2/7/2024 – In his World Chess Championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi, which made him the 17th World Champion in the history of chess, Chinese Grandmaster Ding Liren won the sixth game by threatening a checkmate with rook and knight. Let us see how that checkmate was utilized in endgame studies. | Photo: Midjourney

1/8/2024 – Each year we try to have something unusual for the final article of the year. While the endgame studies this time may not fulfill this criterion, your author wanted to provide some deeper, partially philosophical, thoughts. | Photo: Midjourney

11/29/2023 – Endgame studies don’t need to be perfect to be entertaining. Prizes are to be awarded to endgame studies that meet the highest standards. Honorable mentions are for endgame studies of great but not the highest quality. Special awards should be for those that can’t compete with other studies. Let us examine what this means.

10/31/2023 – Chess stalemates in the middle games reveal the intricacy and beauty of this uncommon occurrence, offering various unique and engrossing endgame analyses. To show the variety of inventiveness and strategic nuance present in these unusual circumstances, Siegfried Hornecker presents a number of examples of midboard stalemates. These range from complex endgames to complicated compositions by well-known chess composers like Vladimir Bron and Emil Melnichenko. | Photo: Midjourney

9/30/2023 – Possibly readers would enjoy a little bit of behind-the-scenes information on how chess composers work together. As always, this will be supplemented by endgame studies.| Photo: Midjourney

8/31/2023 – We talked a few times about Genrikh Kasparyan already, this time we delve a bit into his book “Domination in 2545 Endgame Studies”. At the time, the book served as a great anthology and also a small theoretical introduction to the theme. | Photo: Midjourney AI

7/29/2023 – Two years ago, we had a collection of “random” endgame studies, a small kaleidoscope, in January, and then again in July. With the vast number of different possibilities in endgame studies, many creations wouldn’t fit into a coherent article, so let us take this approach again. | Pictured: Mikhail Botvinnik during his match for the world crown against David Bronstein in 1951

6/3/2023 – Genrikh Kasparyan is widely regarded as one of the most prolific endgame study composers and shared his knowledge with a younger generation. So his son Sergey also composed endgame studies - 56 are in the database, including versions and corrections. But also other friends from Genrikh's endgame studies teaching circle created interesting ones themselves or together. | Photo: Midjourney AI

5/11/2023 – In the World Chess Championship, which still was running while this article was written but will be over when you read it, Ding Liren won the sixth game by threatening a checkmate with rook and knight. Let us see how that kind of checkmate was used in endgame studies. | Photo: Midjourney AI

4/14/2023 – Tim Krabbé's 1985 book "Chess Curiosities" showed a study by the Bulgarian chess composer I. Ionchev, flawed but nevertheless interesting. Yours truly tried to follow in his footsteps. Nadareishvili explored the same concept, and it might be unfair to associate the name with Ionchev as he was neither the first, the last, nor the most important one to show it - only the most famous. | Photo: Pixabay

3/28/2023 – Castling in endgame studies is a rich and entertaining topic - be it real castling, the threat of castling, or even just retroanalysis that proves that castling is impossible. Last year we began a new series in which we chronologically explore the most interesting endgame studies with castling ideas. We aim at a mix between informative and interesting endgame studies again this month, a mostly light-hearted article without too much text. | Photo: Pixabay

2/7/2023 – In the German magazine "Rochade Europa" / "Europa-Rochade", Gerd Wilhelm Hörning and Gerhard Josten had a column in which they presented their findings on incorrect endgame studies, offering also corrections to them. A small retrospective. | Photo: Motionarray - By SeventyFour

12/31/2022 – 64 squares. For some they mean the world. In the past month, the World Congress for Chess Composition was held, as I quickly reported. Among the new books there was also the FIDE Album 2016-2018 (for a history of the FIDE Albums see our September 2019 article) | Photo: Pixabay

