Practical Endgames (14)

When the pieces come off and the evaluation settles on equality, most players reach for the draw. Anatoly Karpov spent a career doing the opposite. He treated "equal" as a starting position rather than a verdict, tightening his grip until an ending that could not be lost was quietly lost anyway.

That instinct sits at the heart of one of the most common mistakes in chess: the assumption that an equal endgame must end in a draw. Nothing could be further from the truth. Equal endgames — precisely because both sides relax once the position looks balanced — are where the heaviest errors are made, and where a patient player finds wins that were never supposed to exist.

There comes a point in almost every endgame where the variations run dry. The pieces are few, the position is quiet, and no forcing sequence promises anything at all. For an inexperienced player this is where the trouble starts — the reflex is to keep calculating, to burn energy searching for a line that simply isn't there. For players like Capablanca or Petrosian, this is precisely where the game was decided.
That reversal sits at the heart of Schematic Thinking in the Endgame by IM Boroljub Zlatanovic. When a position offers nothing to calculate, the decisive skill becomes something quieter and harder to teach: building a long-term plan the opponent cannot prevent, and finding the ideal square for every piece — the king included — in the unhurried manner Capablanca made his own.

9 Steps to Endgame Mastery addresses this reality with systematic clarity. Created by two experienced Macedonian International Masters—Nikola Nikolovski and Filip Pancevski—the course recognizes that endgame competence isn't built through memorizing theoretical positions alone. It requires understanding the principles that include piece activity, recognizing when king safety matters and when the king must be active, and developing the technical precision to convert advantages that less experienced players let slip away.

The 2025 Chess World Cup delivered exceptional opening novelties and tactical brilliance—but as always, it was endgame technique that separated the contenders from the champions. GM Dejan Bojkov has distilled the tournament's most instructive conclusions into a comprehensive course, capturing the precise calculations, subtle maneuvers, and critical principles that decided games at the highest level. This isn't a collection of theoretical curiosities; it's a practical masterclass drawn directly from elite competition, where every inaccuracy carries consequences and technique becomes the deciding factor.

Every chess player knows the frustration: you've studied theoretical endgames, memorized key positions, understand the principles—yet over the board, critical half-points slip away. The gap between endgame knowledge and endgame performance remains one of chess's persistent challenges. GM Ioannis Papaioannou addresses this directly in Typical Mistakes in Practical Endgames, a course born from observation of what strong players actually do wrong when the position simplifies, not just what textbooks say they should do right.

How GM Alexey Dreev and GM Pier Luigi Basso are revolutionizing endgame education for ambitious chess players

The moment arrives in every serious chess player's journey when they realize a painful truth: you're not losing games because you don't know your openings, and you're not losing because your tactics are weak. You're losing because when the position simplifies and enters the endgame, you're navigating by feel in waters that demand precision.

GM Alexey Dreev and GM Pier Luigi Basso understand this frustration intimately. That's why they've crafted Dreev University - Practical Endgames, the newest addition to their acclaimed educational series that's already transformed thousands of ambitious players worldwide.

The camp of GM Bojkov - Practical Endgame Mastery is already a digital product.
This product includes all the videos from the workshop as well as the PGN file related to the training sessions. Overall, the material consists of 9 hours of video and a PGN database, which includes 120 files!

The camp of GM Bojkov, Converting a Minimal Advantage is already a digital product.
This product includes all the videos from the workshop as well as the PGN file related to the training sessions. Overall, the material consists of 7.5 hours of video and a PGN database which includes 121 files!

The camp of GM Papaioannou - Pawns on One Wing in the Endgame is already a digital product.
This product includes all the videos from the workshop as well as the PGN file related to the training sessions. Overall, the material consists of 3 hours of video and a PGN database which includes 32 files!

GM Mihail Marin comes up with one of the most fundamental works that he has ever done for Modern Chess! His new database My 50 Favourite Endgames is a must for everyone who looks for top-level endgame education.
The database consists of 50 carefully selected super instructive endgames and 64 associated tests. Each one of the examples (including the tests) is extensively annotated. This makes a total of 114 extensively annotated endgames!
The course also comes with a video version. The running time is 5h and 18min.