The Master's Hand: Capablanca's Endgame Technique - GM Alex Colovic

Endgame course by GM Alex Colovic
Includes book, video and PGN

Language: English
Lectures: 7
Total Running Time: 10 hours 26 minutes

From the course:

Improve your overall game by studying the endgames of one of the greatest players of all time
Though Capablanca was World Champion a century ago, his games remain some of the most important to study. The clear logic and simplicity of his moves inspired even Mikhail Botvinnik and Bobby Fischer to become endgame virtuosos themselves.

By studying such endgame mastery you could be next. This course on Capablanca’s endgame technique will help you play with such precision at all levels of the game, not just the endgame. And who else to better teach you than Grandmaster Alex Colovic?

Grandmaster Alex Colovic was the first grandmaster author for Chessable and won Chessable’s 2021 Legend of the Year Award. He has won 18 national championships for his native Macedonia, in addition to representing his home country in three Chess Olympiads and two European Championships.

It was Capablanca himself who said, “In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else”. This is for two main reasons:

1) The wide-open board and complicated nature of pawn endgames force you to improve your calculation skills; and

2) middlegame decision-making is made easier once when you know what kind of endgame is winning. You can devise your strategy to steer games in the direction of such endgames

In this course, you will be guided through Capablanca’s most instructive endgames and the methods used in them, including:

♞The principle of two weaknesses- The art of creating a second weakness, leaving opponents helpless as they cannot manage both of them at the same time.

♞How to convert an advantage in the endgame, not by brute calculation, but by knowing where to best position your pieces. This will carry over into the rest of your game as you will learn how to improve your overall position.

♞Fine-tune your intuition in double-rook endgames and avoid expending energy on calculating everything and making mistakes.

♞Learn about piece activity and how to fight to create imbalances and win seemingly drawn endgames.

♞The key concept of prophylaxis when it comes to trading pieces, a notable aspect of all of Capablanca’s games. You will learn when to trade off superfluous pieces.

By studying these endgames, you will adopt Capablanca’s simple yet effective style instead of unnecessarily complicating things.