Thanks to this thread, I found what I was looking for: Everyone's Second Chess Book, by Dan Heisman. I needed a structured overview to this ultimate game of war. Also, going through lessons wasn't enough.
I very quickly realized that I wasn't seeing the board - there were too many obvious blunders. I've restarted my efforts by working through the practice lessons and some puzzles. Until recently, I haven't had time to focus on chess. A strategy like this is part of the game I suppose. I read somewhere Carlsen purposely chose a marathon match (longest in World Championship history) and outlasted Nepo. At this level, I guess dictating the outcome of the games might not be so difficult, given proper preparations for the matches. However, in a world championship, now the world champion is studying you and only you. With many challengers and many tournaments the world champion likely puts very little effort into any specific individual player. When you are the top everyone knows how you play, studies your games, etc. I don't necessarily read too much into those stats. Looks like we have to wait till 2023 when Firouzja is ready to challenge Carlsen. I haven't followed any of Nepo's prior games either, but I somehow had high expectations because he was 4-8-1 vs Carlsen in classical TC prior to the championship games. Carlsen is certainly one of the very best players of all time, very tough to beat in a long match. Reincarnated as an endgame composer without peer, Pal Benko now has his monument.I haven't followed any of Nepo's prior games, so I didn't have high expectations for him. If not for his clock, or daring 1e4!? against me, I could never have won a game. “From out of the land of Reti to the Wild West came a subtle positional stylist. If you removed the king and queen (and the clock) from the board, no one could beat him.” “When Benko arrived, I saw that he was one of the finest positional and endgame players in the world. – GM John Nunn, 1980 British Chess Champion, four-time gold medal winner at Chess Olympiads, author of Nunn’s Chess Openings and many other popular chess titles Whenever I see a Benko endgame I always try to solve it – but first I make sure that I won’t be disturbed for the rest of the day.” “I’ve always had a great deal of respect for Benko’s endgame compositions. A real chess renaissance man, his contributions to the royal game are immense.”
He gives us 300 of these compositions in this book, and if all those gems weren’t enough, he intrigues us with the story of his life, while revealing in-depth notes with world-class competition. “GM Pal Benko is one of the greatest composers and endgame specialists of the 20th century. Champion, chess columnist for The Washington Post “Pal Benko’s love of chess is an inspiration. This highly entertaining and instructive book gives competitors who wish to improve their playing strength a dynamic, fun way to deepen their knowledge and understanding Photos abound, and 300 of Benko’s chess compositions allow lovers of the game to become intimately acquainted with a strikingly beautiful aspect of chess that most have overlooked. A massive survey of Benko’s openings (by famed author John Watson) shows us the scope of Benko’s theoretical contributions to the game. Pal Benko: My Life, Games and Compositions is a celebration of this great man’s creative legacy: Interviews with other players offer further insights into Benko’s nature. His insights into famous grandmasters transform their names into real people with substance and personality, and his reminiscences of legendary tournaments take us on a journey of chess history unlike anything that’s been published before. This amazing collection of 138 deeply annotated games-carefully prepared to be entertaining, enlightening, and instructive-is brought to life by Pal Benko’s memoirs of his early years in war-torn Hungary where he takes the reader into a world of poverty, chaos, pain, and ultimately, personal triumph. A challenger for the World Championship, an innovator of many modern opening systems, a problem composer par excellence, and a father figure to his close friend Bobby Fischer, Benko has played and defeated most of the top players of the last fifty years. It walked away with the ChessCafe 2004 Book of the Year Award, the Cramer Book of the Year Award, and the most prestigious award of all, the British Chess Federation Book of the Year Award. Pal Benko: My Life, Games, and Compositions is the only book to ever win all three major chess book awards.