Greetings,

Thank you all for the replies and suggestions!

I'm just back from a week abroad and apologise for not responding before.

As both Frendo and Markovich indicated, Mednis was covering forcing lines in his book as this is, obviously, the only guaranteed way to reach a late-middle-/end-game.

As a d-pawn player, I had originally been drawn to the book by the KID and Grunfeld lines he covered. These were of interest as alternatives to my normal Samisch and Exchange variations, respectively, which I employed against those two openings at the time.

Certainly, as White, one generally has more opportunity to transpose to a endgame - not that Black can't!

It would be interesting to know if anyone has suggestions for White against the more irregular openings - Benoni, Benko, Budapest, etc!? Even against the NID/QID?!

Kindest regards,

James

Hello,

None of the examples mentioned so far are in Mednis book. The ones he covers are, if remember correctly:
1) Ruy Lopez Exchange var, old main line with f6, and Bg4 which Adams has played (not particularly sucessfully).
2) Exchange variation of Kings Indian. This was very popular on ICC for some reason.

3) A line in the Modern with c4, 1.e4 g6 2. d4 Bg7 3. c4 d6 4.Nc3 e5, white plays f4 after exchange of queens. This still looks quite good for white.

4) g4 line in the Dragon, based around some Karpov games.

5)A line in the Nf3 Grunfeld.

6) 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.e4 Nxc3 6.dxc3
7) A symetrical english line based around a Symslov v Benko game.
and finally  I think
8) A endgame from the Maroczy Bind.

Bye John S

OstapBender wrote on 08/03/06 at 00:09:26:


If you're interested in this position, you'll find it discussed at length in Aagaard's book on the Panov-Botvinnik.  I don't think Mednis covers it.  He's interested in White's >forcing< an endgame, but in this line, Black can go in for complications.

Another endgame variation exists in the Petrov: 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 Nxe5 d6 4 Nf3 Nxe4 5 Qe2 Qe7 6 d3 Nf6.  Against the Queen's Gambit Accepted White can often enter and endgame by playing an early dxc5 in the main lines after 3.Nf3.

GM Mednis has to be the most under rated writer in chess ever. While I do not have his 'From The OPening to the Endgame' his book on 'From the Middlegame to Endgame' was and still is a great piece of work on this phase of the game. His other work 'Strategic Chess' is a must for the 1d4 player even though it was written so long ago. This work along with Cox's Starting out 1)d4 are helping my play & understanding of the closed openings. A great author.........

Interesting question really.  I can't really recall many myself.  Of course there are plenty of sub-variations of openings that lead to the endgame, but not all that many usually directly go into the endgame.  The ones that spring to my mind that weren't covered by Mednis are the Berlin Ruy Lopez, 1.e4 d6 2.d4 e5 and 2...Nf6 3.Nc3 e5, 1.d4 d6 2.c4 e5, and apparently 1.e4 e4 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 f5 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.Nc3 often leads to an endgame.  Of course Mednis was trying to find systems for White that usually quickly lead to an endgame where White could try to convert a small advantage.  I think all of the systems he offered contain some poison, but some are definitely better than others.  The endgame variations of the openings I mentioned certainly vary in effectiveness.  I think White is basically forced to try the endgame in the Berlin if he wants a theoretical edge (although I could be wrong on this since I'm one of those crazy people who keep studying 2.f4).  The others I mentioned shouldn't really offer much possibly with the exception of the last which was mentioned by Jonathon Tait (http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1154282625).

I'm sure there are lots of others and hopefully more members will contribute their knowledge.  I'll try and keep an eye out for more variations and post any I see.