Descripción

Two Bishops Save the Day: A World Champion’s Favorite Studies Sergei Tkachenko, a member of the Ukrainian team that won the 5th World Chess Composition Tournament in 1997 and which came second in 2000, 2004, 2013, and 2017, has collected 100 studies whose common theme is that white ends up with just two bishops in the finale, yet manages to win or draw.
There are no more than six moves in almost all solutions, so experienced chess players can analyze the positions directly from the diagrams.

Two Bishops Save the Day

Newbies to chess problems will also find analyzing these studies useful. The diverse set of tactical ideas involving two bishops in the finale will enable them to gain a deeper understanding of how the bishop pair combines.

A World Champion’s Favorite Studies

Some of these studies are classics from bygone ages. Others were originally published in the Soviet Union or ex-Soviet countries.
This is the ninth book in the World Champion’s Favorite Studies series by Sergei Tkachenko to be published by Elk and Ruby Publishing House.

A Pair of Long-Range Snipers

It’s no secret that two bishops possess tremendous power, since they’re able to control a lot of squares at once. Chess glossaries even have an entry on the “bishop pair advantage”. A chess player who has this advantage usually attempts to open diagonals and break down the opposing king’s position. However, the bishop pair becomes especially strong in the endgame, when there are few pieces on the board. There are cases when even the formidable queen cannot break through the defenses of a bishop pair. Diagram I shows one of them.

Author

Sergei Tkachenko (born in 1963, near Odessa, Ukraine) is a member of the Ukrainian team that won the 5th World Chess Composition Tournament in 1997 and which came second in 2000, 2004, 2013, and 2017. He has won the studies section of the Ukrainian Chess Composition Championship six times and has won prizes, many of them for first place, in over 100 international chess composition tournaments.

Sergei coaches the Ukrainian chess composition team. He is also the press secretary of the Chess Composition Committee of the Ukrainian Chess Federation. Sergei is an award-winning author who has written 17 chess books in English published by Elk and Ruby, including compositions and on historical themes. He is deputy chief editor of a Ukrainian chess composition magazine called Problemist of Ukraine and has a regular studies column on the ChessPro website. Sergei is a member of the Ukrainian Union of Journalists. He is a historian and archivist, as well as being a mechanical engineering graduate.

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