to maximum benefit, how to master the most important endgame principles and how to effectively and efficiently calculate variations.

Theoretical Rook Endgames

Rook endgames are the single most important endgame to study, for one blunt reason: they are the kind you will face most often over the board. As the saying goes, working on them gives the biggest bang for your buck — and this book, by world-class grandmaster Sam Shankland, sets out to be the clearest, best-organised guide to them ever written.

Shankland’s method has two layers. First, the vital "set positions" you simply must know by heart — the Lucena, the Vancura, the key drawing and winning formations. Then, more valuably, a framework of rules and guidelines that lets you assess a theoretical rook endgame you have not memorised and still find the right path. The goal is understanding, not rote: you finish knowing both which positions to commit to memory and how to reason about the rest.

The coverage is systematic and complete, marching from single-pawn endings through the great practical battlegrounds — rook in front of, beside, and behind the passed pawn — to multi-pawn structures and pawnless endings, with a foreword by endgame authority Karsten Müller.

Demanding but exceptionally clear, this is essential study for any ambitious club player or tournament competitor who wants to stop throwing away half-points in the most common endgame of all.