Secrets of Minor-Piece Ending (B5) (HQ Scan)

Understand some of the most subtle endings in chess

Secrets of Minor-Piece Endings completes the reissue of John Nunn’s classic endgame trilogy. Following on from Secrets of Rook Endings and Secrets of Pawnless Endings, in this book John Nunn turns his attention to the intricacies of endings with just knights, bishops and pawns.

Such endings are of great practical importance but are often misplayed even by the strongest players. The subtleties of minor-piece endings lead to amazing situations in which the slightest change of piece position can turn a win into a draw, or a draw into a loss.

These three books used the then newly-constructed endgame tablebases to correct existing analysis of 5-man endings and present a wealth of new discoveries, all backed up by the guaranteed accuracy of tablebases.

This new edition has been completely re-typeset with a larger and more convenient page size. It has also been rechecked for accuracy, and all known errors corrected. The book features nearly 500 chess diagrams, including winning and drawing zones, as well as tables for the numbers of reciprocal zugzwangs by square occupied by the pawn in each of the main endgame types covered.

Detailed coverage of:
Knight and Pawn vs Knight
Knight and Pawn vs Bishop
Bishop and Pawn vs Bishop
Bishop and Pawn vs Knight
Two Bishops vs Knight

Grandmaster John Nunn was one of the world’s leading grandmasters for over twenty years, won four gold medals in Chess Olympiads and in 1988-9 finished sixth overall in the World Cup. His books have won the English Chess Federation Book of the Year prize three times. In addition, he won the World Chess Problem-Solving Championship three times, in 2004, 2007 and 2010. In 2022 he came out of retirement to participate in senior chess and in 2023 simultaneously held the British, European and World 65+ titles. Playing on top board, he also helped the English 65+ team win the World Senior Team Championship in 2022.