11/26/2022 – Pattern recognition is a major feat of the human brain, albeit one that can lead to wrong outputs. Examples include seeing faces where there are none, known as pareidolia. Once it was believed that the planet Mars has a face structure on it, speculations about former inhabitants of the planet ran wild, later it turned out that this isn't the case and could be attributed to the low resolution of the photo. | Photo: Pixabay

10/29/2022 – This month, I planned to write about chess composition in Japan, but it turned out that not much information was obtainable. The situation in Singapore is even worse regarding sources. So instead, in this month's column we have a small mix of shorter articles again. | Photo: Pixabay

9/25/2022 – Last month, we talked about themes that blurred into the philosophical, but also into insanity. Jan Sprenger combines both: His profession is philosophy, his recent mastery of endgame studies is insane. Yours Truly sent a few questionnaires to Jan Sprenger, the results of the interview as well as a selection of his studies is presented below. | Photo: Pixabay + Wikipedia

8/27/2022 – On 30 June 1908, just after 7 AM (all dates correspond to our Gregorian calendar), an explosion occurred in the harsh forests in Siberia near the Tunguska river. The explosion happened over an area that is nearly unpopulated, so apart from an estimated 80 million trees (and, we suppose, the wildlife in that area of 2150 km²) only three humans died in the event that would likely have been a major catastrophe if it had happened over a densely populated area.| Photos: Pixabay

7/31/2022 – The term "malyutka" - "baby" - is used for endgame studies with up to five pieces. The art of such studies is very old, but some modern composers extensively researched such positions. Obviously, endgame tablebases made composing such endgame studies easier in the late 20th century, and it seems that there can't be much variety with only three pieces apart from the kings. Yet, even with so few pieces, some interesting ideas can be found.| Photos: Pixabay

6/25/2022 – Free association is an interesting mechanism to make up introductions for articles. Let us try: "Music was my first love and it will be my last", John Miles sang many years ago. The "Children" of Caissa rather would see their "Circle of Life" in Chess, where the WCCT-7 theme might have been predicted by Phil Collins in "Against All Odds" (who also performed the song named in the previous quotation): "Take a look at me now! There's just an empty space!", the bishop in the Kozłowski study might say this. | Photos: Pixabay

5/28/2022 – Polarchy or Polyarchy is the idea to have the burden of government on the shoulders of multiple people, as opposed to the monarchy that only sees one king or queen with all the burden. In chess, the king remains the sole objective of the game, but in rare cases one might be faced with the constellation that said king is joined not only by one but two queens. | Photo: Pixabay

4/30/2022 – Castling is a fascinating move. According to Wikipedia, "it originates from the 'king's leap', a two-square king move added to European chess between the 14th and 15th centuries, which took on its present form in the 17th century". The intricacies of the rules of castling have inspired many studies. Specialized columnist Siegfried Hornecker presents some of them. | Photos: Pixabay

3/26/2022 – Due to recent events, in these times of turmoil that have divided the world, I will this time not speak on behalf of the WFCC, but on behalf of my own, my personal opinion. | Photos: Pixabay

2/26/2022 – Humans formed belief systems based on stellar bodies. If you ask an astrologer about it, he might tell you his beliefs which of those have the most influence on your life. If you ask a scientist, he will likely name at least two: Sun and Earth. Ancient cultures already measured a phenomenon that - relative to each other - Earth rotates around the sun as well as around its own axis. A full rotation around itself is called a "day", a full rotation around the sun a "year". Relatively speaking, that is in relation to the sun, Earth returns to its current position after one year. One hundred such rotations are called a "century". A man who is on Earth for such a time is called a "centennial". A centennial who contributes to endgame theory is called... Yuri Averbakh. | Photo of Averbakh: Eteri Kublashvili

1/29/2022 – Endgame studies sometimes go to extremes, e.g. by demonstrating a win in 584(!) moves in a study, in which King, Rook, two Bishops (standing on the same colour), and pawn fight against King, Queen and Pawn. But are these and similar studies relevant for the theory of the endgame or practical games? It depends. Siegfried Hornecker takes a closer look.