Endgames
Created Thursday 07 December 2017
When people talk about endgames, they are often not sure what exactly is meant by this term. Sometimes any position without queens is called an endgame. A more sophisticated approach is to look at the role of kings. If the king can play an active role in the game without serious risk, usually this is called an endgame. And yet there are exceptions to this definition. To clarify the terminology, a famous coach Mark Dvoretsky introduced the concept of 'simple positions', where one of the type of pieces is absent - either rooks, queens or minor pieces. Understanding simple positions is often more important than knowing precise theoretical positions. The most common type of simple positions is rook+minor piece vs. rook+minor piece.
The endgame books here will mostly focus on this kind of simple positions.