By Daniele Guglielmo Gatti
The Babson Task, one of the most elusive and prestigious challenges in chess composition, originally proposed by American chess composer Joseph Ney Babson in year 1884, requires Black to promote a pawn to four different pieces (queen, rook, bishop, knight), with White responding in each case by promoting a pawn to the same piece, achieving full thematic symmetry as the only way to reach the stipulation. It’s often called also “an extreme form of Allumwandlung“, a German word that means “Promotion to all pieces”. Numerous attempts have been made over more than a century, but very few have achieved the task in its pure form, without major compromises, and only in the chess problems field.
The most ambitious effort to compose a Babson Task in an endgame study came from U.S. composer Gady Costeff. While technically impressive, his study turned out to be retrospectively illegal, due to an undetectable pawn capture that violated the rules of chess. This issue remained unresolved, and the Babson in endgame studies remained unfulfilled – until now.
In October 2024, unable to find a correction to his nearly successful scheme which was composed more than 13 years before, Costeff decided to publish it hors concours on EG n.238, offering an open challenge to the composing community: to accomplish what still seemed impossible.
Find all ensuing relevant lines in the replayer at the end of this article, and a full explanation by Harold van der Heijden in this link
After his publication, several world-class composers attempted to find a valid correction — but in the end, it was a “minor” composer, Daniele Guglielmo Gatti, who, after 45 days of intensive work, succeeded in achieving the task in its perfect form, for the first time in history.
The attached endgame study, composed in November 2024 and published in January 2025 on EG n.239, offers a revolutionary and elegant realization of the Babson Task. It is the result of extensive analytical effort and a deliberate stylistic approach, aiming to combine technical rigour with artistic clarity.
This version is notable for its proofed legality – as said, one of the greatest obstacles in achieving a complete Babson Task in an endgame study -, its perfect economy (no promoted pieces in the diagram), natural flow, and full thematic content without duals or artificial mechanisms. It has been independently verified by leading experts in the field and is currently under consideration for the FIDE Album and other major awards, due to its uniqueness and the undoubtable historical value for the chess composition.
I hope readers will enjoy both the intellectual challenge and the aesthetic harmony of this composition.
Full composition
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Daniele Guglielmo Gatti
Daniele Guglielmo Gatti (born 6 November 1987) is an Italian chess composer who began his work in 2015, focusing first on selfmates before exploring other genres. In early 2025, he achieved a landmark in chess composition by publishing a legal and economic complete Babson Task (4/4), solving a challenge first posed in 1884 by Joseph Ney Babson. That same year, Gatti publicly shared his diagnoses of Asperger’s syndrome and intellectual giftedness, noting how traits like hyperfocus and logical precision influence his creative work.
The study gained widespread attention from national and international chess communities, with praise from leading composers, grandmasters, and critics, and was featured in lectures, blogs, and instructional videos.
Throughout his career, Gatti has composed around 630 problems and 255 studies, earning 200 awards. He became a National Master of Chess Composition in 2018, represented Italy at the 2022 WCCT, and won the 2024 Italian Chess Composition Championship. His work has been showcased at the Global Chess Festival by Judit Polgar, and in July 2025 he was appointed as a FIDE International Judge of Chess Compositions.
