The World's Most Boring Chess Book: The Isolated d-Pawn in the Endgame

by Ian Rogers, Laszlo Hazai, Boris Gelfand (Foreword by)

Overview

Excellent Ennui!

Chess, so the theory goes, takes 10,000 hours of practice to master. Clearly not all of those hours will be enjoyable and studying 80 endgames featuring a specific isolated pawn is definitely not in the fun category. This is where The World’s Most Boring Chess Book comes in.

What The World’s Most Boring Chess Book lacks in entertainment, it makes up in examples explaining how to push for a win in an endgame where one side is saddled with an isolated pawn, and how to defend against such efforts. The commentary which accompanies the deep analysis, makes the subject accessible but never easy: even the endgames with just kings and pawns are surprisingly challenging.

Isolated pawns are one major type of technical position. One can find oneself in such a position from many different openings, or at the end of a middlegame or endgame battle. Hundreds of fascinating games have been played with an isolated pawn and Rogers and Hazai deeply analyze 80 of them in this book… [A] reader will learn which pieces it is better to exchange, when one can wait patiently, and when one needs to look for active counterplay… If you are not shy about working diligently and want to improve your technique, then this book is for you! – From the Foreword by Boris Gelfand

Many chessplayers are uncomfortable in positions which have an isolated d-pawn. With the help of the authors, you will come to embrace these positions, whether on offense or defense. What excellent ennui!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781963885019
Publisher:	Russell Enterprises, Incorporated
Publication date:	02/12/2025
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Ian Rogers is an Australian Grandmaster. He is commentator, trainer, and author who has tried to make the book accessible for players below a 2700 rating. His previous works for Russell Enterprises include two immensely enjoyable books, Oops! I Resigned Again! and Oops! I Resigned One More Time!.

Hungarian International Master Laszlo Hazai is a noted trainer and theoretician who has worked with elite Grandmasters such as Judit Polgar and Boris Gelfand and multiple World Junior Champions. Hazai is also a gold medal winning Olympic captain for Hungary. This is his first book for Russell Enterprises.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 4
Knights and Bishops

An important and challenging chapter, given the multiple possible exchanges into other endings. In general, knights are not worse than bishops, nor knight and bishop worse than a bishop pair, because the isolated pawn closes diagonals for the bishops.

Conversely, a pair of bishops can offer great defensive chances even after the isolated pawn has been lost as they can suddenly have some open diagonals.

Yet even in the worst piece match-up for the defender, a good knight versus bad bishop endgame (say, White: Nd4 Pe3 v Black Bd7, Pd5), the ending is a theoretical draw if there are no other weaknesses in the defender’s camp, as has been known since a famous Fine-Capablanca game.

However, since Capablanca defends very few endgames these days, in practice the attacker’s winning chances are excellent. Above all, the defender must avoid giving up too much space on the kingside, as in Belavanets-Rauzer.

These games lead to the conclusion that the defender must keep most of their pawns on the opposite-coloured squares to their bishop – but not too many of them! It is close to a general rule that the defender should keep at least one pawn on the same colour as their bishop – for example ...h5 to exchange at least a pair of pawns should White advance on the kingside. In practice, following this advice – and choosing the right pawn or pawns to advance, is far from easy.

Once an extra pair of minor pieces are added to the board, though the objective assessment does not change, the defence becomes much more challenging, with every exchange a potential minefield. (See Flohr-Pirc.)

It should be noted that a pair of bishops, though great for defence, offers no extra winning chances for the attacker. Indeed, a common strategy is to exchange off the isolated pawn in order to provide more breathing space for the bishops, as in Riazantsev-Musalov. It is, however, very rare that such a plan can be executed to advantage.

(24) Sergey Belavenets – Vsevolod Rauzer
Moscow Championship 1937

[diagram]

One of the classic good knight versus bad bishop endgames and one which is not as bad as it looks for Black. While in practice Black will always be struggling to earn a draw, it cannot be said that Black’s position is lost.

White’s plan starts with bringing the king to d4, followed by trying to fix the pawn structure. (Obviously it is a bonus if Black pawns finish up on light squares.)