About Genrikh Kasparyan
Genrikh Kasparyan (Surname also spelled Kasparian) (27 February 1910 – 27 December 1995) was an Armenian chess player. He is considered to have been one of the greatest composers of chess endgame studies. Kasparyan became a national master in 1936 and an international master in 1950. He was awarded the titles of International Judge of Chess Compositions in 1956 and International Grandmaster of Chess Composition in 1972, the first composer to receive this title from FIDE (Harkola 2007). Kasparyan was also a very strong chess player, winning the Armenian championship ten times (from 1934 to 1956, including two ties with future world champion Tigran Petrosian) and the Tiflis championship three times (1931, 1937, 1945). He reached the USSR Championship finals four times (1931, 1937, 1947, 1952), but never finished higher than tenth place. Kasparyan is best known for his compositions. He started with chess problems, mainly three-movers, but soon discovered that his best field was in endgame studies. He wrote several books and collections and composed about 600 studies, many on the theme of domination, winning 57 first prizes. He won the USSR Composing Championship several times (Sunnucks 1970).
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