Sergei Mikhailovich Kaminer

SM Kaminer (around 1928)

Sergei Michailowitsch Kaminer ( Russian Сергей Михайлович Каминер , scientific transliteration Sergej Michajlovič Kaminer ; *  1906 in Romanowo-Borissoglebsk ; † September 27, 1938 in Moscow ) was a Soviet chess player and composer of chess studies .

Life

Kaminer studied in Moscow, became an engineer and worked as a technologist in the chemical industry. Previously, at the age of 16, he won three documented games in 1924 against the later thirteen-year-old world champion Michail Botvinnik .

In the foreword to a book, Botvinnik reported about his friend:

“Kaminer was a little older than me. We met when I was 13. As soon as he saw me at the Petrograd Chess Club, he suggested that I play a three-game training match. I was so much weaker than Seryosha that I couldn't even understand why I lost all three games. He came to me on Nevsky Prospect , I to him on Sergievskaya Street. He lived with his mother and younger sister. They left us alone in a large, bright room. We dealt with chess, analyzed Serjoscha's studies. When we had to move a little, Serjoscha taught me to box, which he used to love (his shoulders were broad, his paws strong, he spared my nose and eyes).

Serjoscha went through a period of illness, so that I surpassed him after tournament successes. He did not think very highly of my chess skills. 'Why is everyone losing to you?' he asked me in astonishment when I achieved almost one hundred percent result in the semifinals of the Leningrad Championship in 1926. (...) At the age of sixteen he was already a mature and great master of composition. With his mastery, he immediately placed himself in line with such luminaries as Troitsky , the Platow brothers and L. Kubbel (there were far fewer composers then than there are now). I realized what Kaminer had achieved in the spring of 1925, when Serjoscha (in the new chess club in the Palace of Labor) showed L. Kubbel a study. Leonid Ivanovich usually solved studies in a flash, but this time he capitulated and asked the author to show the solution. The study was an original version and roughly showed the position of the study shown below after the third move (only the black king was on f3 and the pawn on g3). Kaminer held back the triumph with difficulty when he made the move g3 – g4 !! demonstrated.

Kaminer was the first known composer to grow up during the Soviet period. The living conditions of the chess composers differ significantly from the conditions of the master players in terms of supply. The latter can devote their lives to their favorite pastime, the composers cannot become professionals: chess does not provide them materially, they have to have another profession.

It was the autumn of 1937. I was playing the match for the USSR championship against lionfish in Moscow . An unexpected phone call and Serjoscha Kaminer appears in the room of the Hotel National. 'Here in the booklet', he says, 'all my studies have been completed, some of which have not yet been completed. Take them. I fear they will be lost to me. ' His premonition came true. I kept this booklet for a long time. In the 1950s I informed our composers that I had Kaminer's notebook. And now Kaminer's studies are in this book. "

At the age of thirty, Kaminer fell victim to Stalin's Great Terror . On August 17, 1938, he was arrested and accused of belonging to a counterrevolutionary terrorist organization. On September 27, 1938, he was sentenced to death by shooting by the Military Department of the Supreme Court of the USSR and shot on the same day. The grave is on the Kommunarka firing range . On July 11, 1956, Kaminer was rehabilitated by the Military Department of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

Chess composition

Kaminer was one of the cornerstones of the Soviet study composition. From 1932 to 1938 he and Somow-Nassimowitsch headed the study department of the magazine 64 . From 1924 he published 65 studies, 27 of which received awards, including 15 prize winners. He possessed a rare sense of harmony, his studies are natural and appear to be game endings. In the struggle between minor figures, he composed a number of astute works.

Sergei Michailowitsch Kaminer
Schachmaty 1925, 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 to move wins

Solution:
1. b6 – b7 Rf5 – f8
2. Nd5 – b4 + Kd3 – e4
3. Nb4 – c6 Ke4 – f4
4. g2 – g4 !! Steering 4.… Kf4xg4
5. Kh6 – g7 Rf8 – e8
6. Kg7 – f7 Re8 – h8
7. Kf7 – e7 Rh8 – g8
8. Nc6 – d8 Rg8 – g7 +
9. Nd8 – f7 Rg7 – g8
10. Nf7 – h6 + Fork
and white wins

Individual evidence

1. ^ Moscow, Kommunarka firing lists
2. ↑ Rafael Moissejewitsch Kofman: Isbrannyje etjudy S. Kaminera i M. Liburkina, Fiskultura i sport, Moscow 1981, pp. 3–4 (Russian)
3. ↑ Anatoly Jewgenjewitsch Karpow et al .: Chess - encyclopaedic dictionary, Sowjetskaja enzyklopedija, Moscow 1990, p. 417, ISBN 5-85270-005-3 (Russian)

Web links

• Training games from Botvinnik ( Memento from October 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (English; PDF ; 505 kB)
• Kaminer's compositions on the PDB server
• Wladimir Nejstadt: On the fate of the old masters of Russian chess composition (Russian)