Михаил Николаевич Клинков родился 27 декабря 1934 года, жил в Запорожье.
Он активно составлял с 1963 по 1972 годы, публикуя примерно десяток этюдов ежегодно. В итоге, со 112 этюдами в последней базе М.Клинков занимает 203 место в списке самых продуктивных композиторов. В Альбомы отобрано пять его этюдов (два совместные), но они точно не главные творческие достижения автора.
Находка C с жертвой ладьи и правильным матом конем могла бы стать визитной карточкой запорожского этюдиста, но его подвела техника. Ради кое-какого вступления он запачкал оригинальный финал. Спустя годы более мастеровитые коллеги показали, как почистить позицию от лишних пешек: глупую парочку с3 и с4 смахнуть с таким же отвращением, словно смахиваете с себя тарантула; потом сдвинуть позицию вниз, чтобы переставить коня g6 на d9, где он тоже воздействует на поля e7 и f8, но не угрожает матом с f4, и услуги пешки g5 больше не нужны.
В этюде D Н.Кралин привел все фигуры на свои финальные места с ловкостью фокусника. Игра понятная, вариантов мало. Кажется, что лучше не бывает.
Но если бы автор ценил финальную находку еще сильнее, и корпел над ней не жалея сил и времени, то шахматные боги наградили бы его шедевром E. Изобретательная неуступчивая игра сторон с использованием тактики в атаке и в защите – верный признак высочайшего уровня мастерства. На своем сленге композиторы ее уважительно называют "шахматами".
Великолепная семерка этюдов М.Клинкова в пяти случаях потребовала моего вмешательства, чтобы исправить или улучшить его находки.
Этюд №1 заканчивается эффектной ничьей, где защита от угрозы мата чередуется с перекрытием Новотного. В ложном следе этюда №2 черные спасаются позиционной ничьей или правильным патом, а в решении белые жертвуют три фигуры, позорят ферзя и матуют последней пешкой. Уникальная последовательная доминация коня над слоном ставит №3 в один рад с классическими шедеврами композиции. №4 порадует любителей четких решений и необычных финалов. М.Клинков составил несколько этюдов с известным патом после линейного выигрыша белого ферзя. Но из уймы подобных этюдов его №5 выделяется двухходовым сбросом коня и двумя предварительными планами. В №6 белые вечно защищаются от угроз мата. Черная ладья играет замечательно, поэтому Клинков пытался исполнить ее удивительный маневр в этюде на выигрыш. Отчаявшись, он позвал на помощь А.П.Кузнецова, но их совместные этюды также не выдержали теста на корректность. Маневр состоялся только в №7.
Статья "Находки Клинкова" в PDF.
Whose Babson is in the latest EG?
🙂
0 points for guessing the composer.
He’s an alien. Humans can’t achieve the Babson in a study.
Gady is the greatest!
You still have a chance to prove that you are an alien too, since the starting position is illegal. Get to work.
I vaguely remember somebody showed me the Babson study on my planet.
Thanks for this very interesting article about a composer I did not know!
Gady’s Babson is an impressive technical achievement, but it fails to speak to me emotionally. I simply think that this has nothing to do with chess and that it is a theme for direct mates, or perhaps selfmates.
Seems like a very narrow definition of chess.
In our slang “chess” stands for an “inventive unyielding battle of the both sides” (source “Klinkov’s finds”). Study D is “flow”, study E is “chess”.
Fortunately, chess has many ambitious themes and ideas and only a few Jans who don’t care. 🙂
Hehehe. I do care for some ambitious themes in studies, but not for all.
How can this not speak to you emotionally?
I’m curious about this.
Gady’s effort is something like climbing the K2 in winter, alone, and due to technical issues, being forced to stop 10 meters before the top.
And then trying again to reach that top for 13 years, but always failing.
This is an epic story!
Babson Task in a study is probably the most difficult theme in chess at all, something like a Riemann hypothesis of chess, Anyone will succeed will write history of chess composition and Gady arrived so close that it’s very unlikely that this task is really impossible to achieve.
Isn’t all this exciting? 🙂
Of course, showing the Babson task in a study is an outstanding intellectual achievement. It is, as you say, as complicated as climbing the K2 in winter, alone and without oxygen bottles. Nobody will deny this.
