The Dutch chess composer and former world-class practical player Jan Hendrik Timman is a fan of checkmates by bishop, as can be seen in the announcement to his 65th birthday composing tourney, still open for submissions until July 1st.
Jan Timman analysing endgames with Yochanan Afek in 2005
Coincidentally, we will look in the next two months at studies where a bishop is the hero of the day. Of course, we have incidences where a real reverend was such a hero, such as Fernando Saavedra or Henry Loveday, but here we talk about the chess piece. As a small gift to Timman we will today have three joint studies of the month with a theme from his birthday tourney – the checkmate of the bishop and the fight against it.
David Bronstein had a brillant, yet unconvential, mind. A chess composer with the first half of his last name can claim the same for himself.
Vladimir Bron (1909-1985) was according to Wikipedia a scientist in Sverdlovsk, “one of the leading scientists of the refractory materials industry”. The German Wikipedia, naming Russian sources, calls him a doctor of engineering, having published not only a large number of chess studies and received the title of grandmaster for chess composition, but also over 150 scientific studies.
|
|
The Russian word “korol” means “king”. Of course the king of chess composers, at least by his name, must be Korolkov then. His study from Trud 1935 is very famous, but despite that I want to reproduce it as there might be someone who has indeed not seen it yet.
Vladimir Korolkov (1907-1987), son of a railroad engineer, was an electrical engineer, working in the legendary Kirov plant. He was, as the German Wikipedia tells us, citing Russian sources written by Korolkov himself, married to a rather unknown chess player, who however was twice Soviet Women Champion: Olga Semenova Tyan-Shanskaya. She was Master of Sport, a title given in the Soviet Union to extraordinary sports(wo)men.
The last selection of this month will show the battle against the bishops, a checkmate can only happen at a wrong move, but there is a highly tense battle worth watching. The composing hero is one that almost became unsung. Interestingly, the study took the second prize in the very same tourney.
Sergey Kaminer (1906-1938) also was engineer in the chemical industry. He was the earliest chess composer of the modern Soviet period, but his story is a rather sad one. One day in autumn 1937, when Botvinnik played the USSR championship against Levenfish in the hotel “National” in Moscow, Sergey Kaminer appeared after a phone call, gave Botvinnik his notebook in case something happens to him and with this took care that his studies were preserved. Unfortunately, the prediction turned out to be true, as those were the years of Stalin’s mass murder known as the “Great Purge”, to which Kaminer fell victim in 1938.
Of course, compared to the other two studies, this short battle might seem to lack in content, but it has an unexpected idea that in rare circumstances practical players can profit from. And of course isn’t such a move aesthetically highly pleasing?
Botvinnik kept the notebook, and it became one of the bases of the book “Selected Studies of Liburkin and Kaminer” by Kofman in 1981 (“Izbrannye etyudi Kaminera i Liburkina”, Fizkultura i Sport, Moscow 1981). I offer a good reward to anyone who can find the notebook of Kaminer and scan it to preserve the content permanently. Kaminer himself was rehabilitated by the USSR Supreme Court in 1956, but as a death sentence was carried out in 1938, this was mostly a symbolic act, one that could not restore the great talent, one possibly on par with the famous Soviet composers, undoubtedly destroyed by Stalin...
From the Reddit IAmA here is a small selection of the questions that Yours Truly answered (shortened when necessary). The session is over, but you can always write questions into the ChessBase comments section, and if you’re lucky they will be read. And once in a blue moon they might even be replied to in the column. The same goes for your criticism.
Q: What is exactly a chess composer?
A: A chess composer is a person (at least, until computers manage to understand artistry) who creates chess puzzles, such as endgame studies (positions where a way to win or draw has to be found) or direct mates (positions where a checkmate in a specified number of moves has to be found). The positions might be similar to games but always should include an artisitic element, or in rare cases a contribution to endgame theory. An artistic element might be a paradox, for example, refusal to capture a piece or pawn.
Q: Have you ever considered doing the same for other abstract games (like Go, Hnefatafl etc.) or are you only composing for chess? And if so, why?
A: I understand only chess well enough to compose for it. Go is too difficult for me, and Shogi is too tactical, it amounts to just giving check each turn. Of course, there are fairy chess variations, but it is already difficult for me to compose for those, so I only compose for chess.
Q: What are your thoughts about endgame tablebases finding winning positions that take 500+ moves to mate? Does it have any effect on chess puzzles?
A: This is an excellent question that has been explored, of course, in extenso. The short answer is that tablebase positions, such as in the Nalimov and Lomonossov sets, are not regarded as anticipations to studies – or to chess compositions in general. The English founder of the magazine "EG", John Roycroft, has written an entire book about two such longest winning positions, trying to analyze them from a human point of view, and believes this to be contributing to endgame theory if someone actually takes the time to understand the endgames in-depth. He asks why one move fails but another not, or why two seemingly similar moves are different, so one must have a hidden defense somewhere. Of course, while that effort is to be lauded, I don't believe personally that such endgames, even with the narrative, can be generalized, to be made understandable in a general form for humans.
The effect it has on chess puzzles is more in the mutual zugzwang positions (abbreviated "mzz" or just "zz"). Those mzz positions can be easily "mined". Some composers are tempted to take such positions, add an introduction that leads to the position with either side to play, and publish this as an endgame study. But even in such cases, in my opinion all play before and after the mzz must be humanly understandable, i.e. it must be understandable why a situation is a zugzwang.
The other influence the tablebases had is that certain endgames that were deemed a draw, always or in special cases, now are shown to be always lost. A famous yet curious case is the endgame of KBB vs. KN (king and two bishops vs. king and knight) which was thought to be a draw by a fortress in certain situations, with the knight on b7. But the tablebases showed that the fortress can be broken and it can just be prevented to set it up on the other side of the board again, so the endgame is a general win. As a result of this, many studies have become unsound, i.e. defect, because the intended draw was none, or because there is another way to win now that is shown by the tablebases and was thought to be a draw back then.
 |
About the author
|
| Advertising |
Siegfried Hornecker (*1986) is a German chess composer and member of the World Federation for Chess Composition, subcommitee for endgame studies. His autobiographical book "Weltenfern" (in English only) can be found on the 
