Nikalai (Nikolay) Dmitrievich Grigoriev () was a Russian

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

player and a composer of

endgame studies In the game of chess, an endgame study, or just study, is a type of chess problem that starts with a composed position—i.e. one that has been made up rather than played in an actual game—where the goal is to find the essentially unique way for ...

. He was born on 14 August 1895 in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

, and he died there in 1938. His father was a professional musician in the

Bolshoi Theatre The Bolshoi Theatre ( rus, Большо́й теа́тр, r=Bol'shoy teatr, p=bɐlʲˈʂoj tʲɪˈat(ə)r, t=Grand Theater) is a historic opera house in Moscow, Russia, originally designed by architect Joseph Bové. Before the October Revolutio ...

orchestra. At the relatively late age of eighteen, Grigoriev joined the Moscow chess club and played in the Moscow tournament of 1915. There, one of his opponents was the future world champion

Alexander Alekhine Alexander Aleksandrovich Alekhine. He disliked when Russians sometimes pronounced the of as , , which he regarded as a Yiddish distortion of his name, and insisted that the correct Russian pronunciation was . (March 24, 1946) was a Russian ...

against whom he lost but later maintained friendly relations. In 1917, he was drafted into the Imperial Russian army in the First World War and was sent to the front. He was wounded and returned severely ill. In early October 1937, Grigoriev returned from a trip to the Far East and Siberia, where he gave lectures and played. The

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

militia on the train arrested him. Grigoriev was frail; he lost consciousness immediately after the use of force, and his throat began to constantly bleed. After an interrogation, the interrogators had to wash down the room. An unexpected illness then confined him to bed. Severe complications required immediate surgery. He was severely weakened and died of lung cancer.

Playing career

Grigoriev was Moscow Champion four times: in 1921, 1922, 1923–24 and 1929. His playing career spanned from 1910 to 1929. He lost games to

(1915 and 1919) and

Mikhail Botvinnik Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik (; ; – May 5, 1995) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster who held five world titles in three different reigns. The sixth World Chess Champion, he also worked as an electrical engineer and computer sci ...

(1927); both would later become chess world champions. In the 1920 USSR Chess Championship (Moscow 4–24 October 1920) Grigoriev took 5-7th place (8 wins, 6 losses, and only one draw), despite undertaking extensive and difficult organizational duties including finding scare food rations for the participants. Before his departure from Russia in 1921, Alekhine played a match with Grigoriev of 7 games resulting in 2 wins and 5 draws in favour of Alekhine. Analyzing the match, Levenfish said: "In some of the games only exceptional ingenuity saved Alekhine from destruction." Grigoriev competed in various internal Soviet tournaments. His tournament victories included: the Third Chess Championship of the Trade Unions 1928 and he divided the 1-2nd places with

Peter Romanovsky Pyotr Arsenyevich Romanovsky (; 29 July 1892 – 1 March 1964) was a Russian and Soviet chess player and author. He won the Soviet Championship in 1923 and, jointly, 1927. Biography At the beginning of his career in Saint Petersburg, he shared f ...

in the international Workers' Congress in Leningrad. Grigoriev became better known, however, as a chess organizer and educationalist, chess journalist and problemist.

Composing career

Grigoriev composed more than 300 endgame studies. He is especially noted for his prolific output of pawn endgames with only kings and pawns on the board, where he had no equal. In 1935, the French magazine ''La Stratégie'' organized a tourney for endgame studies with two pawns against one, and Grigoriev ran away with ten of the twelve awards. Players called him the "world champion in the Pawn end-game."

Alexander Kotov Alexander Alexandrovich Kotov (Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Ко́тов; ( – 8 January 1981) was a Soviet chess International Grandmaster, grandmaster and author. He was a Soviet chess champion, a two-time world title Cand ...

. ''The Soviet School of Chess'', p. 71. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958.

Example study 1

In Diagram 1, White wins as follows: :1.d4 Kg5 :2.Kf7 Kf5 :3.d5 Ke5 :4.e4 Now Black can choose which of his three pawns he wishes to promote to a queen, but he loses no matter what. :4...a5 :5.Ke7 a4 :6.d6 a3 :7.d7 a2 :8.d8=Q a1=Q :9.Qh8+ wins the queen by a

skewer A skewer is a thin metal or wood stick used to hold pieces of food together. The word may sometimes be used as a metonym, to refer to the entire food item served on a skewer, as in "chicken skewers". Skewers are used while grilling or roasting ...

. If Black queens the b-pawn instead, the queen on b1 is captured after 9.Qd6+ Kxe4 10.Qg6+. If Black tries to get a queen on h1, it's gone after 9.Qd6+ Kxe4 10.Qc6+.

Example study 2

In Diagram 2, White wins a pawn race through a beautiful repetitive maneuver: :1.f4 Threatens to queen on move 5 ''with check'', after which the queen can stop Black's pawn if it advances to d2. Black's best defense is to try to chase the White pawn with his king. :1...Kb4 :2.h4 d5 The Black king cannot catch the h-pawn, so now Black must counterattack by advancing his d-pawn. Now if White plays 3.h5, Black will queen on d1 with check. So... :3.f5 Kc5 :4.h5 d4 And the pattern repeats itself again: :5.f6 Kd6 :6.h6 d3 :7.f7 Ke7 :8.h7 d2 Now, finally, White provides the ''coup de grace'': :9. f8=Q+ Kxf8 :10. h8=Q+ Ke7 :11. Qd4 and White wins. Irving Chernev. ''Practical Chess Endings'', p. 80. New York: Dover, 1961. . The following two studies won prizes at the 1936 French journal contest:

Example study 3

Exceptionally precise and beautiful playing brings white victory. :1. Kg3! Ke4 :2. Kg2! Ke3 :3. Kf1 Ke4 :4. Ke1 Ke3 :5. Kd1 Kf4 :6. Kd2 Ke4 :7. e3 Kf3 :8. Kd3 Kg3 :9. Ke4! Kg4 :10.Ke5 Kxh4 :11.Kf4 Kh3 :12. e4 Kg2 :13. e5 h4 :14. e6 h3 :15. e7 h2 :16. e8=Q h1=Q :17.Qe2+ and mate soon follows.

Example study 4

A draw seems to be a vain hope. But here is how it is done: :1.Kc1 Ke5 :2.Kd1 Kd4 :3.Ke2 Ke4 :4.Kf2 Kf4 :5.Ke2 Kg3 :6.Kd3! e5 :7.Ke3! Kg2 :8.Ke2 e4 :9.Ke1 Kf3 :10.Kf1 e3 :11.Ke1 e2 Stalemate.

References

External links

* Another problem by Grigoriev on ChessCafe.com

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Grigoriev, Nikolay 1895 births 1938 deaths Chess players from Moscow Chess composers Russian chess writers 20th-century Russian chess players 20th-century Russian sportsmen