Saturday, August 25, 2012

August 26th

Сергей Михайлович Каминер (26-08-1908 - 02-11-1938) Russian composer (Sergey Mikhailovich Kaminer)

Sergey Kaminer
[Wikipedia]

Sergey Kaminer composed endgame studies (and one helpmate). In 1937 he left a notebook with all his studies to his friend Mikhail Botvinnik, who revealed their existence in the 1950s after Stalin's death.
Rafael Kofman's 1981 book "Izbrannye etjudy" contains Kaminer's 75 studies. And JMRW reproduces 30 of Kaminer's studies on his website.

Каминер, Сергей Михайлович
«64» 1935 (679)
2nd Prize


+ 5 + 6

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Олександр Гнатович Жук (26-08-1946) Ukrainian composer (Oleksandr Gnatovich Zhuk)

Oleksandr Zhuk
[popovgl.narod.ru]

Oleksandr Zhuk composes direct mates and helpmates.

Жук, Олександр Гнатович
Уральский проблемист 2010 (62/654)


h#42 solutions 5 + 9

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Guus Rol (26-08-1949) Dutch composer

Guus Rol composes endgame studies and retro problems. He is also interested in the game of Go.
You may enjoy his fourmover (with the disruption sacrifice in key 1.Qc8+! and in try 1.Rb8+?). His style is generally quite analytical:

Rol, Guus
Schakend Nederland, 30th Nov 1983
2nd-3rd Prize


= 4 + 5

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Axel Steinbrink (26-08-1954) German composer

Axel Steinbrink
[Facebook profile]

Axel Steinbrink organizes solving tourneys and will be the director of the 36th World Chess Solving Championship (WCSC) at Kobe in September 2012.
He also occasionally composes problems.

Steinbrink, Axel
Sarajevo, 1984
3rd Prize


h#2b) wSe7->bSe7
c) wRe8->bRe8
4 + 2

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Vlaicu Crişan (26-08-1973) Romanian composer and International Master

Vlaicu Crişan, 2010

Vlaicu Crişan is already well-known for his successes in prestigious tourneys: for instance in the Olympic Tourney, 1st place in the fairy section 2012 and 2nd place in the Retro section 2012 1st place in the fairy section 2010 and 1st place in the Helpmate section 2008. He obtained the FM title in 2013.
He also collaborates with magazines "Quartz" with Paul Raican or Japanese "Problem Paradise" as fairy editor. He is the co-organizer and judge of the yearly Tzuica tourney, with Eric Huber (by the way, this year's announcement is here).

Romanian readers can discover his 2010 interview by Dinu-Ioan Nicula on the site of the Romanian Chess Federation where he provides details about his career as a Romanian chess composer.

Vlaicu is also a very good solver (International Master) who won the Solving Show at Wageningen 2001.

Vlaicu can compose in all genres, but he has recently specialized mostly in fairy problems (especially helpselfmates) and retro problems (especially Proca Retractors with fairy conditions AntiCirce or Circe Assassins).

Crişan, Vlaicu
Rusenescu MT, 1992
Comm.


#3 9 + 10

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Crişan, Vlaicu
1st place
FIDE Olympic Tournament 2012

hs#3   b) Pf2 – d7  (7+11)
Take & Make
Vao – a2
Pao – a4
Equistoppers – h6,h7

Take & Make: the capturing piece must play another move immediately, playing like to piece that it has just captured. The second move cannot be a capture.
Vao and Pao are Chinese pieces that move like Bishop, respectively Rook, but can capture only beyond a hurdle.
Equistopper: it moves to any square that is exactly halfway towards any other unit of either colour, which must (naturally) be an even number of rows (ranks and files) away orthogonally.

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1 comment:

  1. Thanks !
    You're right. The link to ARVES is now added in a new category: "Endgame studies".
    The link to Lomonosov tablebases is also added in the Databases category.

    ReplyDelete