Two brilliant chess players and composers

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

Grigoriev composed more than 300 endgame studies.[2] He is especially noted for his prolific output of pawn endgames with only kings and pawns on the board, where he had no equal.

Here are 30 of his sudies : http://www.jmrw.com/Chess/Grigoriev/base.htm



Hermanis Matisons (1894 – 1932), (also known as Herman Mattison), was a Latvian chess player and one of world's most highly regarded chess masters in the early 1930s. He was also a leading endgame composer. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 38.

In 1924, Matisons won the first Latvian Chess Championship tournament. Later that year he finished ahead of Euwe and Colle to win the first World Amateur Championship, which was organized in conjunction with the Paris Olympic Games. Matisons played first board for Latvia at the 1931 Chess Olympiad in Prague and defeated Rubinstein and Alekhine, who was the World Champion at that time.

Here are 25 of his studies : http://www.jmrw.com/Chess/Mattison/base.htm

The history of great chess players is so vast.  Interesting article..