Endgame studies with annotations from world champions. Emmanuel Lasker
Compiled by Gia Nadareishvili, Grandmaster for chess compositions (1921-1991). Presented as puzzles (see move lists for variants and annotations).
Alexey Troitsky. White to play and draw.
An ingenious idea. White try to Queen their pawn with check. Due to this, the Black King, despite a very open board, is very cramped in its movements, and White manage to give perpetual check with their Knight.
Alexey Troitsky. White to play and win.
The motive, based on purely geometrical ideas, is to limit the movement of the Rook by the Bishop and vice versa. This can be achieved, for instance, by occupying the squares attacked by both Bishop and Rook.
The Bishop can hold the f-pawn from a3, and the Rook can hold the b-pawn from the b-file. Or, alternatively, the Bishop can hold the b-pawn from f4, and the Rook can hold the f-pawn from the f-file. It's up to Black to choose. To ruin the coordination of the Black pieces, White deflect the Black Rook from the 5th file with a Knight maneuver.
Leonid Kubbel. White to play and win.
The author's idea was to present the geometrical motive of struggle of two opposing Queens, both on straight lines and diagonals. Of course, the author strives to do most things with minimal material and make the endgame study look like a real practical endgame.
Leonid Kubbel. White to play and draw.
The idea here is stalemate. All White pieces' strength are used very subtly. First of all, they need to force Black to capture the Knight at the 1st file.
Henri Rinck. White to play and win.
The material is scarce, but the endgame study has a number of motives with the passed pawn. The latter is guarded by the Bishop from the Rook's attack, even though the Rook is severely hampered with the f6 pawn.
The Bishop manages to lock down the g-file for the Rook.
In the next posts:
Max Euwe on Henri Weenink, Germans Matisons and Richard Reti
Mikhail Botvinnik on Sergey Kaminer, Leonid Kubbel and Gia Nadareishvili
Vasily Smyslov on Genrikh Kasparian, Platov Brothers and Alexey Troitsky
Mikhail Tal on Abram Gurvich, Nikolai Kralin and Arthur John Roycroft
Tigran Petrosian on Vladimir Korolkov and Henri Rinck
Boris Spassky on Alexander Sarychev
Anatoly Karpov on Alexander Kazantsev, Anatoly Kuznetsov and Mark Liburkin
Nona Gaprindashvili on Yuri Bazlov, Alois Wotawa and Alexander Kuznetsov
Maya Chiburdanidze on Zinoviy Birnov, Vasily Dolgov and Froim Simkhovich
