An endgame puzzle with a long solution is usually called a study.
Here’s the most famous of them all. White can’t catch the h-pawn nor force through their own passed pawn. But it’s White to play and draw:
Here’s a really neat one with the same limited material. White to play and win, but I warn you now, distrust your first idea!
Solutions:
You can sometimes give up material and come out with an advantage. You often see a sacrifice as part of a combination — a sacrificial combination, in Botvinnik’s language. Spielmann didn’t think these were real sacrifices. The advantage you get from sacrificing might be a mating attack (like the Greek gift) or just a very…
King safety is the most important thing on the chessboard — ignore it and you will get mated! Kings are unsafe if they are stuck: uncastled in the centre (Wojciechowski-Weiss, Alekhin-Nimzowitsch) castled but exposed or in a weakened position (Liubarski-Soultanbieff) castled but outnumbered (Kasparov-Marjanovic) Ian Nepomniachtchi’s success in the 2022 Candidate’s Tournament was marked by…
Here’s a list. There are different levels of appreciation, from Know-That to Know-How Anyhow, here’s the list, each linked to a post.
A nice easy one: having more pawns than your opponent on one side (and an open file there too, otherwise we have the half-open files setting for a minority attack) Capablanca shows Marshall that a working majority is enough to win the game: you create a passed pawn. A working King’s-side majority can produce an…
Rooks on the seventh (both if you can) [br]Use your King [br]Do both if you can! Here’s some examples: Click […] to see list of games
When two pieces queue up on a file or diagonal, they more than double their power. When two Rooks join forces on a file or rank, we call them doubled. (Nilsson-Boehm, Marshall-Capablanca) You can even triple major pieces on a file. (Alekhin-Nimzowitsch, Karpov-Kasparov) A Queen and a Bishop can combine to form a powerful battery…
