Several years ago I was at Santa Monica Chess Park when an expert player said to me, “Guess what I have inside my bag?”  Joking around, I said, “I don’t know, a gun!?”  He smiled and said, “No, something better!”  And pulled out a copy of Fundamental Chess Endings by Karsten Müller and Frank Lamprecht.

For some reason this cracked me up to no end and I remember laughing about it for several minutes.  Indeed, to a chess player, a copy of FCE is certainly more valuable than a gun, especially in the endgame!

This comprehensive book even won the British Chess Federation’s 2002 Book-of-the-year award, and deservedly so.  However, if one were going to find fault with this book (not an easy thing to do considering how good it is!), it would be that it’s more of a reference book, i.e., it’s not really the type that you are going to read cover to cover.

Well, Herr Müller (note: even though I only use Müller’s name throughout the review, it should be understood that I mean both Müller and Pajeken) has rectified that problem with his latest offering, How to Play Chess Endgames.  Rather than list the chapters by pieces, e.g. knight vs bishop (as in FCE), HTPCE breaks the chapters down by strategy/theme:

A Little Controversy

Of course, what would a good book review be without a little controversy!?  It has to do with the first position I chose at random to include with this review, from Chapter 10 (page 182) on Zugzwang:

Having said all this, the position is still quite instructive, so let’s look at what we have.

First, here are the final moves of the game according to chessgames.com: 58.Ke8 Be6 59.Kf8 Bf5 60.Ke7 Bc2 61.Kd6 Bd3 62.Ke6 Bc4+ 63.Ke7 ½–½

And now, here are the final moves, with analysis, from Müller:

1.Kd7 Kf5 [1...Kf7 2.f5 Bh7 3.g6+ Bxg6 4.fxg6+ Kxg6 5.Kc6 Kxh6 6.Kb5 Kg6 7.Kxa4 Kf6 8.Kb5 Ke7 9.Kc6 Kd8 10.Kb7+- ] (I was curious about the try 1...Bh7. Rybka gives: 2.Ke8 Bg8 3.Ke7 Bh7 4.Kf8 Kf5 5.Kg7+-) 2.Ke8 Kg6 3.Ke7 By triangulating with his king, White has put Black in zugzwang. 3…Kh7 [3...Bb3 4.f5+ Kh7 5.f6 Kg6 6.h7 Kxh7 7.f7 Bxf7 8.Kxf7+-] 4.f5 Bb3 5.f6 Kg6 6.h7 Kxh7 7.f7 Bxf7 1–0

And Müller ends things here.  Just to be 100% clear, I played it out against Rybka: 8.Kxf7 Kh8 9.Kg6 Kg8 10.Kh6 Kh8 11.g6 Kg8 12.g7 Kf7 13.Kh7 1–0

The lesson here is no matter how good a book might appear to be, it still never hurts to check things out for yourself.  Of course, with hundreds of positions in the book, there are bound to be some errors.  And while Müller’s analysis is not wrong, as you can see, the details surrounding the final result of the position is a bit confusing.

Okay, let’s look at one more position (Note, I couldn’t find this game in Megabase 2008 or Chessgames.com either, so obviously Müller has his own special “super secret database” of games!)

White to play and win

Says Müller:  "Without the black b-pawn, the position would obviously be an immediate draw.  (MJ: Because White has the 'wrong colored bishop' and thus Black's king can never be evicted from a8.)  Can White take advantage of the presence of the b-pawn?"

This ending has a nice study like solution.  I will give the answer at the end of the review.

Rules of Thumb

In the book’s final chapter, the authors give 64 “Rules of Thumb” for endgame play.  Here are the first 10, which are somewhat well known, but that some might find helpful: 

1) Always improve the position of your worst-placed piece.

2) Always try to limit the activity of the enemy pieces.

3) Improve especially the position of your strongest piece (in the following order of priority: queen>rook>king>minor piece).

4) The fewer pieces there are remaining on the board, the more important is the position of the king.

5) The more pieces there are remaining on the board, the more insecure is an exposed king.

6) Not all routes of the king to a certain goal are equivalent. Don’t forget the ideas of the bodycheck and the Reti manoeuvre.

7) Rook endings occur in practice with great frequency. Study them precisely.

8) Fight for the initiative.

9) If you make material or structural concessions in the fight for the initiative, then make sure that your initiative is lasting and sustainable.

10) Opposite-coloured bishops favor the side with the initiative.

The Bottom Line

This large, 352 page paperback contains a lot of material and should keep the endgame student busy for quite a while. The positions in this book are more “user friendly” than in Müller’s previous excellent effort, Fundamental Chess Endings. This is due to there being more “explanational text” regarding each position. Also, because the material is broken up by themes, rather than by pieces, it is easier to remember.

While 35 bucks for a paperback is not cheap, when you consider that a single private endgame lesson with GM Müller would be at least $100.00, suddenly this book becomes quite a bargain!  On a scale of 1-10, How to Play Chess Endgames by Karsten Müller and Wolfgang Pajeken gets a 9.

Solution to problem:

From the Publisher's website:

Grandmaster Karsten Müller is a world-renowned expert on all aspects of endgame play. He is co-author (with Frank Lamprecht) of the acclaimed Secrets of Pawn Endings and Fundamental Chess Endings. He finished third in the German Championship in 1996, and was runner-up in 1997.

Wolfgang Pajeken is a FIDE Master from Hamburg who plays frequently in the German Bundesliga, and other team and individual championships. He is also a chess trainer, organizer and arbiter.

Download a pdf file with a sample from the book.

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