How can I teach the endgame to someone who feels it is "boring"? I have a student who is in the 1600-1700 range, who has lost his last few games due to improper handling of endgame positions. Some were drawn, which he lost; some winning which he drew; and some where he could have forced a winning endgame (by simplification) and painlessly won, but instead created further complications (to his credit he won most of those games, but lost the ones thereafter, due to being mentally exhausted) leading to unbalanced, and often uncertain positions.

The cure is obviously to focus on endgame theory, but the problem is, he finds endgame theory boring (as I think many chess players do; in fact, I have this problem myself!). I've been teaching him from Panchenko's "Theory and Practice of Chess Endgames" which I've found is a superb guide to endgame theory, but he doesn't seem to be enjoying it. 

When I queried him regarding his disinterest he gave me the following reasons:


He claims he has a poor memory and that endgame theory contains too much memorization (he's partially right, he has a superb ability to remember positions, but not so much move order, which is essential in most theoretical positions)
He cites the old "Before the endgame, the gods have placed the middlegame" addage, saying he can make up for this weakness with better middlegame play (but even he knows he is pushing it, since he's lost several games despite good middlegame play)
He claims endgame study takes too long and does not have immediate results OTB (citing that most of the theoretical positions are ones he has never encountered; this, while true, is ignoring the fact that he avoids the endgame like the plague to begin with)
He just doesn't find endgame study to be exciting (though he has admitted that it is necessary)


I've tried to address these concerns with brute force but I'd like to use a little more finesse in my method.
Many old endgame books are like encyclopedias, they have sections about one type of endgame and then a lot of analysis about all the various situations one might encounter in that endgame. I find those boring and very hard to remember. Let's forget about those.

I can think of three things to mention that might be helpful:

Jeremy Silman's endgame book is organized with chapters based on rating level. His point is that a 1600 player doesn't need to know all the intricacies of the endgame in the way a 2200+ player does. He also has a fun writing style. Maybe concentrating on the first chapters of that book helps.

Also, exercises. Both the Steps Method workbooks and Yusupov's series of books are full of exercises on chess in general, including chapters on various endgames. Challenging exercises are fun to solve and when you finally see how the solution works (usually there's only one way that works), that's memorable.

Thirdly, and probably the most work for the trainer, is to find a good, hard endgame study, and turn that into a whole lesson. I remember a training session I once had with GM Yge Visser (alas, I can't remember the position), where he showed a complicated endgame position. We, the students, could propose some lines but really had no clue.

He then wiped the board and started talking about various building blocks: the K+Q v K+pawn endgame (how it's usually a win, how the a and c pawns can draw, a few exceptions, then lines in which the white king is close enough that he can let black's pawn promote but threaten unpreventable mate on the next move, et cetera). He made this interesting by constantly asking the students, some of them knew some things already, nobody knew everything. 

There were other building blocks like this, like the Reti study with the two passed pawns where it seems the black king has no chance to catch the white pawn or help his own promote, but then does it by cleverly keeping both options open.

After two hours or so of this sort of thing, he put the original position back -- and we recognized the main theme, and could suggest relevant moves. As we got a few moves in, it turned out that all those blocks were relevant, and eventually it was a mate in 8 or so, and we found it! "And if you manage to see all this during a game, then you're about GM level."

Although I can't remember the position anymore, I still learned everything I know about K+Q v K+pawn in that session, and it was great fun.

But to find such positions and to turn them into lessons that good takes quite a lot of experience as a trainer, I guess.

In short: don't teach him theory, challenge him with exercises and puzzles.