Great endgame study

A superb study by Mark Liburkin. White to play and win.

The study is by the great Russian composer Mark Savelevich Liburkin (1910-1953), also known as 'The Chess Poet". First published in Wieczerniaja Moskwa 1932.

boggles my simple mind...

Welcome to the club. This stuff is mind-boggling, even for very strong players. The mechanism of defense against the mating threats is rather staightfoward, but the concept with the three consecutive underpromotions (to knight, bishop and rook respectively) is simply stunning. One of the very finest pieces of chess art ever made.

That was fun! I really like puzzles/situations that require underpromotions.

Wow. I had to think for a while to understand why the third underpromotion had to be a rook. Great stuff. Is this what GM's actually do in their heads OTB, or are these studies just a technical showoff?

No, not OTB, it's composed position.

The second and third underpromotions are forced. In both cases promoting to a queen draws after 1 ... c1/Q+  2. Nxc1 Kxc4+  3. Qxe5 stalemate.

The first too- else white is mated...

Not really important, but Black should play ...Kc4+ before ...c1=Q+, else white does not take on e5 and wins.

lol....that's awesome!

the bishop/rook underpromotions I don't get though

EDit: nvm...already explained

Unbelievable.  Positions like this are the reason I love playing chess.

I'm afraid I don't see for what reason Qxe5 is a necessary move in that line (3. Kb2), the move list shows a more accurate order...
This was a most ridiculous study. Incredible, really.

Edit: pfren already said this, my bad. Would rather leave what I have than it just leave the ever ambiguous [COMMENT DELETED]

Nice one :) I solved it but I has headache now in my head ! ^_^

I followed this to the very end. I like the overall idea of the study, I could never come up with a study such as this, but each move is easy to find. I like this study a lot. Thanks for sharing it.

That was lovely. Thanks for sharing it. Horribly tough. 

Nice puzzle. Couldn't solve it, but the under-promotions were stunning.

AMAZING!!! I love this so much. I think the idea of under-promotion is pure beauty. Thank you pfren for this wonderful post. I absolutely love it.

vERY COOL!

I spent two whole minutes thinking why doesnt black play K*P+ after 14...Bf6???

And then it dawns on me that its white's move.

Tough. I took 30min on this monster. More please.