Book Review
Just the Facts
Just the Facts, a book by GM Lev Alburt and GM Nikolay Krogius, is subtitled Winning Endgame Knowledge in One Volume. This is the seventh and final volume of Alburt’s Comprehensive Chess Course Series.
Alburt, who was inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame earlier this year, and Krogius supply the chess, but the book’s title is undoubtedly the handiwork of Al Lawrence. Lawrence, the former Executive Director of the USCF, was the book’s executive editor, and of the three the most likely to be familiar with the signature tag line of Jack Webb in the old television show Dragnet.
The title emphasizes one of the themes running through Alburt’s series. Extraneous material is meticulously avoided so that the student is tasked with tackling only the essentials. It is quite a challenge to cover the complex topic of chess endings in a single volume, but the authors have risen to it.
Many chess players spend a disproportional amount of time on chess openings. They often rationalize this deficiency with the misguided notion that there is no point to studying chess endings, if they never get to them! However, the same logical methods of conducting the opening and middle game phases of a chess game can lead you astray in the ending. It’s as though you’ve undergone a phase transition from general relativity to quantum mechanics.
There is simply no way you can figure out endings on your own. There are simply too many counter intuitive winning maneuvers, such as losing a tempo to win the game. We all have a limited amount of time for study and, if you accept the premise that you must study endings, it is of paramount importance to do it as efficiently as possible.
Just the Facts begins by examining what constitutes an ending, and precedes to tackle the deceptively tricky subject of pawn endings. These are the most basic endings possible, but you will be introduced to concepts such as triangulation, which are anything but obvious. The book proceeds in the manner one would expect from pawn endings to piece endings to multiple piece endings and concludes with the critical topic of transitions.
The most reliable method for winning chess games is to simplify a complicated middle game position into an ending that you know how to win. You won’t recognize these opportunities unless you know how to properly evaluate the resulting endgame. If your knowledge of the endgame is unsatisfactory, Just the Facts might be the just the thing.
Ordering information is available in my previous post.
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