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.

Latvian/Soviet Endgame Composers. The Platov brothers started composing independently of each other but by 1905 they were working as a team. Vasily was the most creative in the composing duo but they both needed each other for their talent to flourish. Their compositions were of a high order. They were pioneers along with Troitsky, Kubbel and Rinck of a new emerging art form in chess, that of composing endgame studies with it's own rules and competitions. They built on earlier work but also made new discoveries in the field of endgame theory. They wrote together: 'Selection of Chess Studies' (Sbornik shakhmatnykh etyudov, 1928).

The Platov brothers in this study have come up with a natural setting for their theme which is the battle of two pieces, particularly the Knight, against the Queen. The Knight will be beautifully placed at e6 whereas the Black Queen at h3 will find herself in a compromised situation.