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.

Professional Player and Teacher. Born in Poland but moved to Paris in 1883 and became a French citizen. Never a brilliant tournament competitor but sometimes he could cause a major upset.

This game took place in the 6th American Congress, New York in 1889. This was one of the greatest and wearisome chess events of all time. It consisted of twenty players who had to play each other twice. In the second round, draws did not count so some players found themselves playing in total nearly fifty games !! The tournament included all the strongest players of the day except Steinitz, the World Champion, who had the task of editing the tournament book. He had high praise for Taubenhaus's conduct of this ending but as we shall see later there were omissions in Steinitz's analysis for White's moves. Amos Burn was worn out trying to defend this long difficult ending but it does seem that with optimal play he could have drawn it.

This move throws away the draw. 6.Kh5! is the important move that Steinitz and Burn missed. It is logical because the King makes way for the quick advance of the g-pawn and Black no longer has the time to dislodge the Knight. 6...Bf3+ 7.Kh4! Be2 8.g4 Bd3 (8...Kf4 9.g5 Kf5 10.Kg3 Kxg5 11.Kf2 Bc4 12.Ke3 Ba6 13.Kd4 =)9.Kh5 Kf4 ( 9...Be2 10.Kh4 Kf4 11.g5 Bd3 12.g6! Bxg6 13.Nb5 c2 14.Nd4 c1Q 15.Ne2+ =) 10.g5 Kf5 11.Kh6 Ke6 12.g6! Kf6 13.g7 Kf7 14.Kg5 Kxg7 15.Kf4 Kf6 16.Ke3 Ba6 17.Kd4=;

Black has an elementary win and White soon resigned. With the help of a tool of the new age, computer analysis, we see that Taubenhaus played this ending accurately but Burn was lack lustre. Steinitz with the publication of the 1889 New York Tournament book gave us an important historical record of this event. At that time he was the best player and analyst around and his theories about the game pushed forward its development. But we have discovered omissions in Steinitz's commentary and analysis of the final phase of this game. I suppose we have to ask the awkward question: How much of 19th century tournament analysis and game commentary can we really trust as being accurate ?