What would you like to see in a study? What would make your jaw drop or make you review the puzzle again and again? What would you consider extremely nice, interesting and/or entertaining in a study? What kind of study would you not regret to have spent time to solve?


Patterns?
**(under-)Promotions?
___ [I cannot find the intended composition, where pawns are promoted to N,B,R... I'll add it later.]
**Cycles?
___ Blathy 1890 FEN: q5nn/1pk1p3/p3P1p1/P3rpP1/1Kp1pP1p/8/2PQ1PP1/8 w - - 0 1 [Mate in 257 moves]
**Funny positions?
___ Kasparyan 1935 http://endgame-studies.blogspot.com/200 ... d-win.html
**Feel free to add...

Tactics?
**Windmills?
___ Prokes 1947 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lubomir-k ... 67149.html
**Hero pieces?
___ Van Bruekelen 1990 http://endgame-studies.blogspot.com/200 ... study.html
**Sacrifices?
___ Mitrofanov 1967 http://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/mitrofanov.htm
**Feel free to add...

Concepts?
**Domination?
___ Korolkov 1948 http://endgame-studies.blogspot.com/200 ... dy-by.html
**Fortress?
___ Checkover 1952 FEN: 8/8/8/5Bp1/7k/8/4pPKP/8 w - - 0 1
**Stalemate?
___ N.Kralin and An.Kuznetsov 1975 http://blog.chess.com/benws/a-study-in-stalemate
**Zugzwang?
___ Matous 1975 http://www.jmrw.com/Chess/Matous/base.htm
**Manouvering (Long term strategy)?
___ Troitzky 1901 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENksXh3mOFM
**Feel free to add...

Well good question.

I analysed many studies with rook and knight/bishop dominating a queen and they were mostly nice.

Also there are many very good pawn ending studies. Some of them are brilliantly embedding/extending the theme of the famous Reti study.
I downloaded a nice collection at "deja scacchi" and really enjoy solving.

I don't think the subject is the most important, if the motif is well presented and solution is elegant and/or tricky it's perfect.
That is a quite unclear statement, so maybe it's easier to state what is disturbing me and that is normally studies without a clear way which are involving many sidelines. If the sidelines themselves are elegant it's nice again. I remeber a study where an underpromotion was required and in all of the four variation a different piece was needed... fantastic!

I still like the old stuff with the Novotny/ Grimshaw themes etc. But I also agree with Zeitnoakrobat: if it's elegant and interesting- that's good enough. One thing I'm not a fan of is studies with lots of pieces on the board- I just usually pass them by- give me a miniature any day.

Thanks for the opinions zeitnotakrobat, kamus
So, one clear line, or thematic sidelines, and not-so-many pieces...

If the world is going to end and I am the last person to survive (God forbid, I really don't mean it), I only wish to have a chess set and lots of chess books for the rest of my life. Chess is God's gift to mankind.

Yeah, I always thought that if I landed in prison (hopefully the feds will stay off my trail for a few more years yet) as long as I had Chess available in some form, I could get through it OK.