Welcome to this active site. Each week I am going to present to you an endgame position for you to solve or to workout the best continuation. Computer analysis will also be considered. Some of these positions will come from actual historical games. Others will be composed endgame studies, but all the solutions will be relevant to the practical game. 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.

German Grandmaster. World Champion from 1894-1921. In 1890 Lasker had a match with the English master H. E. Bird. At this time Lasker was still relatively unknown and most of the experts expected the veteran Bird to defeat the budding German master. Yet Lasker won the match convincingly (+7=3-2) and people began to sit up and take notice of the arrival of this new star.

In the above ending White has the advantage because of the better King position, and superior pawn structure. He can readily attack Black's weak b-pawn with his pieces. White still has to play with care because Black has a protected passed e-pawn which might prove troublesome. We follow the moves as played in the game:

Like all the world champions Lasker was very strong in the endgame. In his day his superb endgame play stood out from the rest because technique in this phase was still in its infancy among his contemporaries. Experts might argue about various aspects of his playing style but they all were all agreed about his brilliant endgame play. The secret of his success was his positional awareness, deep calculating abilty, fighting spirit (no early draws) and his endless patience. He had no equal in this phase of the game, that is until Capablanca arrived on the scene.