Endgame Study #4 - White to Move

This study was composed by Alexey Troitzky and appears in his book 360 Brilliant and Instructive End Games. It was first published in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution.

Troitzky is regarded as one of the great composers and he is especially well remembered for his Troitzky line. Tragically, he is said to have died of starvation during the seige of Leningrad in 1942.

Not the only great chess talent to die in such dire circumstances, both of his contemporaries Alexander Ilyin-Genevsky, credited as one of the founders of the Soviet School, and Leonid Kubbel, also an endgame composer, died during the same seige. Notable dutch player Salo Landau died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1943 and Vera Menchik, the first women's world chess champion, died along with her family in a V-1 rocket attack on London in 1944.

There's just one move that will put Black in such a bind that he'll soon have to give up his queen. Can you find it?



Find all of the endgame studies posted on The Pied Chessman here.