A Friend of Tal Larry Tapper John Roycroft, ed., A (First) Century of Studies: Ernest Pogosyants, Selected and edited by John Roycroft, 1999 Russell Enterprises, English Algebraic Notation 48 pp., $9.95 Like Michael Gilbert's detective Bohun, Ernest Pogosyants was an incurable insomniac who learned how to put his sleepless nights to creative use. While the fictional Bohun amassed enough academic degrees to wallpaper his bedroom, the very real Pogosyants preferred to write poetry and compose endgame studies. How this came about is a story told with laconic eloquence by Pogosyants' friend and colleague John Roycroft: As a young idealist Ernest Pogosyants, known to his close friends as Erik, joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth Organisation) and later the Communist party but, having joined, naively continued to speak his mind and ask awkward questions without regard to the occasion or his surroundings. Having publicly criticised KGB chief Shelepin he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to several months in a psychiatric 'hospital'. The injections forcibly administered left him with the headaches and sleeplessness he suffered from for the rest of his life. But he never ceased to sport his allegiances by wearing Party badges and similar emblems in his lapels. It was while he was unable to rest that he composed, throughout insomnious nights. It has been informally reported that he would turn up at the Monday evening meetings of composers in a room of the Central Chess Club in Moscow clutching a fat sheaf of originals composed during the previous week, to be greeted with supercilious ridicule by senior, classic, composers. The laughter may have been tinged with envy: the best of Pogosyants was, and is, inimitable. By most counts, Pogosyants composed over 6,000 studies, over half of them publishable. A (First) Century of Studies brings together 100 of Roycroft's favorites. For those who are new to the world of endgame compositions, I should mention that Roycroft is the perfect man for the job: his Test Tube Chess remains the most comprehensive and widely read introduction to endgame studies in English. The book's presentation is scholarly enough to satisfy serious buffs: the citations are thorough and there is an index in GBR notation, a classificatory device invented by Roycroft himself. This is plainly a labor of love, however, intended primarily to entertain. Roycroft's light notes, written in his distinctively jaunty style, show his unalloyed admiration for Pogosyants' inventiveness. Typically the studies in this collection feature surprising dramatic twists achieved with remarkable economy of means. For example, do you think you've seen all the basic tricks involving underpromotion? Then let's look at a couple of studies showing what Pogosyants can do with this theme! Here's a composition that won the Shakhmatnaya Moskva first prize in 1964: White: Ke7, Bb5; pawn - d5; Black Kh5, Ng7; pawns - e4, h7 Win The solution begins with a clever pair of stalemate tries: 1.Kf6 Kh6 2. d6 Ne8+! 3. Bxe8 e3 4. d7! A pleasingly symmetrical variation is 4. Bb5 e2 5. Bxe2 delivering stalemate from the other direction. 4....e2 5. d8N! ("Very nice," observes Roycroft, "because 5...e1Q 6. Nf7+ Kh5 7. Ne5+ wins the queen or mates. And that's all? Not quite!") 5...e1N! ("Now let White try winning this piece with a knight fork!") 6. Nc6 and 7. Ne7 and 8. Ng8 mate. "Instead." And here's an even sparser setting, which won second commendation, Czech Chess federation 1974-75: White: Kc2; pawns - b3, h3 Black Ka1; pawns - a3, g6 Win Now that you've been alerted to the underpromotion theme, you might expect the b-pawn to march forward, become a bishop to avoid stalemate, and deliver mate at e5 somehow. But this is not what happens, at all. The direct approach doesn't work: 1. b4 g5 2. b5 g4 3. hxg4 a2 draws. The solution is 1. h4!! g5!! ("Or 1...Ka2 2. b4 g5! 3. b5!! gxh4 4. b6 h3 5. b7 h2 6. b8Q b1Q 7. Qb3+! a check that was not available with the black king on a1, and 8. Qxa3 mate") 2. h5! g4 3. h6 g3 4. h7 g2 ("Is any care or thought needed? Let's plug on: 5. h8Q+ Ka2 6. Qg8 (Qh2/Qd4) g1Q 7. Qxg1 stalemate. So, 5. h8B!! Ka2 6. Bd4 and wins.") Many of these studies combine brilliance with what I can only describe as a kind of inspired buffoonery. Here's a droll one composed for a 1974 solving olympiad: White: Kb3, Nb6; pawns - a3, b4 Black: Kb5, Na6, Nc6; pawns - a2 Draw The solution is 1. Nd5! a1Q (1...a1N 2. Kb2) 2 a4+! Qxa4+ 3. Kb2 ("and White, although a whole queen and knight behind, draws by dominating the black queen, even granted it is Black's move, Black is not in check, and his queen is not attacked. Pure Pogosyants!") In addition to lightweight constructions such as these, there are several more elaborate and fanciful studies. There are also quite a few excellent collaborations with such estimable fellow composers as Kasparyan and Herbstman. In the middle of the book we find a couple of photographs. One shows Pogosyants, stocky and serious-looking, with his young bride carrying a bouquet of flowers. The picture was taken in 1960, when Pogosyants was 25. (He died in 1990, two years after receiving the Grandmaster of Composition title.) The other is a well-known photograph of Mikhail Tal playing blitz, surrounded by a crowd of attentive Russians. Tal's mesmeric eyes are fixed firmly on the board, his left hand is poised to move, smoke curls from a cigarette held delicately in his deformed right hand. The caption reads: "Mikhail Tal, world champion 1960- 1961, was a close friend of Pogosyants." At first the Tal photograph may seem to be a slightly incongruous touch, but I think anyone who reads through this book will easily understand that it is not. Roycroft's biographical sketches, brief as they are, make it plain that the affinities between Tal and Pogosyants ran far deeper than a tendency to keep odd hours. Both men could be seen as romantic rebels in the grand 19th-century style, consumptive bohemians driven by the need to express themselves artistically. And though Tal sat at the top of the chess world for a while, he and Pogosyants never managed to gain the unqualified respect of their most august colleagues, who tended to value hard science over dramatic flights of imagination. To casual readers, though (which most of us are, in this arcane sphere) Pogosyants' studies will seem like sheer wizardry, comparable in effect to Tal's most magical combinations. This Century of Studies is an immensely entertaining book as well as a fitting tribute to a remarkably talented artist.