Genrikh Kasparyan

File:Kasparian.jpg

Gasparyan

Genrikh Gasparyan (Armenian: Գենրիխ Գասպարյան; February 27, 1910 in Tbilisi — December 27, 1995 in Yerevan) is considered to have been one of the greatest composers of chess endgame studies. Outside Armenia, he is better known by the Russian version of his name Genrikh Moiseyevich Kasparyan or Kasparian (Russian: Генрих Моисеевич Каспарян).

Gasparyan became a national master in 1936 and became an international master in 1950 and was an International Judge of Chess Compositions (awarded in 1956) and an International Grandmaster of Chess Composition (awarded in 1972) (Harkola 2007).

Gasparyan was also an active chess player, winning the Armenian championship ten times (including two ties with future World Champion Tigran Petrosian). He reached the USSR Championship finals four times, but never finished higher than tenth place.

Gasparyan is best known for his compositions. He stated with chess problems but soon discovered that his best field was in endgame studies. He wrote several books and collections and composed about 300 studies, which won 40 first prizes. He won the USSR Composing Championship several times (Sunnucks 1970).

Sample study

Kasparyan, 1955

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

White to play and win

Irving Chernev included five of Kasparyan's compositions in his book 200 Brilliant Endgames. This study uses a "model mate" in the middle of the board (Chernev 1989:103).

• 1. Bf5 Kd4
• 2. Ne6+ Ke5
• 3. Bh3 Bc2
• 4. d4+ Kd5
• 5. Kb5 Bh7
• 6. Kb4 Bg8
• 7. Kc3 Bxe6
• 8. Bg2#

Books

• Domination in 2,545 Endgame Studies by Genrikh Gasparyan. ISBN 0-923891-87-0
• The Complete Studies of Genrikh Kasparyan by A. J. Roycroft. [1]

References

• Chernev, Irving (1989), 200 Brilliant Endgames, Dover, ISBN 0-486-43211-4

• Sunnucks, Anne (1970), The Encyclopaedia of Chess, St. Martins Press, ISBN 978-0709146971

• Harkola, Hannu (2007), Handbook of Chess Composition v4.1 http://www.saunalahti.fi/~stniekat/pccc/hcc.htm