Endgame Magic: The best endgames of 2018

by Karsten Müller
1/3/2019 – Karsten reviews the best endgames of 2018, checks in on our reader poll and gives his own opinions. This week's show is live at 15:00 CEST (13:00 UTC; 9:00 AM EDT) and FREE to watch on-demand (for a limited time)!
Let endgame expert Dr Karsten Müller show and explain the finesses of the world champions. Although they had different styles each and every one of them played the endgame exceptionally well, so take the opportunity to enjoy and learn from some of the best endgames in the history of chess.

Endgame Magic #119

Happy New Year! In the Endgame Magic Show, Grandmaster Karsten Mueller invites strong players and shows recent examples of the tournament praxis for a live exchange, usually at 14:00 UTC (15:00 CET; 9:00 AM EST).

This week Karsten shares his view of the best endgames of 2019. Let's see how they match up with our reader poll!

Here's a position you will encounter in today's show: 

 
Carlsen vs Caruana, Rapid tiebreak
Position after 49...a2

This week

Guest: (Just Karsten today!)

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Endgames are the soul of the chess games. This could be a phrase from GM Karsten Mueller. The German grandmaster is one of the leading experts when it comes to endgames, with numerous published books and DVDs about this phase of the game. The Endgame Magic show is one of the major features of the video portal.

Previous shows on-demand

Karsten Mueller goes on air around once a month, always inviting a guest into his endgame world to discuss recent examples. But he also tests his guests with their very own endgames. Watch anytime with a ChessBase Premium account.

Endgame expert GM Karsten Mueller

Links

Karsten Müller is considered to be one of the greatest endgame experts in the world. His books on the endgame - among them "Fundamentals of Chess Endings", co-authored with Frank Lamprecht, that helped to improve Magnus Carlsen's endgame knowledge - and his endgame columns for the ChessCafe website and the ChessBase Magazine helped to establish and to confirm this reputation. Karsten's Fritztrainer DVDs on the endgame are bestsellers. The mathematician with a PhD lives in Hamburg, and for more than 25 years he has been scoring points for the Hamburger Schachklub (HSK) in the Bundesliga.

Discuss

Rules for reader comments

 
 

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Karsten Müller Karsten Müller 1/4/2019 02:49
Good questions. I guess that both positions can be defended. But such waters can be very deep of course. And for a drawing proof it must be shown that all winning attempts fail. For the first position this might be doable with modern means as the number of winning ideas is very limited. In the second case it might be too deep even with modern technique as there are already deeply hidden long wins in rook and pawns against bishop and pawns.
Nordlandia Nordlandia 1/4/2019 12:37
Karsten Müller: I will appreciate if you can look upon couple of complex endgames and anticipate the most likely outcome and give me your verdict upon them .

Goldin versus Korzubov, Dushanbe, 1980

#1: Black is ahead in material but the white knight is so strong that it's worth atleast 1 pawn in positional compensation for the material deficit. There is no entry path for the bK on the queenside.



Yannick Berthelot vs Glenn Flear, Pau FRA (1988)

#2: The material distribution rook + knight versus bishop-pair + pawn is ceteris paribus close in value. Although R+N is usually slightly stronger. Is the likelyhood if victory for white greater than the chance of draw as black?

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