Chess Composers: June 17th

Radu Drăgoescu (17-06-1914 - 07-12-1999) Romanian composer

Radu Drăgoescu
[radudragoescu.com [broken link]]

Radu Drăgoescu selfportrait
[radudragoescu.com [broken link] ]

Radu Drăgoescu was a painter and composed chess problems in all genres, with a predilection for selfmates and helpmates. He wrote many articles for "Buletin Problemistic" and for "Planeta Sah".
Valeriu Petrovici and Marian Stere published a book about Radu Drăgoescu's works ("Radu Drăgoescu", 2004) and his family had created a website in his memory [radudragoescu.com - broken link].

Drăgoescu, Radu
The British Chess Magazine, 1991
1^st Prize

10 + 13

Show Solution

Drăgoescu, Radu
Revista Română de Şah, Jan 1987

h#2

2 solutions

8 + 8

Show Solution

Every year the Romanian Chess Federation offers a "Radu Drăgoescu" trophy, which is a painting by Radu Drăgoescu offered by his daughter Şerbana Drăgoescu.
Below a painting by Radu Drăgoescu which was recently auctioned in Bucharest:

Faleza la 2 mai - by Radu Drăgoescu
[Artmark.ro]

Андрей Яковлевич Лобусов (17-06-1951 - 13-07-2010) Russian composer and Grandmaster (Andrey Yakovlevich Lobusov)

Andrey Lobusov
[popovgl.narod.ru]

Andrey Lobusov published his first chess problem at the age of 11, in 1962. From then on, he composed high quality problems, mainly two- and threemovers, but also some moremovers.
He wrote many articles as well as the manuscript of a book from which was selected the article published on Andrey Selivanov's website in 2010.

Let's show 3 problems in 2, 3 and 4 moves in order to realize how talented he was:

Лобусов, Андрей Яковлевич
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
1^st Prize

9 + 10

Show Solution

Лобусов, Андрей Яковлевич
Шахматы в СССР 1990
1^st Prize

10 + 10

Show Solution

Лобусов, Андрей Яковлевич
Rudenko JT, 1988
2^nd Prize

9 + 8

Show Solution

Andrew G. Buchanan (17-06-1959) British (Scottish) composer

Andrew Buchanan, 2008

Andrew Buchanan himself writes it on his website: "I love designing retrograde analysis chess problems." About this love, its history and its manifestations you can read here.

In 2000 Andrew "stumbled across the curious idea that became 'Dead Reckoning'" and developed it further. Many problems and explanations are included on his website and make it a worthwhile read. The Dead Reckoning idea is based on article A 1.3 of the FIDE Laws of Chess, which states: "if the position is such that neither player can possibly checkmate, the game is drawn."

The article published by Ronald Turnbull about Dead Reckoning in pages 140-141 of The Problemist, July 2001 can be read here ; Andrew's tutorial here and Andrew's article in StrateGems 16, Oct-Dec 2001 here.

Let's see one of Andrew's Dead Reckoning problems:

Buchanan, Andrew
StrateGems, 2001