[.ca] Basic Chess Endings (ISBN 0812934938)

a classic masterwork on chess endings:
This is a great but also a difficult book. Because it deals with a very complex subject, moreover is not an approachable text for chess newbies, therefore I should not award it more than four stars-- it's not for all! Yet this great marvel ought to be on the book shelf of any chess master! For having so many hundreds of pages of clear (and dry) examples in this book ; this has stood the test of time. Now it is revised, in-print and in the newer algebraic notation format. The couple of dozen errors which were unknowable to anyone before computer analysis of endgames was available have been ammended by Grandmaster Pal Benko. Honestly I can think of easier endgame books, like Auerbach's 5 volume set (now available on a cd-rom by Convekta-dot-com a russian publishing house) or certainly the are simpler rook ending books such as Emm's work and simpler pawn-ending books like Fishbein's work. but Reuben Fine-- the greatest US contender for the world chess championship before RJ Fischer--the man Botvinnik (and the soviet system of chess) most worried about before he gave up chess for medicine-- knew his stuff better than the rest. Don't ever try to read this kind of book straight on. Look at your own chess games. Look at the type of endings which you are playing right now. Then study those ending-types in Fine's taxonomy of endings via the book index. This method will make you fearless of the ending. You will more willing to play strategic chess with complex endings instead of rock'em sock'em blitz. You will enjoy longer time-controls. This kind of book can change a young man's chess game alot. But you have to put the work into this book to get that. So it's not for all players.

The best single reference work around:
First let me state that I was NOT planning to write a review until I read some of the other reviews. (Some of them are very misleading). This book is a fantastic reference book covering virtually any major ending situation that you would likely come accross in actual play. It is NOT a textbook - although it could be used to learn basic endings, there are many better books to fill this gap. This book is probably most useful (as a reference work) for more advanced players (say 1500 - 1600 USCF & up) who have likely already studied other endgame manuals. This book would probably also be useful for a post-mortem (analyzing a game after the fact) to determine where a particular player went astray. It is well organized, good diagrams, good binding, etc. It has also been converted to algebraic notation (which was a drawback to the older editions). Some of the earier reviews were most likely referring to the older editions of the book. Hey, for 25 bucks you would be hard pressed to find anything better!

No Serious Chess Player is without It:
OK, it has errors, is difficult to read, and is really esoteric. It also the only really comprehensive one volume manual on the endgames and contains endings that are found nowhere else. Buy it used, but it does belong on your shelf if you intend to be a serious chess player.

NOT BASIC BUT SUPERFICIAL:
I am disappointed... Reuben Fine was a great player and almost reached the very top in chess. However, when it comes to providing a study guide for the ending this is anything but basic. The lack of explanations in some variations is just irritating! I like to be challenged when reading a book and encouraged to think but the author is not teaching me but showing off! I believe that more diagrams could have been included to illustrate the points or at least, for the verbally oriented, a more thorough description of what is going on. In this regard I want to give "Fundamental Chess Endings" by Muller et. al. an ovation. For example: The pawn endings chapter in Basic Chess Endings requires 287 diagrams in all \o I have added the positions described in the text but not depicted like: "White: King at KN8, Pawns at QB6 and KN2. Black: King at K1. White to move and draw" \c In Fundamental chess endings there are only 64 diagrams for the same chapter and I don't have to go through the aggravation of setting up the board for positions that are not diagramed! And it is so much clearer... Do yourself a favor and don't buy BCE's by Fine... It is a horrible book. Ah! Many inaccuracies have been found in BCE's and some of them weren't caught with a chess computer! When I was browsing through old issues of chess life I ran into a bunch... That leads me to regretfully believe that Fine didn't do his best and that his work in endings is very superficial.

An amazing effort:
I can't give this book anything other than 5 stars. This is a monumental effort that remained the serious chess players Endgame Bible for years. Now, should new players use this book as a training manual? No. There are far better books to teach you the endgame. This is a REFERENCE work. A reference work done before huge computer databases and tablebases. There is a revision coming with algebraic notation and corrections done by computers etc. Regardless, the book will never be as useful as it once was. I'm compelled however to give the credit that is due Fine. It's quite possibly the most ambitious chess book ever written.