Iirc Karoly writes in Endgame Virtuoso or says in an interview he was astonished by going through Karpov's endgames how often Karpov worked with mate threats.

Naturally there's a bias in public opinion and you will not change it. It's even hard to do this if you know the facts are different to your prejudice.

Karpov and Capablanca are missing. Also look at Timman's endgames.

I've been thinking about the concept of different endgame "styles" lately. Most well-known endgame greats (Smyslov, Fischer, Karpov, Kramnik, Andersson etc.) are known for slowly and surely improving their positions, and winning by "understanding" the position better (of course in reality there is still lots of calculation involved!).

But there's a sharper way of playing the endgame, with lots of tactics, often unbalanced material, dangerous passed pawns on both sides and so on. Players who often solve their endgames tactically include:

- Shirov (claims his great calculation skills are even more of a strength in the endgame than in attack)
- Kasparov
- Alekhine
- Tal
- Azmaiparashvili (his tactical endgame style was pointed out in one of the Beliavsky/Mikhalchishin endgame books)
- Mark Hebden (a strange choice maybe. I played through many of his games as a junior, and was struck by how often he would just continue playing sharply with constant threats, even after a queen exchange).

- Is there anything to this distinction between "positional" and "tactical" endgame players? And if so, could it be that the endgame skills of i.e. Shirov or Kasparov are underestimated, because their endgames seem more random and illogical to the average player? 

- Or, is the difference just an artifact of the openings and middlegames they play?

- Any other well-known names that fit on this list?