In my opinion, not every outstanding intellectual achievement is an equally outstanding artistic achievement. For me, Gady’s study Babson is like Drumare’s mate in 5 Babson from 1980: yes, it shows the theme, but the ugliness of the position and the absence of meaningful make it an unsatisfactory implementation. And therefore I have the same reaction to it as direct mate composers (including Drumare himself) had to Drumare’s 1980 problem. It is notable that it can be shown at all, but it remains monstrous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babson_task
Given Gady’s prowess as a composer, I doubt that there is a Yarosh who will show the a satisfactory study Babson anytime soon. For me, this would mean a minimum of meaningful play and a more open position. As long as nobody shows that this is possible, I think we should just work on other themes that suit the study genre more.
On a more optimistic note, Drumare said the same about the Babson theme in direct mates in the early 1980s and it took not long until Yarosh’s problem refuted his pessimistic prediction. Perhaps one of you can do the same?
All what Jan writes rings true to me, except the part about looking for other themes.
Study composition is primarily but not only about beauty, harmony and the well-fought battle between White and Black. We should be in the business of expanding chess, not setting its boundaries.
Of course, the Babson is exceptionally random and far-removed from the game of chess as fought by Carlsen and Gukesh. We owe a lot to the practical game, but we also share a large common ground with the problemists, who are constantly expanding the map in addition to digging deeper in the land they’ve already conquered. The land of studies is much smaller and rarely expanded, but when it is, it is time to rejoice.
By the way, I would give Gadys study 0 points for the Album (I know he doesn’t care about this). We cannot allow illegality. Like Joose Noori wrote on Facebook, would we allow Ba1, Pb2 as well? Perhaps it will be appreciated in the fairy section of the album, until the next Yarosh comes along and puts it in its just place.
Ba1 + Pb2 is Chess 960. It is more chess than any chess problem.
Costeff is an explorer. Sprenger is a chained dog in the backyard of the chess study.
Serhiy, I agree with you about the Babson.
It would be nice if you published the current tournaments again. Your blog is the only way to discuss this.
Blablabla. That’s the same that Adorno & Co. said about 20th century music which was not atonal, dodecaphonic and/or serial. Today this more traditional music (e.g., Hindemith, Poulenc, Elgar, Prokofiev, Shostakovich) is equally often performed by orchestras, and musicologists do not consider it inferior to the avantgarde compositions of Schönberg, Boulez, etc. Style is not associated with quality or significance.
That being said, there is one notable difference: Adorno is more subtle and more entertaining when he insults composers whose style he does not like.
That’s the point. Drumare’s first attempt seems monstrous to you (and many many others, not considering that’s a problem and not a study), but I see a lot of beauty in that problem. Beauty lies in the effort made to compose it, a 20-years struggle, a lifetime job! I am perhaps more fascinated from that problem, than from the Yarosh’ ones. As Steffen correctly says, Drumare was trying to push the boundaries of composition more far than ever, that’s the main point. Hope that my philosophical point of view is clear 🙂
Obviously, I will be one of the Babson-researchers trying to achieve the impossible, the task is too attractive for me. But I’m not Gady Costeff, and also I’m not so confident in my personal luck!
The Janaury EG arrived (finally) in my postbox and so I (finally) learned that you have managed to do the impossible, Daniele! A sound and completely legal Babson without promoted pieces. Moreover, a rather elegant position given the complexity of the task.
I would not have thought that somebody would have managed so fast. But you proved me wrong. What a great achievement! Perhaps only a selfmate composer was able to achieve it.
Regarding authorship, for this specific task I would primarily apply the criteria from science, not from art. The name of a result in mathematics and other sciences is connected with whoever takes the last step toward establishing it. Here, the result is the existence proof that it a Babson is possible in a study, in a legal position without promoted pieces. The fact that Gady Costeff failed for a long period to make this last step suggests that it was an extremely hard one.
Of course, Gady’s work was essential for Daniele getting to the final post. Similarly, there would not have been relativity theory without Minkowski’s ingenious mathematical work that Einstein built on. Here and there, we stand on the shoulders of giants and thus, we see more than them.
My doubt was on the fact that the matrix is intellectual property of Gady, as obvious.
The mechanism of differentiation of Q,R and N promotion is practically identical.
Only the Bishop variation shows a real improvement with an extremely subtle thematic try that make the Knight promotion fail.
Therefore, some composers consider this something in-between a version and an original.
I think the formula I chose to credit Gady on EG is correct. Original, yes, but with big credits.