I didn't understand the reason why J. Hawkins named a chapter: "Ulf on the Warpath! Development in the Endgame."

It's quite interesting, in the presented games Ulf Andersson was playing a meek opening with a safety net, so it seems, and then he makes some deep moves and maneuvres in the endgame and just wins the games!

As the author points out in the "Summery of Ideas":
"As a general comment, maybe more relevant to the opening than the endgame: Weaker players in particular find deploying or redeploying their pieces under duress (as in these games because of threat and initiative) a difficult task.

The players of the black pieces in these games were strong players, but still found a harmonious deployment difficult to achieve."

proustiskeen wrote on 01/16/13 at 04:26:26:



Congratulations. I think the internet needs more of these, actually. Plenty of my fav reviewers aren't doing it anymore or have slowed the pace of their reviews to a crawl.

The remarkable thing about that improvement curve (under the grade progress tab) is just how smooth it is. Not especially fast, or even at times almost slow, improvement but also very sustained. Most people jump for a few years then stick.

I'm not sure entirely how meaningful his ECF grade is anymore mind - with playing all the congresses/local leagues that he does he's got an awful lot of games in there where he's been winning (very) consistently against 'weak' players.

http://stevegiddinschessblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/an-inspiring-story.html

A combination of the review at this link and this thread have sufficiently interested me to have ordered the book. A Xmas present from me to me !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_endgame#Frequency_table

The link to the Frequency table in Wikipedia reveals that it is amore plausible 1.7 percent of games that become Rook and Bishop plus pawns versus Rook and pawns , not the Arkell speciality with just the pieces.

To go back to the review and the book Amatuer to IM. some of the review is petty such as the nitpicking about Karlsbad which is certainly the standard name for such structures regardless of geography.

The main gripe though is that the book is not really revealing how Jonathan Hawkins went from fairly good club player to virtually grandmaster. We all know about needing to study more endings. But Hawkins improvement is not just down to ending study, e.g there is a video on You Tube where he out calculates Simon Williams. On the video the Ginger GM mentions his good opening preparation and calculation,there may be some specific reasons why he had such a relatively  low rating till his Twenties.
for instance he went to a comprehensive school in North of England rather than an academic hothouse like St Paul's in London of King Edwards in Birmingham which produced many English GMs
I read that he also has a fear of travelling abroad which may have hampered his development.


I would have been more interested if the book dealt more with improvement in calculating skills like Tisdall's did and simply somepersonal history about his chess development and motivation.

there is inevitably in the pocket Fritz era perhaps some 
suspicion about such a drastic increase in rating, though I see Hawkins has also won The British Rapidplay championship which would be evidence that his strength increase is genuine.

I very much doubt it even then Have to imagine that Keith has played rather more than ~900 (17 * 60) games. Quite possibly an awful lot more.....

Maybe they queried a database of Keith Arkell games 

Anyhow, the % of endgames in which technical endings appear is not a relevant metric; how can you evaluate or play a more complex ending if you don't have a handle on the implications of simplification? So the appearance of a textbook ending is neither here nor there; what's important is assessing the potential simplification down to such an ending.