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 chessplayer and study composer. He won the first Latvian championship in 1924 and the first FIDE world amateur championship in Paris in the same year. He played first board for the Latvian team at the Prague Olympiad in 1931 and scored wins against Alekhine, Vidmar and Rubinstein. He composed over 60 studies, many of which are of great artistic value.

This study which Mattison dedicated to Vera Menchik, the 1st Lady World Champion, was found to be flawed not long after it had been published. In the starting position the f-pawn was at "f5" and not at "f6" as shown above and the composer's stipulation was: White to play and draw. The main line below shows clearly that this is not so and that the composer overlooked an important resource which enables Black to win. Fortunately although the position is unsound in its original form, we can still use it as a solving exercise as shown here:

A subtle move which allows White to get in reach of the square of Black's d-pawn (d1-d4-g4-g1) and at the same time threaten to queen the f-pawn. If 2.Kxc5?? Black wins easily with 2...d3.