Chess Composers

Василий Николаевич Платов (24-03-1881 - 17-07-1952) Russian composer (Vasily Nikolayevich Platov)


The Platov brothers (Vasily and Mikhail) were two Latvian endgame study composers who followed Troitzky's steps. They collaborated with the great magazines of their time - Shakhmaty, 64. They published two collections of their studies: "Сборник шахматных этюдов/Sammlung der Endspielstudien" in 1914 and "Сборник шахматных этюдов" in 1928. Vasily also published a selection of contemporary studies "150 избранных современных этюдов" in 1925.
Timothy G. Whitworth wrote the reference book "The Platov Brothers" in 1994.

One of their most famous studies is this one and you may want to check it, but let's choose another one, composed 4 years earlier and sent to the same newspaper "Rigaer Tageblatt":


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Ferdinand Metzenauer (24-03-1908 - 05-03-1968) German composer



Ferdinand Metzenauer composed beautiful threemovers. He defined the Munich theme, which you can find explained here in German with an example from Metzenauer's works.
The following threemover appeared also in the FIDE Album:


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Василий Васильевич Смыслов (24-03-1921 - 27-03-2010) Russian otb GM, World Champion and composer (Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov)


Beside being the 7th chess World Champion, Vasily Smyslov was also International Judge - since 1957. He composed many studies, collaborated with Grigory Levenfish for "Rook Endings" in 1971 (see March 9th) and wrote in 1997 "Endgame Virtuoso"


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Roger Missiaen (24-03-1925 - 19-06-2018) Belgian composer


Roger Missiaen composed about a hundred compositions, many of which were of a very high quality. He wrote together with Ignace Vandecasteele and Julien Vandiest "Flemish miniatures. 123 chess endgame studies" in 1998. He also composed moremovers, but we chose an endgame study:


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Юрій Маркович Гордіан (24-03-1937 - 08-01-2024) Ukrainian composer and International Master (Yuri Gordian)



He was the son of Soviet fairy composer Mark Filipovich Gordian. He was the chief editor of the Ukrainian magazine "Problemist Ukrainy" and author of about 250 problems and one of the main pillars of strong Ukrainean composition school. He gained many points for his country in WCCT.
Sergey Tkachenko wrote a nice article in homage to Yuri Gordian in Perspectiva.info [broken link].


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Christopher John Feather (24-03-1947) British composer and helpmate/fairy expert


For the reader who does not know Chris Feather, reading his very short autobiography on Kobulchess is a must.

From it you will learn that Chris, one of the very best composers of helpmates in the world, who recently completely turned to fairy problems, is not interested in prizes or titles. For this reason he has not sent his problems to the FIDE Album. While other composers similarly neglecting the Album honours are self-centered and autarchic, on the contrary Chris generously provides fellow composers with excellent advice, profitable hints and considerable enjoyment through his self-produced magazine Fairings.

He coined the term HOTF(Helpmate Of The Future), which is best represented by the forever green following helpmate:


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Chithathur Gopalan Sathya Narayanan (24-03-1947) Indian composer and International Master



Narayanan is famous for his amazing double in (削除) 4th (削除ここまで) 2^nd WCCT: 4^th place and 5^th place with problems that got directly in the FIDE Album!
C.G.S.Narayanan or CGSN as he is referred to by his friends, is an expert in orthodox two- and threemovers. He won the prestigious Brian Harley award a total of four times. In the 1990s he started the only Indian problem magazine called "Cross-check". He ran a regular column on problem solving for almost twenty years in the newspaper "The Hindu". He has also organized solving contests in Chennai and has mentored a number of young enthusiasts (for instance o.t.b GM Karthikeyan Murali). For the blog we selected another amazing achievement: 4^th degree defence of bB in #3 (by the way, Miodrag Mladenovic published in the Summer issue of MatPlus Review 2007 a very interesting article about Nth degree black correction in 3# and other commented problems can be found on Mat Plus forum)


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Radovan Šulc (24-03-1965) Czech composer

Radovan Šulc is present in this selection for his funny and entertaining following fairy problem:


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橋本 哲 (24-03-1957) Japanese composer (Satoshi Hashimoto)


Satoshi Hashimoto has composed 20 tsume-shogi problems and around 100 chess problems. Most of these are proof games and he has published a collection of his best works: "64 Proof Games" (Paradise Books 10, 2012), a must have for fans of retrograde analysis.
Here is an example of his talent:


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