Why Endgame Training Should Come Before Opening Study
The counterintuitive truth about chess improvement: most players should stop studying openings and start studying endgames. Here's the case.
The typical club player spends sixty percent of their study time on openings and maybe ten percent on endgames. The ideal allocation is almost exactly the reverse. Here's why.
Endgame Knowledge Compounds
Every endgame technique you learn applies in game after game for the rest of your career. Knowing the Lucena position doesn't expire. Knowing how to promote with a rook's pawn and the wrong-coloured bishop is a skill you'll use at every level up to grandmaster. Opening knowledge, by contrast, becomes obsolete as theory evolves.
Endgame Skill Transfers Back
Players who understand endgames play better middlegames, because they know what positions to steer toward. They trade pieces with purpose, create passed pawns early, and centralise their kings because they understand the endgame logic that makes those actions powerful.
Where to Start
Begin with king and pawn endgames: opposition, triangulation, the king-and-pawn race. Then rook endgames: Philidor, Lucena, the active rook principle. Then bishop and knight endings. Silman's "Complete Endgame Course" organises this by rating level — start at your level and work up.