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.

Important Notice: The last position for Cumulative 2004 will appear next Sunday on 19st December. I am then taking a break and I will be back on Sunday January 16th with the first position of the new year.

Czech player and endgame composer. An engineer by trade who has composed nearly 200 studies of high quality. He has won many prizes.

Queen endings with few pawns and pieces left on the board are usually difficult to analyse because of the many options opened to the Queens. Here the task is relatively easy because it is the White Queen who dominates. The other Queen is hampered by her own side.

".......thanks for drawing my attention to these drawing lines. A pity - the ending had really looked very smooth...I think your final judgement on 19th century analysis is a bit harsh, however. How many trivial mistakes can one find even today! And sitting at our computers, we should not forget how Steinitz had to analyse several hundred games for that (tournamemt) book - without Fritz and friends ! "

The Amos Burn biography is a magnificent achievement. It has some nice Victorian touches; the photographs etc. At nearly a 1000 pages it is a "big book" in every sense. It is not only about Burn but about chess in the late 19th and early 20th century. Please do some "googling" and read the rave reviews.