Endgame Virtuoso Magnus Carlsen: His Extraordinary Skills Uncovered and Explained Paperback – August 15, 2018

Carlsen's career features a high percentage of endgame wins, where he reliably outplays average GMs and frequently also his elite peers. Modern tournament chess has done away with adjournments, leaving GMs on their own in late stage of play. Whereas Karpov and Kasparov had a team to assist in overnight prep for the endgame, modern champions are alone in a less perfect battlefield environment. Resulting in more errors and a much more dynamic endgame situation. Carlsen resembles Fischer, Korchnoi and Lasker by having faith in his ability to 'wing it' and rely on finding a way through to the true finish of play, eg. all possibilities are exhausted. Karolyi exams Carlsen from his early junior years, including a few pre-gm games and the developing period as journeyman GM of great promise. As usual the positions are deeply studied, lots of diagrams, careful consideration of alternative ideas. Karolyi offers his own evaluations of how Carlsen developed his skill, making a good faith effort to get into the thinking side of the game. Unlike his Tal, Karpov and Kasparov collections, Karolyi has never really met this champion and does not have access to Carlsen's inner circle. However, Carlsen's games have been widely covered on the net and in NIC and Informantor, so there is not much new ground here to be broken. I do not think Karolyi offers new deep insights.The book is an outstanding study of the current great endgame maestro of the 21st century. Nicely laid out, thoroughly assessed, accurate and highly beneficial for learning and improving the endgame. I too regret the lack moves prior to the ending (which Karolyi did include with Karpov endgame collection), but is this really much of loss?! These games are easily find-able from the net or NIC, unlike the games from Smyslov's superb endgame collection. This is presented as an endgame collection only. In future years GM peers will address Carlsen complete achievements. I am pleased tah Karolyi includes the rating and event (incl the round of play) for both players in each game presented, There is a good index of endgame themes. Carlsen's games and these notes greatly explore recent endgame theory. Carlsen's play has greatly enriched understanding of: dynamic piece imbalances, pawn sacrifices for dynamic advantages, clever methods to restrict mobility of other pieces (especially with bishop and knight) that can create fatal weaknesses, discoveries of non-routine plans or movement routs of pieces, and above all the of use of accurate calculation to broaden the immense possibilities in seemingly simple endgame play.A word of warning! I believe players below 1800 will not get much from this book. Karolyi's notes are written to address readers already having a solid understanding of endgame play. In fact, often he does not always explain why the opponent resigns. This caused me to have to spend an instructive effort to figure out either the killing idea or discover what makes the position part of standard gm endgame knowledge. I rate this as one of the great endgame books to own after one has studied a standard book on fundamental endings, e.g. Mueller, Dvoretsky, Nunn. Carlsen's play is joyous to watch, never dull, often full of risk and daring ideas.

Absolutely AWESOME. Tibor Karolyi never fails and this is a favorite of mine. I never got his endgame book on Karpov, but I'm sure it is great as well.It is amazing no one else has published a book on Carlsen's endgames, because they are the best of all time. Karolyi picks out amazing moments from many of Carlsen's iconic victories against the world's best players and explains what is happening with very clear, easy to follow concepts. The only thing I would caution people on is that this is not a beginner's book. But if you've played a decent amount of chess and have familiarity with endgame concepts, I would go for it no matter what your rating.

This is a very good study of MC's endgames. One star eliminated because the author did not include all the moves of each game, but only starts with the endgame position under consideration. Karolyi knows better than this.

This book of Karolyi and this type other books, such as Chernev's Capablanca's Best End Games for example, provide a chess player to develop himself in terms of understandig the position and eventually planning what/how to play from now on... I really appreciated Tibor Karolyi's book and advise it to all players suffering "what to play and how to plan" problem...

Was a gift for my grandson.......he loves chess and this was a great gift

Great read fir your chess enthusiast

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Totally Disappointed!!! Asking for replacement