Daniel Naroditsky's Mastering Complex Endgames republished

Introduction

Daniel Naroditsky (who died tragically in late 2025) was the author of 2 chess books in his teens.

This week, both volumes have been published in revised editions:

• Mastering Positional Chess
• Mastering Complex Endgames

In addition, a third book compiled from his articles for Chess Life and chess.com has been published:

• Mastering Practical Endgames

This article is focused on the rook endgames chapter of Mastering Complex Endgames (MCE).

Mastering Complex Endgames

The Book

MCE was first published in 2012 at 306 pages while the new version is 376 pages. The chapters are:

1. What are Complex Endings?
2. Rook Endgames
3. Rook + Minor Piece(s)
4. Queen Endgames
5. Queen + Minor Piece(s) vs Queen
6. Conclusion

In addition, there are two forewords from Yasser Seirawan and Sam Shankland.

The "Rook Endgames" chapter

I am making it my goal to improve my rook endgames in 2026, so my focus has been on this chapter.

This chapter starts with several double rook endgame positions. Endgame fans may know the Capablanca-Janowski game which I've come across before. The book is strong on description of concepts. For example:

White played the start of the endgame very well, highlighting some important techniques when pressuring your opponent's weaknesses, namely:

1. Try not to let your opponent liquidate into a drawn endgame by sacrificing a pawn and trading off all his other weaknesses; almost all 3 vs 4 pawn and 4 vs 5 pawn endgames are drawn if the defending side plays accurately.
2. You don't need to be extravagant - if you see a simple win, you don't need to search for any brilliant combinations. I'm sure you would rather win the game by simple means than lose it while trying to win the brilliancy prize.
3. If you made a mistake, it's extremely important to recuperate quickly. If you know you missed an easy win, erase all of the thoughts about the previous moves from your mind. It won't help if you keep criticising yourself for missed wins during a game; it will only hamper your thought process.
4. If your opponent is completely tied up to the defense of his weaknesses, focus on your opponent's king, as it will be completely undefended.
5. Controlling the seventh rank, with one of both rooks, is extremely important in double-rook endgames, and often it is worth a pawn to accomplish this.
6. Pinning the opponent's king to the back rank (or getting your own king stuck there) often has grave implications. It often leads to mating threats.

This advice is much more concrete than I am personally used to seeing in endgame books.

I found the finishing section of

to be particularly educational. The plan of saccing the a-pawn is obvious and new to me.

The commentary on the following game between Karpov and Vlastimil Hort is also quite valuable:

I have the game in Karolyi's "Endgame Virtuoso: Anatoly Karpov", but Danya provides greater depth on several moves, and greater understanding on others.

Again he provides rules-of-thumb:

We can state the following important rules and ideas:

1. Don't hurry with the execution of a plan. Improve your position to the maximum before deciding on any particular strategy.
2. Don't be afraid to sacrifice for activity!
3. When playing against weaknesses, try to keep as many pawns on the board as possible.

The chapter finishes with a comedy of errors which for me at least, inspires me to fight on in my endings when I'm considering resignation.

Summary

Danya wrote a book on fighting technique in complex endings where theory books don't provide answers. The notes are to games are at a very high quality, and between games, he gives excellent advice.

The book will be of benefit to anyone who feels that there is room to improve in endings. I'm looking forward to reading the other chapters.

If you are thinking of buying one of his books on Forwarchess, please consider using the links in the post above.