Vitaly Halberstadt (20 March 1903, Odessa – 25 October 1967, Paris) was a French chess player, theorist, problemist, and a noted endgame study composer.
Born in Odessa, in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine), he emigrated to France after the Russian Civil War.
Chess games
+Chess games during Halberstadt's careerYearPlacementCompetition or locationVictor of year19251st place (shared with Abraham Baratz)Paris City Chess ChampionshipHalberstadt and Baratz19262nd placeLeon Schwartzmann5-6th placesHyèresAbraham Baratz1st place (shared with Peter Potemkine)ParisHalberstadt and Potemkine19275-7th placesParis City Chess ChampionshipAbraham Baratz192810-11th places1st-3rd places (tied with Marcel Duchamp and J.J. O'Hanlon)HyèresHalberstadt, Duchamp and O'Hanlon19308th placeParis City Chess ChampionshipJosef Cukierman19316th placeEugene Znosko-Borovsky19323rd placeOscar Blum19389thParis (L'Echiquier)Baldur Hoenlinger
Publications In 1932, Halberstadt published with Marcel Duchamp "L'Opposition et les cases conjugées sont réconciliées", a chess manual dedicated to several special end-game problems, for which Duchamp designed the layout and cover. In this book, Duchamp and Halberstadt addressed the complication of the so-called "heterodox opposition", which is a precisely organized endgame that involved two kings and a handful of pawns. This concept has established a figure of immobilized reversibility between two subjective positions and two players. Within a condition where only two kings remain, the duo described the move in the following manner:The king 'may act in such a way as to suggest he has completely lost interest in winning the game. Then the other king, if he is a true sovereign, can give the appearance of being even less interested.' Until one of them provokes the other into a blunder. Halberstadt was also the author of "Curiosités tactiques des finales" (1954).
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