Troitsky, Alexey (1866 – 1942)

Famous Soviet chess composer of endgame studies. In 1934, he obtained the title of Composition Master of Sport of the USSR. The founder of the modern art of the chess endgame.

During his student years, he met with famous chess enthusiasts including Chigorin who invited him to contribute studies for the chess column of Novoe Vremya.

His first problem was published in 1883 and his first etudy in 1885. He published a total of 800 compositions – 750 endgame studies and 50 problems.

In 1897, Troitsky left Leningrad for Smolensk where he worked as an assistant to a forester, and during that time, he did not compose. In 1906, he returned to chess with a new publication in the magazine Deutsche Schachzeitung in which he examined the endgame of two knights against a pawn – and that examination became the basis for a change in the fifty-move law for many years.

He was very productive in his composing between 1908 and 1913. In 1910, he published an article in Niva containing the principles for the composition studies. Troitsky became one of the promoters of the Petrograd analyses, composing problems as well. Unfortunately in 1917, he lost all his papers and this period of his composing productivity ended.

In 1923, he began to work hard with composing again, and that period was known to be mellowed and still rich in ideas. He was the first one who was awarded by the government of the Russian Soviet Federated Republic the title of the Honoured Art Worker in 1928 – the chess composition was recognised officially as a form of art.

Troitsky died of starvation during the siege of Leningrad, and his papers passed away with him. He published his well-known work 500 Endspiel-studien, containing some of his own studies in 1924 and Chess Studies, which includes 360 studies and the analysis of the endgame with two Knights against one Pawn in 1937.