Book Review: 100 Endgames You Must Know by Jesus De La Villa
100 Endgames You Must Know is written by GM Jesus De La Villa. This book is originally published by New in Chess which Play Magnus Group owns. This book becomes one of the bestselling chess endgame books within significantly less time.
100 Endgames You Must Know is a perfect book for players from beginners to masters. The basic theme of this book is quite simple. The author selected 100+ best chess endgames we often see in actual games and analyzed them thoroughly.
This book became more popular when chessable introduced it with move trainer technology. We will talk about this later in this article.
A Glimpse of This Book
This book is a must-have endgame book is in your shelf. If you finish this book and revise it every six months, you are good to go in the endgame until you become FIDE Master. After reaching this level, you may need to focus on the high-level endgame book, like the Dvoretsky endgame manual.
In this book, the author started with Pawn Endgames and ended with a difficult test. The following are the chapters covered in the book.
- Basic Endings
- Basic Tests
- Knight vs. Pawn
- Queen vs. Pawn
- Rook vs. Pawn
- Rook vs. 2 Pawns
- Same colored bishops
- Bishop vs. Knight: One Pawn
- Opp. Coloured: B+2 Pawns vs. Bishop
- Rook + Pawn vs. Rook
- Rook + two Pawns vs. Rook
- Pawn endings
- Other material relations
- Final Test
As you can see, the author covered everything related to basic endgame positions.
What To Expect from this book?
This book is perfectly made and highly recommended for every chess player. You can expect 100+ excellent analyzed puzzles that Grandmaster Jesus De La Villa curates. By solving this book thoroughly, you can expect to gain atleast 100 points as a beginner player.
Although, this book is not perfect in all aspects. Many endgame books cover more detailed analyses and positions than this book. These books include Silmon’s complete endgame course and Dvoretsky Endgame Manual. Silmon’s endgame book covers a lot of positions that sometimes are not necessary for players to learn. Dvoretsky’s book is too high for beginners and sometimes even professional chess players.
What Is A Unique Thing In This Book?
The unique thing is the selection of puzzles. It is tough to find perfect chess puzzles, and Jesus De La Villa did an excellent job choosing 100 chess puzzles and test puzzles. The main unique thing about this book is if you do it properly, you don’t need to buy or study any other endgame book.
Also, ChessAble published a video course of this book, and that course is also detailed and very unique. IM John explained every concept in video format, which is very easy to understand.
The audience for 100 Endgames You Must Know
As I already told this book is perfect for almost all chess players. Generally, this book is ideal for you if you are between 1000-2000. If you are above 1800 players and if you have already finished this book, then better go for Dvoretsky Endgame Manual.
Below 1000 chess players don’t really need to study the endgame. They should focus more on Middlegame and Basic opening principles. I would highly recommend beginners read our latest article, “12 Must Read Chess Books for Beginners.”
From where can you purchase this book?
This book is available on all major websites and also in various offline stores all over USA and Europe. If you want a hard copy, then you can buy it from Amazon.
If you need an e-book, then better go for chessable. Another benefit of chessable is using their app and website for easy revision. Chessable also has a video version of the same course, which is not really recommended to anyone as it is way too expensive.
This book costs $29.99. In sales and other discount offers, you can find it anywhere between $20-$25.
100 Endgames, you must know PDF excerpt
Download 100 Endgames You Must Know PDF Excerpts from here.
100 endgames you must know workbook
This is the next part of 100 Endgames you must know. In this book, Jesus De La Villa provided puzzles and tests to study. Jesus took all the reviews seriously and created this book from old reviews from his students. This book is not as compelling as the main book. Also not recommended for top-level chess players.
This book is recommended for chess players below 2000. But remember to finish the main book first. Otherwise, you will get zero benefits from this book. This book is also available on Amazon and Chessable.
100 Endgames You Must Know videos
Some of the top chess players recorded videos solving the final test on ChessAble. You can enjoy watching the following videos.
Endgames Test by GM Magnus Carlsen
Endgame Test by GM Anish Giri
Endgame Test by GM Ian Neponmiatchchi
Endgame Test by GM Ding Liren
About Author
Jesus De La Villa is a Grandmaster from Spain. He achieved his GM title in 1999. He is a famous author of the 100 Endgames You Must Know and 100 Endgames You Must Know workbook.
He won a Spanish Chess Championship in 1999. He also played World Chess Olympiad 2 times in 1988 and 1994.
In 2010, he became FIDE Senior Trainer, which is the highest level award by FIDE given to trainers.
About Publisher
New in Chess is a leading chess publication based in Netherland. They have published 100s of chess books. They also have a New in Chess Magzine, which is super popular in the chess world. New in Chess Magzine is the only magazine that is available in English that covers worldwide tournaments.
New in Chess is owned by Play Magnus, which World Champion Magnus Carlsen itself holds. Until 2021, they were publishing the New in Chess Yearbook, which was also very famous.
