Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual (3rd Edition)

Mark Dvoretsky

Reviewer: John Donaldson
Russell Engerprises
2011
408 pages
paper


Half a dozen years ago Grandmaster Alex Shabalov gave a lecture at the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club in San Francisco. When he finished his talk, Shabalov opened the floor to questions and the first was, “What book do you recommend for someone who is ambitious to improve?” Shabalov said that normally this would be a hard question to answer without more information about the questioner’s strengths and weaknesses, their age, how long they had been playing, how much time they had to study, etc., but that a recent book had made this all a moot point. The several time U.S. Champion recommended Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual as that rare book that players of many different abilities could benefit from.

The publication of the third edition of Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual, eight years after the appearance of the first, testifies to the excellent reception this work has enjoyed. The present edition, twenty-four pages longer than the first, with both corrections and new material, will only add to Dvoretsky’s reputation as a chess pedagogue of the first order. The neatly laid out oversize paperback is filled with everything one needs to know about the endgame. 400-plus pages of endgame theory might seem intimidating for many, but Dvoretsky has made his masterwork more accommodating by highlighting in blue that which is deemed absolutely essential.

Anyone who does not have the first or second editions of Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual will want to have this book.

Highly Recommended