Nikalai (Nikolay) Dmitrievich Grigoriev

Chess player, chess composer

He is one of the greatest study composers of all time.

Nikalai (Nikolay) Dmitrievich Grigoriev (Russian: Никола́й Дми́триевич Григо́рьев) was a Russian chess player and a composer of endgame studies. He was born on August 14, 1895 in Moscow, and he died there in 1938.

His father was a professional musician in the Bolshoi Theater orchestra. At the relatively late age of eighteen, Grigoriev joined the Moscow chess club and played in the Moscow tournament of 1915. There, one of his opponents was the future world champion Alexander Alekhine against whom he lost but later maintained friendly relations.

In 1917, he was drafted into the Imperial Russian army in the First World War and was sent to the front. He was wounded and returned severely ill.

In early October 1937, Grigoriev returned from a trip to the Far East and Siberia, where he gave lectures and played. The NKVD militia on the train arrested him. Grigoriev was frail; he lost consciousness immediately after the use of force, and his throat began to constantly bleed. After an interrogation, the interrogators had to wash down the room. An unexpected illness then confined him to bed. Severe complications required immediate surgery. He was severely weakened and died of lung cancer.

Playing career
Grigoriev was Moscow Champion four times: in 1921, 1922, 1923–24 and 1929. His playing career spanned from 1910 to 1929. He lost games to Alexander Alekhine (1915 and 1919) and Mikhail Botvinnik (1927); both would later become chess world champions.

In the 1920 USSR Chess Championship (Moscow 4–24 October 1920) Grigoriev took 5-7th place (8 wins, 6 losses, and only one draw), despite undertaking extensive and difficult organizational duties including finding scare food rations for the participants.

Before his departure from Russia in 1921, Alekhine played a match with Grigoriev of 7 games resulting in 2 wins and 5 draws in favor of Alekhine. Analyzing the match, Levenfish said: "In some of the games only exceptional ingenuity saved Alekhine from destruction."

Grigoriev competed in various internal Soviet tournaments. His tournament victories included: the Third Chess Championship of the Trade Unions 1928 and he shared the 1-2nd places with Peter Romanovsky in the international Workers' Congress in Leningrad.

Grigoriev became better known, however, as a chess organizer and educationalist, chess journalist and chess composer of endgame studies.

Composing career
Grigoriev composed more than 300 endgame studies. He is especially noted for his prolific output of pawn endgames with only kings and pawns on the board, where he had no equal. In 1935, the French magazine La Stratégie organized a tourney for endgame studies with two pawns against one, and Grigoriev ran away with ten of the twelve awards. Players called him the "world champion in the Pawn end-game."

On Germain wikipedia is written:

Life
Grigoryev's father was a violinist and played in the Bolshoi Theater orchestra for several decades. In his childhood, Grigoriev was able to play the violin excellently and draw well. But in addition to music and painting, he was also interested in the exact sciences of mathematics and astronomy. Grigoriev's grandfather was an Armenian priest.

In 1914, Grigoryev completed his education in a Moscow high school and enrolled in the physics and mathematics faculty of Moscow University. In 1917 he was drafted to the front and had to stop his studies. After a serious illness and his recovery, he worked in various state institutions and from 1920 as a mathematics teacher in schools.

Grigoryev died in Moscow in 1938 as a result of an infection he contracted during an appendectomy for appendicitis. Alexander Herbstman attributed the death to the fact that in 1938 medical care was less sophisticated and penicillin was not yet known.

Grigoryev composed more than 300 chess studies and was particularly considered a specialist in pawn endgames.

Website ARVES: 16 endgame studies by him are shown on Website arves.org 

Source: Website ARVES