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 he scored wins against Alekhine, Rubinstein and Vidmar. He composed over 60 studies, many of which are of great artistic value.

Usually in these type of endings the Knight is no match for the Rook because of it's lack of mobility. The Rook always seems to have great capacity to eat up pawns while the slow plodding Knight is left struggling to cope.

White in this ending has a number of positional factors in his favour. The passed pawns are well advanced and Black has not been able to get his King in front of the pawns to blockade their advance. White pushes the c-pawn which is the candidate for promotion, allowing the d-pawn to be taken. It then requires careful manoeuvring by the White King to escape the attention of the Rook. White needs respite from the checks to have time to play the Knight to "c6"(d8) so that it can act as a shield for the new Queen. Notice how the White King travels down and up the board along the same dark squares. It is one of Mattison's finest compositions. The ending is very instructive.