Secrets of Pawnless Endings

In this follow-up to his highly successful book, "Secrets of Rook Endings" John Nunn turns his attention to endgames without pawns. These occur surprisingly often in practice and are extremely tactical in nature. This book unites man and machine in the searh for ultimate answers. The computer databases created by Ken Thompson, formerly of Bell Laboratories, can state with certainty the correct result of any position with five pieces or fewer. John Nunn has extracted the most important information from these databases and presented it in the form of guidelines and specific key positions, which can be more readily digested by the human mind. With most competitive games nowadays being played to a finish in a single session, this knowledge may prove invaluable over the board. Since the first edition of this book was published, the databases for many six-man endings have been created, resulting in some surprising and paradoxical discoveries. The coverage has therefore been expanded to include the most interesting features of these endings.