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.

 

A leading Soviet Grandmaster. He played in the Soviet Championships many times, coming equal 1st with Ilya Rabinovich in 1934 and coming clear 1st in 1937 ahead of Konstantinopolsky and Ragozin. In the same year he drew a 13 game match (+5=3-5) with the rising star of Soviet chess, Botvinnik. Levenfish wrote a number of books and collaborated with Smyslov on "The Theory of Rook Endings." Although not without mistakes this book broke new ground and lead to an improved understanding of these difficult endings.

White has a clear advantage with the exchange for just one pawn. The White Rook is far more mobile than the Black Bishop which is defensively placed. The passed h-pawn will be advanced and will act as a decoy to take away the Bishop from defending the d5 pawn. The candidate pawn will then become the White d4 pawn. We will follow the moves as played in the game except for a couple of moves which were repeated:

1...Kf6 2.h4 Bf5 3.h5 Bh7 4.Rg4 Bf5 5.Rxf4 Kg5 6.g3 Bd3 7.Rh4! Kh6 8.g4 Bh7 9.Rh2 f5 10.gxf5 Bxf5 11.Re2 Bg4 12.Re5 Bf3 13.Ke3 Bh1 14.Kf2 c3 15.Ke3+-;