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.

World Champion 1963-69. Soviet Grandmaster. In the early 1950's, Petrosian emerged from the ranks of Soviet Masters to become a leading player and a Candidate for the world championship. It was on the the island of Curacao, in the Caribbean, playing in his 4th Candidate tournament where he had his greatest triumph, taking first place (+8 =9) and so becoming Botvinnik's challenger and then defeating him in a match for the World Championship. This year is celebrated as the 75th Anniversary of the birth of this great player.

This ending is taken from the 1st game that these two great players contested at classical chess. Petrosian was already a veteran who had played in two previous Candidate tournaments whereas Fischer was a brilliant young teenager. In the coming years they would face each other many times and would produce tense and exciting games which had an influence on the history of chess. The result of this ending was a draw but Petrosian showed later in a bulletin of the tournament that he could have won. From a theoretical point of view two connected pawns are stronger than double pawns and Petrosian proves that this is the case for this Rook and pawn ending.