Book Review: Liquidation on the Chess Board: Mastering the Transition into the Pawn Endgame
Benjamin, Joel Liquidation on the Chess Board: Mastering the Transition into the Pawn Endgame. New in Chess, 2015. 253 p.
About the Author
Joel Benjamin is a well-known Grandmaster who has won numerous championships. He is a prolific author for chess publications, and is known to many as the long-time presenter of the ICC’s Game of the Week videos. This is Benjamin’s first book publication since American Grandmaster: Four Decades of Chess Adventures in 2008. Liquidation has won the CJA 2015 Best Chess Book Award.
Summary
With his latest work, Benjamin intends to cover a gap in chess literature, which is the transition from endings and middlegames into pawn endings. In his own words, “Pawn endings do not arise out of nowhere; we know of course that every pawn ending started out as an endgame with more pieces on the board… studying the transition will help us see the pawn endings evolve and enable us to appreciate and understand them so much better”. This particular aspect of chess hasn’t been the subject of any book – the closest match may be Exchanging to Win in the Endgame by Gennady Nesis (1991).
I can recommend this book to students of the endgame, and coaches looking for good teaching material. Because of its unique focus on endgame decision-making rather than theoretical positions, beginners are advised to supplement or precede this book with a work covering the basic theory of pawn endings. Meanwhile, more experienced players will be able to use Liquidation to strengthen decision making and ‘feel’, while using the fresh examples to brush up on theoretical knowledge.
Mastering the Transition
The book is subtitled ‘Mastering the Transition into the Pawn Endgame’, and it indeed provides what someone would need to improve greatly in this special area. There is plenty of material covering the major aspects of judging pawn endings. While your average treatise on positional assessment in the middlegame would teach the elements that make up the worth of a position, this book is about the complicated art of juggling the relative worth of completely different types of endings, which each must be judged by their own rules.
Pawn endings are usually viewed as nothing more than the final phase of converting some advantage that was gained earlier in the game. But, as this book focuses on, both the winning chances of the stronger side and drawing chances of the weaker can be enhanced or reduced by a going into a pawn ending. For example, in a Queen ending, a passed pawn advanced far up the board is a big advantage, while after a queen trade, the same pawn might be picked off easily. King activity and outside passed pawns, which are important factors in most endings, become the decisive factors in pawn endings. Furthermore, because many pawn endings are especially sharp, they can be used as a final try to bamboozle the opponent.
The role of judgement is somewhat under-emphasized in chess literature. Recently on a live broadcast of a chess event, GM Yasser Seirewan was asked what the biggest differentiator is between players of varying strength. He named judgement as the key factor. I had for a long time thought it is calculation and tactical ability. But it is common chess wisdom that strong players will seek out quieter positions against weaker opponents, and that one is advised to sharpen the game against stronger opponents. This points to the judging of subtle differences between different positions as something less readily accessible than tactics. Liquidation not only covers endgames from a new perspective, but trains the reader on a set of thinking skills that is under-emphasized.
Structure of the Book
Liquidation features the well-chosen dimensions, typeface, diagram and notation style, and player photos that come standard with New in Chess publications. The quality of the writing is high, and the variations are all computer-checked. The depth and clarity that Benjamin brings to his Game of the Week comes through in his writing as well. Someone who is going through the book carefully will have questions about positions that they need to answer themselves, but the major points are generally brought to light. The tournament games are recent, many of them from 2014, and refreshingly, many of the games are from the US chess circuit.
Most of the book is divided into chapters by ending type: queen, rook, bishop, knight, bishop vs. knight, rook and minor piece, two minor piece, major piece (double rook or rooks vs. queen), queen and minor piece, three or more piece, and unbalanced material endings. Each chapter is made up of excerpts from tournament games, organized by the following pawn ending themes:
- Technical Liquidations
- Tempo Games
- King Activity
- Passed Pawn Dynamics
- The Race
- Breakthrough
- Sacrifices and Countersacrifices
At the end of each chapter are a healthy number of exercises, and they are one of the strongest features of the book. The exercises have hints (listed on a separate page) in the form of cryptic phrases. I really enjoyed these hints! Not only was it interesting to try and guess their meaning, often-times they would be just enough of a help to let you know whether you really saw everything in the position, or need to have a deeper look. Many of the exercises are of the form ‘should White/Black go for the pawn ending from here?’, and after going through many of these, I can’t help but think that I’ll be better prepared to face similar decision points during a game.
After the main part of the book is a chapter ‘Thematic Positions’ with diagrams of typical pawn ending situations, along with brief explanations. Some of them are well-known theoretical positions, while others are motifs that occurred in a few places in the book. There are not assessments or variations in this section, rather the games in which they occur are listed. This short chapter is more of an afterthought and could have easily been left out.
What to Get Out of the Book
After working through Liquidation, the reader stands to gain:
- A better ability to weigh advantages and disadvantages of various endings
- A better feel for typical pawn ending motifs
- An alertness to possible pawn ending transitions and their consequences during practical play
I think the reader will get the most out of this book having already studied basic endgame theory. On the other hand, some new to the endgame may prefer something like this as a more interesting way to get into the subject. The book is recommended for players of Elo 1800 and up. The examples chosen are instructive and rich in content, so this book will be a great resource for coaches.
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