Mueller and Davies

by Karsten Müller
11/18/2022 – Ever analyzing and sharing with readers and fans, Karsten Mueller receives many interesting correspondence and contributions. Here are a handful of endgames analyzed and sent in by Frederick Davies, which Mueller was quick to compliment profusely and send it forward for publication.

Chess Endgames 14 - The golden guidelines of endgame play Chess Endgames 14 - The golden guidelines of endgame play

Rules of thumb are the key to everything when you are having to set the correct course in a complex endgame. In this final DVD of his series on the endgame, our endgame specialist introduces you to the most important of these rules of thumb.

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Using the active notation

You might be inclined to believe the game notations below are just to be looked at and the moves to be played through in your mind. But as most of you know you can click on the moves to get a separate replay board, which you can resize and move to the best place on your screen.

Chess Endgames 9 - Rook and Minor Piece

Endings with rook and minor piece against rook and minor piece occur very frequently, even more often than rook endings, yet there's not much literature on them. This endgame DVD fills this gap. The four different material constellations rook and knight vs rook and knight, rooks and opposite coloured (and same coloured ) bishops and rook and bishop vs rook and knight are dealt with. In view of the different material constellations Karsten Mueller explains many guidelines like e.g. "With knights even a small initiative weighs heavily".

The popup board has full controls, and you can use the navigation buttons to advance the moves, as well as use an engine or save the game or position to your computer. In the engine window you can ask for multiple lines, or what the threat is, or see the positional evaluation of the position. 

A quick win with opposite-colored bishops

It is not uncommon to quickly conclude that winning with opposite colored bishops in the ending is going to depend on a very helpful opponent, and this was the opinion of the viewers as the chatted. However Nakamura had a different idea and showed superb technique. Well worth checking out.

 

The prodigal son returns

In their series, incredibly, a second ending with opposite colored bishops ensued, but this time there were rooks. As Davies explains, if you exchange to a pure rook endgame or pure opposite colored bishops it is an easy draw, but the combination is another story.

 

Centenarians have it tough

Not centenarians in years, but in moves. Indeed, while both Nakamura and So are the crème de la crème, the combination of a rapid game and nothing left but the increments by move 100, and what had been a fairly ho-hum affair now became a comedy of errors as winning chances appeared and disappeared on the board

 

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.

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