Виталий Семёнович Коваленко (23-05-1947 - 05-03-2014)

Russian composer and International Master (Vitaly Semenovich Kovalenko)

Vitaly Semenovich Kovalenko was a composer of miniature direct mates and endgames.

Memories

"The endgame study art has suffered an irreplaceable loss: the famous Russian chess composer Vitaly Kovalenko has died after a sudden heart attack in the seaside town Bolshoi Kamen (Far East region of Russia). For me to speak about him today in the past tense is incredibly hard, not only because he was my friend; for nearly half a century Vitaly and I were bound by our common passion: chess poetry. We first met in 1965 when we were barely 18. Here is how he recalled our adolescent time in his last manuscript, dedicated to our collaboration, which he sent me by e-mail only a fortnight before he died: “We were still very green and had only learned the basics of chess composition. Communication over the board helped us in acquiring much-needed experience… We could spend all night long thoroughly examining our favourite studies, analysing the most puzzling lines of these works and, of course, preparing and designing new ones”. Yes, all was well. It is fair to say that, in general, in our cooperation I was the one who was truly green. We became enthusiastic about composition almost at the same time when we participated in solving events, and then, thanks to the collection of A. Gurvich, we discovered the wonderful world of the endgame study. However, Vitaly had already expressed himself as an artist and was ready to create serious chess paintings."

By Yuri Bazlov

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The Pawn Endings of Vitaly Kovalenko By Yochanan Afek 

"With the death of IM Vitaly Semenovich Kovalenko (23v1947- 5iii2014) the art of the endgame study lost another fine composer of the old classical school. He lived in the remote city of Vladivostok thus it was for us a rare and pleasant opportunity to meet him during the 51st annual composition congress in Jurmala (Latvia) in 2008. He composed more than 500 player friendly studies (he also composed direct mate problems) and these were published all over the world, starting from 1963 until his last days; he was awarded with a number of prizes and other distinctions. Occasionally he worked together with other composers and his life-long cooperation with his celebrated hometown mate Yuri Bazlov was particularly successful, resulting in some 50 quality co-productions. In 2007 he was awarded the title of International Master for Chess Composition, a well-deserved recognition for a rich 50-year career. His studies display a wide range of attractive ideas employing a large number of themes and motifs. Nevertheless, during his long career he always had a soft spot for pawn endings. Vitaly Semenovich used various motifs of the pawn ending, such as tempo-play, opposition, excelsior and under-promotion, to name just a few. Nevertheless, I have been personally more interested in those pawn studies that manage to double a basic element in two main variations on different files, ranks or diagonals. Even if they are sometimes not particularly beautiful, I still find them attractive when they create a kind of harmonious echo or, even better, as an echo chameleon. On top of their artistic merits there are also more prosaic reasons to make them special: no matter how simple they are, they hardly ever appear in over the board practice. However, this is just healthy jealousy on the pat of someone who fails to create such wonders himself "

By Yochanan Afek