Petko Petkow (chess composer)

Petko Andonow Petkow ( Bulgarian Петко Андонов Петков , born February 27, 1942 in Dobrich ) is a Bulgarian chess composer .

Chess journalist

After graduating from college in 1959, Petkow began studying law in Sofia . He then worked as a journalist first for the newspaper Naroden Sport , then as editor-in-chief of the magazine Schachmatna Misl . Since 1962, he has published over one hundred articles on issues of chess problem, including theoretical contributions on the topics Batteriespielzeit and transformation, facilitation , active White King, Grimshaw and Nowotny and conversion .

From 1963 he organized competitions in solving chess compositions in many Bulgarian newspapers and magazines, such as Pogled , Naroden Sport , Studentska Tribuna , Narodna Armia , Narodna mladej , Sptemwritsche , Stroitel , Nascha Rodina . Five smaller books by Petkov were published in Bulgaria, the last one in 1980 with the title Chess Composition - Selected Tasks . Mike Prcic published the monograph Petkov - Selected Compositions in 2000 .

Chess composition

In 1956, Petkow began to be interested in chess composition. From 1958 he published chess problems, which he mainly sent abroad, and by the beginning of 1960 had already created 600 problems. In total, he has composed more than 6100 tasks and won around 2400 awards, including 415 first prizes. In 1984 he received the title of Grand Master in Chess Composition . His successes include the world championship title in the self-mates (1992–1994 and 1998–2000) and fairy tale chess (1998–2000), gold medalist in the 1990 Olympic tournament (Selfmates) in Novi Sad. In 1989 Petkow was appointed International Chess Composition Referee .

Petkow has mastered all branches of chess composition. He prefers strategic topics and synthesizes various ideas in an appealing aesthetic form. In the last two decades he has mainly concentrated on the areas of self- mate , fairy-tale chess and auxiliary mate . According to the sum of the points scored in the FIDE albums (1914–1994), Petkow is currently in first place with 333½.

Petko A. Petkow
Start, 1973
1st - 2nd prize

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

White moves and wins

Solution:

1. f6 – f7! Rg3 – f3
2. b6 – b7 Bf2 – g3
3. Ng2 – f4 Nowotny Rf3xf4
4. b7 – b8D Rf3 – f2 + trigger attack
5. Kd2 – e3 Bg3xb8
6. Ke3xf2 Bb8 – a7
7. f7 – f8L wins under-transformation , because 7. f7 – f8D? not good because of Ba7xc5 + 8. Qf8xc5 stalemate

swell

• Biography on the website of StrateGems magazine ( Memento from June 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (English)

Web links

• Compositions by Petko Petkow (chess composer) on the Schwalbe's PDB server
• Schachmatna Misl, No. 8–9, 2006, p. 258ff ( Memento from August 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (Bulgarian; PDF file; 2.43 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ W. Hagemann : "Petko A. Petkow, Tolbuchin", in: Schach-Echo , No. 4, 1960, p. 63 ("who has thus become the most energetic employee of our problem part").
2. ↑ Grand master for chess compositions
3. ↑ International referees for chess compositions
4. ↑ Hannu Harkola: Handbook of chess composition, Helsinki, October 2007, p. 55 ( Memento of the original from March 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 937 kB)