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.

 

Russian/Soviet Endgame Composer. He is regarded as one of the founders of the art of modern endgame study composition. His name will always be synonymous with the solving of the difficult ending of two Knights vs pawn. In his theoretical treatise of this class of ending he built on the early work of Guretzky-Cornitz and particularly of the analysis of Chapais (1780). Troitzky has composed over a thousand studies. He wrote: A Selection of Chess Studies (1937).

In this composition Troitzky builds on the work of some of the great analysts of the past. He gives a new introduction to a classical ending, the solution of which had been known since the 18th century and probably even earlier. Troitzky's study predates the publication of his theoretical treatise on the NNvP ending so it may have acted as a kind of catalyst which started him on the long road of enlightenment for this particular class of chess ending and which brought him worldwide fame.

Troitzky went on to discover the general rule for this class of ending indicating the winning and drawing zones for different positions of the blockading Knight and pawn. His treatise is found in Chess Studies (1937). It remains the most thorough examination of an ending, unaided by computer analysis, ever carried out by a human analyst. For a recent computer update see Karsten Muller's  excellent articles on the KNNvpK ending in his Endgame Corner at www.chesscafe.com.