Basic Chess Endings was written by Reuben Fine in only four months and was published in 1941 by McKay (a division of
Random House) in hardback. The book used the now obsolete
descriptive chess notation and used the old system of using the abbreviation "Kt" to stand for
knight instead of the more modern "N". In 1944
Chess Review received many letters debating the change from Kt to N. In a 1984 interview, Fine said that it took him three months to write the book. He said that organizing the material gave him no trouble, but it was hard work coming up with example positions. He created many of the examples. There was a Hardback Limited Edition of 500 signed By Reuben Fine sold by
USCF in the 1940s. The hardback edition was reprinted at least as late as 1960. The
copyright was renewed in 1969 as the book went through many paperback
impressions. The cover of the 1971 paperback printing is shown at the right. It went through ten printings in paperback by 1981. Over the years, many errors were found, and many of them were published in
Chess Life in the column by
Larry Evans. Over one hundred such errors were found and a mimeographed list of them was printed and circulated by Paul L. Crane and Rev. David Chew. An 18-page booklet containing over 200 corrections was published by Samuel Louie in 1990 and 1993. Despite these errors, the book remained in print in its original form. After many years, editor
Burt Hochberg finally convinced the publisher to create a new edition. Endgame expert
Pal Benko, whose own copy of the book contained hand-written notes of almost all of the errors, did the revision. The revised edition was published in 2003, but only in paperback. Benko converted it to the now universally-accepted
algebraic chess notation. He also added some new material based on more recent analysis and added many new examples. He made many corrections, but a few errors remain. For example, Benko repeats Fine's claim that the endgame of two
bishops and a
knight against a
rook is
drawn with
correct play. In fact,
endgame tablebases show that the three
minor pieces win.
Howard Staunton, without the aid of
computer analysis, had recognized this over 150 years earlier.
Bernhard Horwitz and
Josef Kling gave the same appraisal in 1851. The original book contains 573 pages and 607 diagrams of positions. Many other positions were given by listing the location of the pieces rather than showing a diagram. The 2003 revision contains 587 pages with 1330 positions, most with diagrams. ==Impact==