The new position will occur each SUNDAY and I will always be pleased to receive POSITIVE feedback about the positions and the analysis and I will try to acknowledge these where relevant.
Johannes Zukertort (1842-1888) World Championship contender. Born in Poland but became a professional player based in London. His greatest performance was in the London tournament of 1883 when he came 1st, three points ahead of Steinitz. Many people now considered him the strongest player in the world and it was fairly obvious he would soon have to play a match with Steinitz to decide the World Championship. This took place in 1886 but unfortunately his health was not up to such a gruelling match and he lost by a wide margin ( +5 -10 =5).
In the above setting Zukertort comes up with an idea which was first shown by Horwitz and Kling in a study in 1851 and which has been seen many times since. It is based on the idea of perpetual pursuit. Whites King is too far away to help stop the pawns from promoting and the Rook on its own will not be able to cope. Whites only hope is to mount a direct attack against the enemy monarch where it will be vulnerable at the edge of the board.
It is worth remembering this idea of perpetual pursuit because it often occurs in practical play. The most famous example with Rook and pawns is when Keres was playing Eliskases at Nordwyk in 1938.
Eliskases who was Black found the draw with ...Rb6+ and there is no escape from the perpetual pursuit.
On his way to winning the London tournament of 1883, Zukertort played a number of fine endings which contributed to the knowledge of endgame theory at that time. Particularly memorable was his RPPvR ending in which he defeated Steinitz and his ending against Blackburne. Jimmy Adams has written a worthy biography:
Last Monday there was a system failure at AOL which meant 9% of members sites could not be accessed which unfortunately included this site. This is a rare occurrence.
I have decided to take a domain name -
which can be used if a total breakdown occurs. *So please remember this address*
The present address:http://members.aol.com/brigosling will remain the site address so there is no need to change any settings at the moment. The domain name becomes operative after any prolonged failure (>24hrs) of the main site.
Autumn Endgame Solving Tournament.
Click here >> positions
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The overall scores for the millennium prize are as follows: Patrick Peschlow GERMANY David Rowe ENGLAND Henryk Kalafut USA/POLAND Mike Fitch USA Vojna Alexander UKRAINE Peter Bereolos USA |
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