Spent 27 minutes of my time this evening working out the solution to this beautiful endgame puzzle by Leonid Kubbel. It was time we’ll spent!
White to move and win (Leonid Kubbel, 150 Endspielstudien, 1925).
For those who are unfamiliar with Kubbel’s work, he composed many of the finest endgame studies of the early part of the twentieth century. In fact, Kubbel likely could have been one of the dominant chess masters of his time period had he not spent so many hours working on his more than 1500 endgame studies! Lucky for us that he did because his endgame compositions (such as the one above) regularly stretched the boundaries of what is possible on the chessboard in ways his chess games never could have.
Chris Torres is a nationally renowned scholastic chess coach working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His classes have attracted players of strengths ranging from rank beginners to world champions. A chess professional since 1998, Chris is widely recognized as one of the main driving forces behind the explosion in popularity and sudden rise in quality of scholastic chess in California. Chris Torres served as the President of the Torres Chess and Music Academy from 2005-2020 and currently is recognized as a correspondence chess master with the United States Chess Federation. Since 1998 Chris Torres has taught 6 individual national champions as well as led multiple school teams to win national championship titles. In addition, Chris Torres has directed and taught at 10 different schools which have been California State Champions at chess. In 2011 and 2012, several former and current students of Chris Torres have been selected to represent the United States at the World Youth Chess Championships. Mr. Torres’ hobbies include playing classical guitar and getting his students to appear on the national top 100 chess rating lists.
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