Ah, at long last a topic I'm fully qualified to comment on, if only for the fact that both my national and international rating is just a few points below 2100.
I only know very, very little about endgames. Yes, I've played through Philidor, Lucena, Vancura et al at some point in my "career", but I've forgotten it all almost instantly. I could probably not mate with KNB, certainly not within 50 moves. I've "read" Shereshevsky, tried to solve some of Müller's exercises every now and then, but basically I have no clue. But then again, I do not have a clue about openings, strategy and tactics either. My calculation is wretched, I drop pieces left right and center. I am most definitely not a hacker. I commit positional mistakes that make grandmasters faint, at times my pieces threaten me with a strike, unless I start treating them better. And yet, I somehow managed to keep my level around 2050-2100 for the last 15-20 years. And this is only thanks to my opponents, whose holes in their game are obviously just as big as mine. Yes, I do get outplayed in the endgame every now and then. But miraculously, I even sometimes win in the endgame. And yes, I do sometimes drop a half point on account of not remembering a technical position (I can recall a case of R+f+h vs R). But this happens exceedingly rare. The vast majority of my games are decided in the middlegame, even if some games then spill over in a not very exciting endgame. Now, you tell me that it's easier to play the middlegame while knowing what to look for in endings. That's true. But, it'd also be easier to play the middle game while knowing where the pieces belong, what pawn strutures to aim for or avoid, how to secure outposts, which pieces to exchange and so on. And preferrably not dropping a piece in the process. When I land in an endgame I just try to get by as good as I can, i.e. play "normal" chess, trying to understand what my opponent wants, what I may want, how to get there. Sure, studying the endgame deeply would yield results. But studying pawn structures, common plans, combinations and - yes, there I said it - even openings might just about yield as much. So basically I agree to some extent with JohnG: every serious study of chess is beneficial. But at 2100, it is not immediately logical to me that endings - especially technical ones that I forget within two days - are the (one) holy grail to improvement.
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