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
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
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
In the third and final instalment of the Chess Artistry Adventure series, we bring you seven more studies, six of them originals, by world-class composers like Arpad Rusz, Amatzia Avni, Michael Pasman, and more. We also briefly discuss the composers and try to understand how they can turn positions from games into original compositions. Like in the previous article, we also have an assortment of flavours here. Some of the studies are concrete and tactical, while others are a bit on the technical side. However, regardless of style, each composition is deeply instructional, and you can be sure to come out wiser as a chess player if you go through them all.
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