Alexey Troitsky

This article is about Russian and Soviet chess composer. For Russian and Soviet soccer player, see Aleksei Troitsky (footballer).
A. A. Troitsky

Alexey Alexeyevich Troitsky, or Alexei, Troitzky, or Troitzki (Russian: Алексе́й Алексе́евич Тро́ицкий) (March 14, 1866August 1942) is considered to have been one of the greatest composers of chess endgame studies.[1] He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern art of composing chess studies (Seirawan 2003:91). Troitsky died of starvation during World War II at the siege of Leningrad, where his notes were destroyed.

One of his most famous works involves analyzing the endgame with two knights versus a pawn, see Troitsky line. John Nunn analyzed this endgame with an endgame tablebase and stated that "the analysis of Troitsky ... is astonishingly accurate" (Nunn 1995:265).

Compositions

Troitsky was a prolific composer of endgame studies. Irving Chernev included nine of them in his book 200 Brilliant Endgames. The diagram shows one of them.

Troitsky, 1909
abcdefgh
8
b8 black queen
c7 black knight
a4 white knight
d4 black king
g3 white queen
d2 white king
8
77
66
55
44
33
22
11
abcdefgh
White to move and win



The main line goes:

1. Nb6! Qe8
2. Nd7! Kc4
3. Qxc7+ Kb4
4. Qc5+ Kb3
5. Qc3+ Ka4
6. Qd4+ Ka3
7. Nc5 Qb8
8. Qa1+ Kb4
9. Na6+

and White wins (Chernev 1989:207–8).

Books

See also

Notes

  1. In the introduction to Collection of Chess Studies, Sam Sloan writes "... Trotzky is considered to have been the greatest composer of chess endgame studies ever."

References

External links

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