If you don’t find this a beautiful endgame you should give up chess!

Botwinniks knight being superior  to his opponents rook.

Here is a clear example of how to create weaknesses and exploit them.

Here is an example of a big mistake in an endgame of Capablanca.

The endgame in this video was played yesterday in the fifth round of the grandmasters tournament in Biel, Switzerland. Magnus surprises us with a pawn sacrifice and makes use of some tactical ideas to win this endgame in an excellent way. Watch how the future world champion wins this game:

Some time ago a friend told me that learning rook endings is one of the most important things in chess. The reason for this is that rook endings are very common and if we put some energy in studying practical endgames we can get a lot in return. Here is an example of a game that I played in a correspondence tournament at Chessworld.com. After having been in trouble in the middlegame we reached a drawish endgame that I won because of a big mistake of my oponent.

In this example we see how different positional concepts arise in the endgame. It’s a very instructive example from the game between Vera Menchik and José Raúl Capablanca, 1931.

This game was played by the young Magnus Carlsen on June 1st 2007 during the candidates match against Levon Aronian. Magnus  gives us a lesson on how to play an endgame.

This endgame was played by “Capa” when he was a 12 year old kid. Now we know that children can become strong players at young age using all this modern training material and computer databases. But imagine its the year 1901 and a small Cuban boy manages to beat the national champion in a match. That is extraordinary. Have a look at this nice demonstration of endgame technique.

This is one of the most beautiful examples of a Bishop vs Knight endgame. The protagonist in this one is the legendary Bobby Fischer.