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.

Soviet Grandmaster. World Championship Candidate. Tied for 1st in the Soviet Championship in three consecutive years 1967, 1968 and 1969 (He lost to Petrosian in the playoff). For a decade he was among the top six players in the world but he could not get past Karpov or Korchnoi in the Candidates.

Black played for this position thinking he could hold the ending a pawn down. He was hoping that his King at "a3" would tie the White Rook to the defence of the a-pawn. The Rook at "e1" cuts off the White King from the kingside. But Black had underestimated White's threat of playing his Rook to the seventh rank hitting his kingside pawns: