Sergey Mikhailovich Ivanovitsj Kaminer (Russia, * 02.06.1906 - † 27.09.1938)

Strong chessplayer and famous endgame study composer

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

Sergei Kaminer's chess studies are among the best in chess literature today. 

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 thirteen-year-old eventual world champion Mikhail 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 practice match. I was so much weaker than Seryozha that I didn't even understand why I lost all three games. He came to me on Nevsky Prospect, I came to him on Sergievskaya Street. He lived with his mother and younger sister. They left us alone in a large, bright room. We studied chess, analyzed Seryozha's studies. When we needed to move around a bit, Seryozha taught me to box, which he used to be fond of (his shoulders were broad, his paws strong, he spared my nose and eyes).
Serjoscha was going through a period of illness, so I surpassed him after winning tournaments. He didn't have a high opinion of my chess skills. 'Why does everyone lose to you?' he asked me in astonishment when I achieved an almost 100% result in the semi-finals of the Leningrad Championship in 1926. (...) At the age of sixteen he was already a mature and great master of composition. His mastery immediately placed him on a par with such luminaries as Troitsky, the Platov brothers and L. Kubbel (there were far fewer composers then than there are today). I understood what Kaminer had achieved in the spring of 1925, when Serjoscha (in the new chess club in the Palace of Work) 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 showed approximately the position of the study shown below after the third move (except that the black king was on f3 and the pawn was on g3). Kaminer barely held back his triumph when he played the move g3–g4!! demonstrated.
Kaminer was the first well-known composer to come of age in the Soviet period. The living conditions of chess composers differ significantly from those of master players. The latter can devote their lives to their favorite activity, the composers cannot become professionals: chess does not provide them materially, they have to have another profession.
It was autumn 1937. I played the match for the USSR championship against Löwenfisch in Moscow. An unexpected phone call and Serjoscha Kaminer appears in the room at the Hotel National. 'Here in the notebook,' he says, 'are all my studies, some of which have not yet been fully completed. Take her. I fear they will be lost to me.’ His premonition came true. I kept this booklet for a long time. In the 1950s I notified 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 counter-revolutionary terrorist organization. On September 27, 1938, he was sentenced to death by firing squad by the Military Department of the Supreme Court of the USSR and was shot on the same day. The grave is located at the Kommunarka firing range. On July 11, 1956, Kaminer was rehabilitated by the Military Department of the USSR Supreme Court.

Chess composition
Kaminer was one of the cornerstones of Soviet endgame study composition. From 1932 to 1938 he headed the endgame studies department of the magazine 64 together with Somov-Nassimowitsch. From 1924 he published 65 chess studies, 27 of which received awards, including 15 prize winners. He possessed a rare sense of harmony, his chess studies are natural and seem to be endgames from games. In the battle between minor characters, he composed a series of astute works.

Individual evidence
  Moscow, Kommunarka shooting lists
  Rafael Moisejewitsch Kofman: Isbrannyje etjudy S. Kaminera i M. Liburkina, Fiskultura i sport, Moscow 1981, pp. 3–4 (Russian)
  Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov and others: Chess - encyclopedic dictionary, Sovietskaya enzyklopedija, Moscow 1990, p. 417, ISBN 5-85270-005-3 (Russian)
Web links
Botvinnik's training games (Memento from October 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive) (English; PDF; 505 kB)
Kaminer's compositions on the PDB server
Vladimir Nejstadt: About the fate of the old masters of Russian chess composition (Russian)

Source: Germain Wikipedia

Others: 3 endgame studies composed by him are selected on Website ARVES (editor Peter Boll)

Further link; Website chessgames.com. 3 chess games of Kaminer are reported