Nikolai Kuzmin (also known as Karamboll)

On December 6, my friend Nikolay Vasilievitch Kuzmin (1963-2018) died.

He was an excellent analyst, a chess composer and a strong practical player.

Despite the modest title (Candidate Master), being the heir to the Soviet school, he has repeatedly defended young NM, FM, and even IM.

His favorite tactic was to drag the opponent into such unprecedented opening jungles where the theorist did not step. And there - crushed!

For many years he remained the Elshad opening paladin(1.c3, d3.Qc2,h3, g4,Bg2 and Nd2-f1-g3 for White / 1...c7, d7, Qc7,h6,g5 and Nd7-f8-g6 for Black) .

Seeing these fantastic maneuvers, opponents were surprised, angry and ... lost!
Until the last days, Nikolay was the most productive player of the Ukrainian team on chess.com.

Here is his brilliant victory in an important match against the Serbian team.

That year, Nikolay and we all became champions/ Team Ukraine is a double champion

And here is game in the qualifying stage of the Team Ukraine blitz Championship among Amators.

Next time we met him in the final of this championship. He was a true friend and gave me a kind of "odds". He warned me which openings would play on that day.

This allowed me to prepare a few surprises, and made the fight interesting. The six major games were very exciting. I showed one of them in the voting for the best game of November. We had three additional series and only the twelfth game determined the winner. My friend Nikolay forgot about time in this position ...

The whole team of Ukraine liked the player @Karamboll.

But according to the legendary, Nikolay's victory over top-GM became!

How many games, ideas and interesting surprises did our friend prepare for us?
But on December 6, his heart ached and he was gone.

Next Saturday his Ukrainian friends will gather for a blitz tournament in his honor. Many people, including GM Pavel Eljanov, will be here.

We collected Nikolai Kuzmin etudes, which he published at different times.

№1 White win

Games, etudes and good memories.
My good friend.
Nikolay.

Rest in peace...