Karsten Müller, Yakov Konoval: Understanding Queen Endgames

Russell Enterprises, paperback, Englisch, ISBN: 978-1-949859-31-7, 271 Seiten, 2021.

Understanding Queen Endgames: The Daunting Domain of Queen Endgames Explained!

Knowing the abilities and limitations of the powerful queen is very valuable for mastering the secrets of the royal game, and this can be studied best in the endgame.

Queen endgames are very difficult, if only for purely mathematical reasons - the queen is the most mobile peace in chess, and the amount of possible options is incomparably higher than in any other type of endgames.

This book follows a dual philosophy as in the three previous works by the same authors: Understanding Rook Endgames, Understanding Minor Piece Endgames and Understanding Rook vs. Minor Piece Endgames. The 7-piece endings are dealt with in great detail. They are often so complex that pre-tablebase analysis almost always contains errors. Many new discoveries are revealed here.

But to really understand the fight of a queen against a queen or minor pieces with rooks, these theoretical positions are of course not enough. So subchapters on the principles of each material configuration have been added.

"All in all, this fantastic book is already on my (very short) “must study” list for chessplayers of different levels, including the top ten! I want to thank the authors for the courage which is required just to start working on such a complex topic, as well as for the very high quality of their work, which will endure for decades to come and will be very useful for many future generations of chessplayers.", from the Foreword by Vladimir Kramnik, 14th World Chess Champion

Großmeister Dr. Karsten Müller (1970) spielt seit 1988 für den Hamburger SK in der 1. Bundesliga und wurde 1996 und 1997 3. der Deutschen Meisterschaft. Der promovierte Mathematiker hat mehr als 10 Bücher und Trainings DVDs verfasst und bearbeitet die Endspielkolumnen des ChessBase Magazins und auf ChessCafe.com. Er arbeitet als Schachtrainer und wurde vom Deutschen Schachbund 2007 als Trainer des Jahres ausgezeichnet.

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