<Practical Endgame Play - Beyond the Basics - Glenn Flear

The definitive guide to the endgames that really matter.

The most common endgames you will ever encounter.

Examinations of material balances you will reach in almost half of your games.

Over 500 pages of grandmaster advice and analysis, assisted by the latest computer software.

Forget those books which just recycle established theory. Forget those books which concentrate on fantastical studies. Grandmaster and endgame expert Glenn Flear has created an in-depth book of all endgames which feature either two pieces for each side, or two pieces against one - an essential area of the game that has never before been comprehensively covered in one volume.

Why is this so important? Because these situations arise incredibly frequently in practical play. These are the endgames that matter. If you can handle such endgames well, your results will improve. This book shows you how.

Published by Everyman >

<Practical Endgame Play – Beyond The Basics by Glenn Flear, Everyman, 544 pages, £19.99.

Most endgame books deal primarily with positions where each player has only one piece – Q+R+Ps v Q+R+Ps, Q+B+Ps v Q+B+Ps, etc. But in practice many more of the endings which arise see more pieces than this on the board. In this huge volume, English grandmaster Glenn Flear deals at length with endings where one or both sides have two pieces. Thus we have detailed coverage of endings with rook versus two minor pieces, rook plus minor piece versus rook plus minor piece, queen and rook versus queen and rook, etc. In fact the book covers what Flear calls endgames and “NQEs” (pronounced “nuckies”), i.e. Not Quite Endgames – those indeterminate positions which are simplified (usually queenless), but which you will not find in Basic Chess Endings or other such textbooks.

Unaware he would be competing, he was due to get married on the day of the ninth round. The organisers arranged for his game to start early.

<WMD>,
Here is the crosstable and report:

They were 14-player all-play-all tournaments over 13 rounds. The venue of the three Phillips & Drew Kings tournaments in 1980, 1982, and 1984 was County Hall, the meeting place of the GLC. The last tournament of the series was held at a different venue with changes in sponsorship, but still with the same format.

This fourth tournament in 1986, not involving Phillips and Drew, was called the <GLC Chess Challenge>, played now in the Great Eastern Hotel. It was the final event in the series, as the GLC itself had been abolished that same year.

Viktor Korchnoi won the inaugural tournament in 1980, together with Tony Miles, and Ulf Andersson. The second and third edition were captured by Anatoly Karpov, together with Ulf Andersson in 1982, and outright in 1984.

The final event of the series held in March 1986 caused one of the biggest upsets in the history of chess:

Glenn Flear, an International Master from Leicester, won as clear first in a field including former World Champion Boris Spassky, Bent Larsen, Lajos Portisch, Lev Polugaevsky, Rafael Vaganian, John Nunn and Nigel Short.

Flear was a last-minute replacement for Karpov and was not expected to score well in such a high class field (Flear and Dlugy were the only IMs).

<The participants 1986 (in rating order): Rafael Vaganian, Lajos Portisch, Boris Spassky, Nigel Short, Zoltán Ribli, John Nunn, Lev Polugaevsky, Bent Larsen, Jon Speelman, Maxim Dlugy, Murray Chandler, Jonathan Mestel, Glenn Flear, and James Plaskett.

For the sake of the legality of the things, it has to be said, that Kasparov, Karpov, Korchnoi, Timman, Hübner, Miles, Seirawan, Ljubojevic, Beliavsky, Tal, Yusupov, and A. Sokolov, then all ranked in the Elo Top-15 of the world (1986 / January-June list), were absent; Vaganian was the only player from the Elo top eight.

Final standings: Flear 8.5/13, Chandler, Short 8, Nunn, Ribli 7.5, Polugaevsky, Portisch, Spassky 7, Vaganian, Speelman 6, Larsen 5.5, Plaskett 5, Mestel, Dlugy 4 (14 players).>

Unaware he would be competing, Glenn Flear was due to get married on the day of the ninth round. As pointed out above, the organisers arranged for his game to start early. Seems like yesterday :)

Married to the multiple French Women’s Champion, Christine Leroy (now Flear), he decided to move to Montpellier in France.