Chess Endgame Challenge

by Frederic Friedel
10/27/2025 – Did you solve the endgame puzzles we gave you last week? In the position shown, White had to move his rook to one of nine squares. But only moving it to e6 retained the win. How come? Today we give you the full solutions of all the four problems, in video explanations and on a replay board with engine assistance. It's a good way to master such tricky endgame situations.
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Here are all four puzzles, annotated, in our replay window. You can click on the fan button below the board to switch on an engine to answer any residual questions you may have. Click on the blue arrow to the right to access the list of studies.

And here are video explanations of the studies, presented by Brainy:

The third video contains a discussions of endgames three and four.

Were you able to solve these studies by yourself, were you able to grasp the salient points they encapsulate? That will enhance your skills in similar endgame position you might encounter during your games.

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Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.
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Video

60m The Two Knights

This entry into the 60 minutes series concentrates on the Modern variation of the Italian game where White opens the centre early : 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 d4 exd4 5 e5!. This line can be reached by various move orders, most frequently from the Scotch 3 d4 exd4 4 Bc4. It's a sharp variation and Grandmasters such as Evgeny Sveshnikov have used it frequently,with very good results. It's a perfect line for club players to adopt which is relatively easy to learn and which contains many traps. All the main responses are covered here, including 5...d5, 5...Ng4 and 5...Ne4 and the conclusion is that is is difficult for Black to equalize in a straightforward way. Problems are being posed, which over the board might prove tough to solve.

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