Levenfish is the all time classic, but it can be rather dry.  Sort of like working on five-finger scales when you are learning to play piano.  Mednis is more to the point and really all you need.  Read that, then move on to something more interesting.

You need to learn the basic theory and familarize yourself with some of the tactics, but, imho, that's about it.  I suspect that up to, say, 2400, nobody really knows all that much more.  As a GM once told me, you'll be fine as long as you keep calculating and stay aggressive.

Minev's book is supposed to be very good. Plus it is rather a cheap book.

I believe that you could do worse than to look at the rook ending chapter in Israel Gelfer's positional chess handbook. 

Not mentioned so far are Korchnoi's book on rook endings and various endings analysed by Speelman in Endgame preparation. Muller and Dvoretsky's universal endgame books provide good coverage.

Thanks everybody....it seems Mednis is the one to start with. In fact, this was the same suggested by a very strong NM to me (whom I respect a lot and regard very highly as coach). Based on his suggestion, I already got the book.

Can you also mention what will be follow up book ?

saubhikr wrote on 02/08/08 at 04:37:49:


IMHO successful study of the endgame involves two elements: 
a) study of a small (but growing as you get stronger) number of "precise positions" of each type of endgame (e.g. R+P, N+P etc.)
and
b) familiarity with (and increasing "feel" for)  the basic principles and methods of conducting endings which are not yet reducible to one of the "precise positions".

For R+P endings, I always suggest that students start with the little Mednis book, which covers the first few important precise R+P positions AND the main principles and methods, in a very user-friendly way. (Also it's is quite cheap!)

BTW, in his fine book "Chess Coaching", John Littlewood made a very useful small selection of "precise positions" in each type of ending that he considered  essential knowledge.

I don't have much of a view on this, but I might mention that an acquaintance of mine (a US master) is effusive in his praise of Mednis's little rook endings book (saying something like, it taught him more about endings in general than any other book).