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.

Alexander Herbstman, (1900-1982). Top Soviet endgame composer who won many prizes. His book, Soviet Chess Problems became very popular both at home and abroad. He died in Sweden two years after emigrating from the USSR. 

Tigran Gorgiev, (1910-1976). A brilliant Soviet composer from the Ukraine. He began his chess career as a player but switched to study composing and had great success. 

When two great composers work together on a study we expect something special and here they do not disappoint. One of the first maxims a chess beginner learns about the endgame is that most opposite-coloured Bishop endings equate to a drawn ending. The study composer is always looking for exceptions in every sphere of endgame knowledge and so the theoretical boundaries are pushed back, as we see new insights into what appears at first ordinary and mundane. This is the fascination that makes endings so absorbing.

White starts with the sacrifice of the c-pawn in order to further block the a8-h1 diagonal. Black desperately wants to get his Bishop controlling this diagonal so that the a-pawn is prevented from queening.

1. Cumulative 2003 Prizes: 1st £100 or equivalent, 2nd £50, 3rd £30; 4th £20. (Total Prize Money=£200) Entries limited to 20 solvers. This event will run from 5/1/2003 to 22/12/2003 with a recess in July. Present rules apply but note the prizes will go to those participants who climb the ladder the greatest number of times during the year. The relative position of the solver's name on the ladder will decide the allocation of prizes.