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.

Brazilian Grandmaster. World Championship Candidate. Child prodigy of the 1960s. He has the remarkable record of winning two strong FIDE Interzonal tournaments; Petropolis 1973 and Manila 1976. In 1974 he narrowly lost to Korchnoi in the Candidates and in 1977, again in the Candidates, he was narrowly defeated by Polugayevsky. In 1979, due to illness, he decided to put his chess career on hold but recently he has made a much-welcomed return to the game.

 

Mecking got off to a good start at the 1975 Las Palmas tournament by beating Tal in a game which came down to this ending. Black is in a difficult position because his King is tied to the defence of his weak pawns whereas the White King is very active. White has the better placed Knight and Bishop which can dominate the key squares. The pawns at f7 and h5 are especially weak because they can be attacked by the Bishop. Despite the presence of opposite-coloured Bishops, White's supreme positional advantage will bring him victory. The main line is the actual series of moves played in the ending: