101 Endgame Crimes and Punishments

This book of finals tactics by Grandmaster Alexander Galkin, who was named Children's Coach of the Year in 2016 by the Russian Chess Federation, provides a large volume of practical knowledge. The vast majority of combination books contain a selection of positions and exercises in which the student is asked to find a tactic or carry out an attack against the enemy king. That way, they learn to develop their combinatorial vision and their attacking ability. However, not much attention is paid to the mistake of one of the players that led to the critical position where the combination or decisive attack became possible.

In this book, aimed at strong tournament players (1900-2300 Elo or youth who improve quickly), the author presents a broader approach to developing the tactical endgame skills a formidable chess player needs. Specifically, it features 101 grandmaster match positions played in 2019, including super GMs like Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren, Alireza Firouzja, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexander Grischuk, Wang Hao, Alexei Shirov, Samuel Shankland, Kirill Alekseenko and Levon Aronian, in which he first explains the mistake made by one of the players in underestimating his opponent's counterplay, then analyzes how the match progressed where the penalty for the mistake is applied. After that, it returns to the starting position to demonstrate the correct or most promising continuation. Thus, the text is structured so that each challenge contains the initial diagram twice: before the moves in the actual game and then, on the back page, before the solution.

Studying these key fragments from grandmaster games will help the player develop his endgame approach. First, the student analyzes why a move or series of moves by one of the players was wrong. What counterplay did the player underestimate? Second, armed with this answer, the student can review the position to try to discover the best move. If the student is working with a coach, then the coach must first establish the position on the board, demonstrate the wrong move made and ask the student to find the refutation of that bad move.

Once the student finds the refutation, the coach must once again establish the critical position and ask the student to find the strongest continuation for the starting player. It can be one or more movements, depending on the position. Naturally, in the case of self-study, the student can change their approach, either by trying to discover the refutation of the error by covering the next text, or simply by studying the moves in the game before trying to find the best continuation, which is detailed on the back along with the initial diagram.