Person of day   -  14 MARCH 2024

ALEXEY TROITSKY

ALEXEY TROITSKY

It is difficult to imagine a chess player who doesn’t know the name of Troitsky and who never solved his wonderful chess problems and studies. Troitsky’s works on chess are equivalent to Cherney’s musical compositions, which everyone must pass if they are to become a true musician. The creations of chess composer Troitsky reveal the music of chess and enable one to understand their depth and beauty.

Alexey Alexeyevich published his first puzzle in 1893 as a student of St Petersburg’s forestry institute. The first study came two years later. For about 20 years, he worked as a forester and composed studies: he published 800 compositions in total, including 750 studies.

It was Troitsky who put forward and encapsulated in art from the more relevant ideas for studies, such as themes concerning catching pieces, positional draws of different types and combinations for mate and stalemate. Their conception predestined the whole path of studies’ development. One can say that Troitsky conceived the main theories of the study which remain relevant to contemporary chess.

Troitsky proved that a chess composition is by no means an artificial, detached universe. On the contrary, a true composer of chess studies often takes ideas from grandmasters’ matches, who in turn use the original conceptions of composers.

Troitsky proved the vitality of his ideas by his fundamental analysis of endgame positions that had important practical implications. It is sufficient to cite his Two Knights Endgame, published in “Deutschezeitung” in 1906. Troitsky was the first chess composer to be awarded the title of recognised artist of the RSFSR in 1928. 

Alexey Alexeyevich Troitsky died during the blockade of Leningrad in 1942.