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 Endgame Composer, Problemist and Strong Player. Kubbel saw himself firstly as a problemist. His early studies were compiled when he was only 13 years old and they showed his great talent. Leonid Kubbel along with Troitzky, Rink and the Platov brothers were leading the emerging art of endgame study composing. With the early composers he explored and added the strategic themes of the problemists to the genre of the endgame study. Kubbel composed over 500 endgame studies. He believed that practical play was also important to a composer because it gave confidence in composing.

In an early study published in 1895, Troitzky (1866-1942) had shown in a simple setting how a lone Bishop could mate the King. Kubbel had become fascinated with this theme and tried to add rich content to the original idea. It was fitting that this study was published with a dedication to the founder of the modern endgame study on the occasion of his 70th birthday.