Victor Korchnoi
Practical Rook Endings
Edited by Ken Neat. 100 pp. with 98 diagrams

The author sees the main purpose of his book as being to try and inspire readers with a deep interest in rook endings, and thus to stimulate their own work in this field. He promises that anyone who thoroughly masters the given material will raise his Elo rating by a hundred points, or perhaps even more!

Victor Korchnoi, undoubtedly one of the greatest experts in the field of rook endings, reports in this new book on his own experiences from tournament play. He begins with an ABC of rook endings, which provides an initiation for the inexperienced, and then deals with various typical positions, difficult to grasp theoretically, which he analyses precisely and in great depth. He does not aim for a general appraisal, but rather for an exact proof.

As the author explains in his preface, anyone who considers rook endings to be simple is quite mistaken. Just how profound they really are is shown especially by his analysis of a famous ending from his World Championship Match with Karpov in Baguio 1978, which is a real treat for practical players of any standard. However, the Cuban World Champion José Raúl Capablanca once said that he owed his knowledge to the study of a thousand rook endings!

This book, a masterpiece in chess literature, will set the reader on the right road.