Yochanan Afek's chess compositions

by Sagar Shah
3/26/2024 – Yochanan Afek, International Grandmaster of chess composition, has been providing us with articles for decades. He lives in Amsterdam, where Sagar Shah caught up with him and conducted a 90-minute interview, discussing some of the great problem compositions that we have from him. We have the puzzles in a replay board, where you can follow the discussion, using the built-in engine to answer residual questions you might have. Very entertaining and instructive.

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Yochanan Afek (Hebrew: יוחנן אפק), born 1952 in Tel Aviv, is an Israeli chess player, composer, trainer and arbiter. He is the only person to possess international titles in five different facets of chess: International Master, International Grandmaster of chess composition, International Arbiter, FIDE master in problem solving, and International Judge for chess compositions.

Yochanan, who resides in Amsterdam, has been supplying us material for our news page for decades, articles on chess composition (here a prime example) or on events in Israel or elsewhere. It has always been interesting and a pleasure working with him. In the March issue CHESS Magazine we did a 60 Seconds portrait of him.

Here is the interview I conducted with him on my recent trip to Amsterdam:

And here are the positions discussed in the above video. You know that you can click the fan button to start an engine – to resolve any residual questions you might have. Click the arrow to the right to see a list of all problems.

Sagar is an International Master from India with two GM norms. He loves to cover chess tournaments, as that helps him understand and improve at the game he loves so much. He is the co-founder and CEO of ChessBase India, the biggest chess news portal in the country. His YouTube channel has over a million subscribers, and to date close to a billion views. ChessBase India is the sole distributor of ChessBase products in India and seven adjoining countries, where the software is available at a 60% discount. compared to International prices.