Endgame NotebookEndgames, a small repertoire, and post-mortems of my own games

Vienna · Leopoldstadtkept since 2021

Notebook pages · Vienna

Notes from a club player who keeps losing the same endings.

A club player's notebook from Vienna: rook and pawn endings, an opening repertoire cut down to what I remember, and honest post-mortems.

Vienna, LeopoldstadtLeague on Wednesdays since 2021Last page revised 4 Sept 2026

The position at the front of the notebook: king on d5, pawn on e4, black king on d7. Whether the extra pawn means anything depends entirely on whose move it is, which is roughly the lesson the whole notebook keeps repeating.

The notebook, as a scoresheet

Pages in the order they were started. Each one exists because something went wrong at the board first; nothing here is theory I have not had to use.

  1. 1.The rook ending I lost three times before I bothered to learn itA pawn up, rooks on, twelve minutes left: the same ending three times in two seasons. What the defence actually is, and how I drill it now.Rook endings2024 · 7 min
  2. 2.Cutting the repertoire down to what I can hold on a WednesdayFour systems as White and a folder of lines I never opened made me slower, not stronger. What survived the cut, and the criteria I used.Repertoire2024 · 8 min
  3. 3.Post-mortem of a fourth-round loss: three decisions, one badA quiet loss to a stronger player in a weekend open, gone through four times. The move I regret is not the one I regretted that night.Post-mortem2025 · 6 min
  4. 4.Counting squares: the pawn endings I can now solve on the tramKing and pawn endings, worked through on a pocket set on the way home: the square, where it misleads, and corresponding squares without the jargon.Pawn endings2026 · 8 min
  5. 5.The last five minutes: giving away positions I had already wonTwo winters of scoresheets said most of my lost points came from positions I had outplayed. A time budget, and what to do when the flag is close.Clock and nerves2026 · 9 min

What is inside each page

Four headings per page, written before the prose, in the order the thinking happened.

  1. 1.The rook ending I lost three times before I bothered to learn it

  2. 2.Cutting the repertoire down to what I can hold on a Wednesday

  3. 3.Post-mortem of a fourth-round loss: three decisions, one bad

  4. 4.Counting squares: the pawn endings I can now solve on the tram

  5. 5.The last five minutes: giving away positions I had already won

Four rules, badly kept

What the notebook is for

Endgame Notebook is where I write down what I actually learned from a game, which is usually a game I lost. It is kept in public because a notebook nobody can read back to me is a notebook I stop opening.

Corrections, better methods and polite disagreement: hello@endgamenotebook.com

  1. Write the ending type on the scoresheet before packing up.
  2. One system I remember beats four I admire.
  3. The engine gets the last word, never the first.
  4. Opponents stay anonymous; the mistakes are mine.