Selection of studies composed by

Yochanan Afek

(or Jochanan Kopelovic)

 

(Israel, 16.4.1950 Netherlands)

He is Grandmaster of the FIDE for chess composition since 2015.

He is International Master of the FIDE for chess composition since 1989.

He is International Judge of the FIDE for chess compositions since 1988.

He is o.t.b. International Master as well.

Yochanan Afek and David Gurgenidze.

Some articles and websites about him.

1) From Wikipedia.

Yochanan Afek (born 16 April 1952 in Tel Aviv) is an Israeli chess player, composer, trainer and arbiter. He described pioneering Israeli master Moshe Czerniak as "my teacher". He is the only person to possess international titles at four different facets of chess, being an International Master, International Grandmaster of chess composition (one of only seven living title-holders),[1] International Arbiter, and International Arbiter of the chess compositions. In 2002 he won Paris City Chess Championship (off contest).[2]

The second chapter of Tibor Karolyi's 2009 book Genius in the Background is devoted to him.

2) From WikiQuote.

Going through Yochanan's studies I got the impression that he is like a music composer who creates many lovely songs with charming melodies, but rarely composes operas.

3) At Twitter.

International master & International Arbiter for chess & chess composition. Professional (since 1967) chess trainer, writer,organizer and ... EG study composer.

4) A study at the Dutch Schaakbond.nl

5) A Dutch article about him on schaaksite.nl by David Klein.

6) Article about his GM title on Composing with studies.

7) His own website afekchess.com with many studies.

Interesting article about Prize winners as an PDF.

8) With a break of 2 years he has edited in the bi-montly magazine The Problemist since 2003. 

He publishes endgame study originals and news about it.

The Selected studies column is edited by John Nunn who also acts as the judge of the  2018-2019 tourney.

The link to the official website of the magazine is: http://www.theproblemist.org/                    

Yochanan has written 6 nice books in which many endgamestudies are used to explain the secrets of the 6 chess-men.

They are written in Dutch.

 

The book has 144 pages in 16 chapters with the following tactical themes:

Fork, Battery Play, Pinning and Unpinning, The Skewer,

Deflection and Decoy, Trapping a Piece, Removing a Guard,

Line-Opening and Line Closing, Back-Rank Weakness, Pawn Promotion, Zwischenzug,

Devious Draws: Perpetual Check, Devious Draws: Stalemate, The Ultimate Goal: Mate, Combined Motifs.

Each Chapter has game-examples played by worldchampions

and about 20 diagrams with exercises where a question or hint is given.

The solutions are explained very clearly.

Besides all over the board examples (a bit more than a half of the total exercises)

are from world champions practice (men and women).

The rest are of players and solvers friendly endgame studies.

The book is recommended because many of the examples

and exercises are taken from beautiful endgame studies !

(All his studies, more exact dates, possible corrections or cooks and exact details about sources can be found in the

Harold van der Heijden database V (31-12-2015) ).

8) Here a few studies to replay. He has made many more:

More studies can be replayed of this composer at this page:

Yochanan Afek studies page-2

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