Chess book review, Endgame Corner, Karsten Müller
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Endgame Corner

Karsten Müller

Difficulty: Advanced, Master

Category: Endgame

Readability: 3/10

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How difficult it is to read the book without using a board. A book with 10/10 readability is a bedtime story, a book with 1/10 is a puzzle book full of variations. Readability doesn’t represent the quality of the book.

Usefulness: 9/10

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Usefulness is a measure of how useful the book is for chess improvement within the topic it covers. Books with a high usefulness score should help you improve quicker than those with a low score.
Endgame Corner is a collection of 450 exercises designed to sharpen your endgame play and improve your practical decision making in the endgame, a skill essential for any chess player. As the authors put it, Endgame Corner is the endgame “proving ground”. Not a book you will use to expand your theoretical knowledge, but to test it in practical play. That, at the end of the day is all that matters. Knowing the Philidor, the Lucena, or how to defend a Kling and Horwitz in theory is one thing, being able to recognize they are coming, and converting them under time pressure after five hours of play is a totally different story. That is what this book forces you to practice.
  • 2023
  • Russel Enterprises
  • Karsten Müller
  • Pages: 336
  • Physical

Endgame Corner is a collection of 450 exercises designed to sharpen your endgame play and improve your practical decision making in the endgame, a skill essential for any chess player.

There are two types of endgame books; the ones on endgame strategy or complex endgames, and the ones on theoretical endgames. Müller and Fishbein’s Endgame Corner doesn’t belong in either category. For example, Aagaard has recently written A matter of Endgame Technique, the most comprehensive book on endgame strategy ever written. Almost 900 pages of endgame knowledge. Dvoretsky has written his Endgame Manual. A mind numbing guide on every theoretical endgame important for tournament play. I don’t wish to say it’s not a good book, it’s the best, it’s just not an easy read. Those two books combined are enough to teach you how to play endgames on Grandmaster level. They accompany each other. There are other books you can use instead of one or both of them, but you need a combination of strategy and theory.

Endgame Corner is the third part of the recipe – calculation and decision making, or, developing skills essential to apply the knowledge you get from books on theory and strategy in the endgame. It’s the only book, in addition to Aagaard’s Endgame Play from the GM Preparation series, devoted to calculation in the endgame on such a high level. In fact, I don’t think any other book can be compared to these two. When it comes to structure, they are quite similar, both devoting a chapter to different piece combinations such as opposite colored bishops, pawn endgames, or rook endgames. When it comes to difficulty, they are very different. Aagaard’s Endgame play is definitely much harder, with problems tailored for master level players or those aspiring to become titled. Endgame Corner, while definitely not simple to solve, is tailored to better suit mortals, intermediate and advanced players. If I had to give my subjective recommendation, I would say read and solve both books, and see how you do.

Endgame Corner, same as any other endgame book by GM Karsten Müller, such as Understanding Rook Endgames or Fundamental Chess Endings, is an incredibly well written book. Even though it’s a puzzle book, a collection of problems, the solutions and the explanations are detailed, easy to understand, and very instructive. My completion rate when going through the book the first time was 72%. Not too good, I know, but I went through every exercise in one week. I will redo it. And I expect to be able to solve close to a 100% because the explanations for the problems I’d failed were clear, concise, and enough for me to understand what I had missed or what I hadn’t understood in the first place.

As the authors put it, Endgame Corner is the endgame “proving ground”. Not a book you will use to expand your theoretical knowledge, but to test it in practical play. That, at the end of the day is all that matters. Knowing the Philidor, the Lucena, or how to defend a Kling and Horwitz in theory is one thing, being able to recognize they are coming, and converting them under time pressure after five hours of play is a totally different story. That is what this book forces you to practice.