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To my way of thinking, Troitzky has no peer among endgame compsers; no one else has composed so many and such varied endings of the first rank.
Sep 18, 2025
I am influenced by books which dont have their eye on the endgame, but which try to be entertaining on each and every page.
Why does any martyr cooperate with his judases?...We see a game beyond the endgame...As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.
I had a slightly inferior endgame that probably should have been drawn, but Kortchnoi kept torturing me with little threats until finally, exhausted and exasperated, I made a losing mistake.
Faith in the endgame helps you live through the months or years of buildup.
I always urge players to study composed problems and endgames.
Once you are in the endgame, the moment of truth has arrived... The amount of points that can be gained (and saved) by correct endgame play is enormous, yet often underestimated.
Modeling was not an endgame for me. I didn't particularly enjoy the act of it.
When you're passionate about something, you want it to be all it can be. But in the endgame of life, I fundamentally believe the key to happiness is letting go of that idea of perfection.
All life long, the same questions, the same answers.
The endgame is peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula.
Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame.
Patience is the most valuable trait of the endgame player.
If you watch the first [Star Wars] movie, you don't actually know exactly what the Empire is trying to do. They're going to rule by fear -- but you don't know what their endgame is. You don't know what Leia is princess of. You don't yet understand who Jabba the Hutt is, even though there is a reference to him. You don't know that Vader is Luke's father, Leia is his sister -- but the possibility is all there. The beauty of that movie was that it was an unfamiliar world, and yet you wanted to see it expand and to see where it went.
You cannot live your life in the elitist world of fashion and not step out or you're disconnected. You have to realize that fashion is not the endgame.
I detest the endgame. A well-played game should be practically decided in the middlegame.
A player can sometimes afford the luxury of an inaccurate move, or even a definite error, in the opening or middlegame without necessarily obtaining a lost position. In the endgame ... an error can be decisive, and we are rarely presented with a second chance.
You're on earth. There's no cure for that.
My forte was the middlegame. I had a good feeling for the critical moments of the play. This undoubtedly compensated for my lack of opening preparation and, possibly, not altogether perfect play in the endgame. In my games things often did not reach the endgame!
What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception.
Patience is the most valuable trait of the endgame player. In the endgame, the most common errors, besides those resulting from ignorance of theory, are caused by either impatience, complacency, exhaustion, or all of the above.
Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.
If you study the classic examples of endgame play you will see how the king was brought up as soon as possible even though there seemed no particular hurry at the time.
Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual ... may well be the chess book of the year... [It] comes close to an ultimate one-volume manual on the endgame.
It often happens that a player is so fond of his advantageous position that he is reluctant to transpose to a winning endgame.
The great mobility of the King forms one of the chief characteristics of all endgame strategy. In the middlegame the King is a mere 'super', in the endgame on the other hand - on of the 'principals'. We must therefore develop him, bring him nearer to the fighting line.
Agreeing to draws in the middlegame, equal or otherwise, deprives you of the opportunity to practice playing endgames, and the endgame is probably where you need the most practice.
The shortcoming of hanging pawns is that they present a convenient target for attack. As the exchange of men proceeds, their potential strength lessens and during the endgame they turn out, as a rule, to be weak.
In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before everything else; for, whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middlegame and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame.
Before the endgame, the Gods have placed the middle game.
After a bad opening, there is hope for the middle game. After a bad middle game, there is hope for the endgame. But once you are in the endgame, the moment of truth has arrived
The great World Champions Morphy, Steinitz, and Lasker were past masters in the art of Pawn play; they had no superiors in their handling of endgames. The present World Champion has not the strength of the other three as an endgame player, and is therefore inferior to them.
For me, MMA is like speed chess. It's like I'm herding a person into a certain position. Say my endgame is an arm bar. I'm not gonna actually take you and put you there. What I'm going to do is convince you that it's a good idea to move in the direction I want you to go.
No one has ever played these endgames with such elegant ease as Capablanca.
You will already have noticed how often Capablanca repeated moves, often returning to positions which he had had before. This is not lack of deciciveness or slowness, but the employment of a basic endgame principle which is 'Do not hurry'.
Capablanca was among the greatest of chess players, but not because of his endgame. His trick was to keep his openings simple, and then play with such brilliance in the middlegame that the game was decided - even though his ooponent didn't always know it - before they arrived at the ending.
The King plays a most important part in the endgame, and gains in power and activity as the number of pieces on the board diminishes. Acting in eight different directions, he becomes, instead of the weakest piece, one of the most formidable units.
The passed Pawn is a criminal, who should be kept under lock and key. Mild measures, such as police surveillance, are not sufficient
Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I'm also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated.
The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.
Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson. Unix was basically his, likewise C's predecessor, likewise much of the basis of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike was the real force in getting it together). And in the meantime Ken created the first computer chess master and pretty much rewrote the book on chess endgames. He is quite a phenomenon.
The endgame is an arena in which miraculous escapes are not uncommon.
Even in the King's Gambit ... White is no longer trying to attack at all costs. He has had to adapt his approach and look for moves with a solid positional foundation ... As often as not, his strategy consists of stifling Black's activity and then winning in an endgame thanks to his superior pawn structure.
Vinyl's just a fun endgame step. I work with analogue signal chains too, but the mp3 is the way I listen to music.
My fascination for studies proved highly beneficial, it assisted the development of my aesthetic understanding of chess, and improved my endgame play.
When I am trying to understand the method of winning in the endgame with two bishops against the knight, chess is a science, when I admire a beautiful combination or study, then chess is art, and when I am complicating position in the approaching time trouble of my opponent, then chess is sport.
I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod. Oh, and since this is England, I had better add, "If wet, in the library." Who could say that this is bad?
The most important feature of the Chess position is the activity of the pieces. This is absolutely fundamental in all phases of the game: Opening, Middlegame and especially Endgame. The primary constraint on a piece's activity is the Pawn structure