Saavedra Position
A celebrated endgame study in which a rook pawn promotes to a rook, rather than a queen, in order to avoid immediate stalemate and still force a win.
The Saavedra position is famous for its surprising and only winning try, underpromoting to a rook so the resulting position avoids a drawing stalemate trick that a queen promotion would fall into.
Etymology
The study is named for Fernando Saavedra, a Spanish Roman Catholic priest (1849-1922) who was living in Glasgow when he made the discovery that gave the position its fame. The position descends from the game Fenton-Potter, London 1875, discussed by Johannes Zukertort in the City of London Chess Magazine in 1875. G. E. Barbier published a related position in the Glasgow Weekly Citizen on 27 April 1895, with solutions following on 4, 11 and 18 May 1895. Saavedra spotted that the apparently drawing line wins by underpromoting to a rook rather than a queen, and his 6.c8=R was published on 18 May 1895. The modern form of the study is generally credited to Emanuel Lasker in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of 1 June 1902, page 53. A. J. Roycroft called it unquestionably the most famous of all endgame studies in Test Tube Chess (1972).
First documented: 1895 — Glasgow Weekly Citizen, 18 May 1895 (Saavedra's rook-promotion solution; the source position appeared there 27 April 1895)
Translations
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