Chess Endgame News 143 CHESS ENDGAME NEWS

What is ‘the chess endgame’? Fine (1952) saw no clear boundary between the middle and endgame phases of chess but it is clear that he intended the endgame to follow the middlegame permanently rather than temporarily. Speelman (1981) suggests that neither side should have more than 13 points but this would imply that the ‘middlegame ’ KQRPKQR could follow the endgame KRPPKRP. The chess endgame is deliberately defined elastically here as that set of positions which are amenable to definitive analysis using only data and/or algorithms without chessic insight. This now includes the vast majority of sub-8-man (s8m) positions (Bleicher, 2013a; ChessOK, 2013; MVL, 2012), positions with sufficient blocked or facing pawns of restricted mobility (Bleicher, 2013b; Romero, 2012), and clear wins within reach of forward-search. How frequently do games and studies reach the chess endgame as defined in this way? In practice, the answer depends on what computer resources are available to the likes of FREEZER, FINALGEN and your favourite chess engines. Table 1 gives a partial response, indicating the number of games and studies with n-man positions and/or which are accessible in theory if not in practice to FINALGEN.