Vitaly Halberstadt


Vitaly Halberstadt was a French chess player, theorist, tactician, problemist, and, above all, a noted endgame study composer.
Born in Odessa, in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire, he emigrated to France after the Russian Civil War.

Chess games


YearPlacementCompetition or locationVictor of year
19251st place Paris City Chess ChampionshipHalberstadt and Baratz
19262nd placeParis City Chess ChampionshipLeon Schwartzmann
19265-6th placesHyèresAbraham Baratz
19261st place ParisHalberstadt and Potemkine
19275-7th placesParis City Chess ChampionshipAbraham Baratz
192810-11th placesParis City Chess ChampionshipAbraham Baratz
19281st-3rd places HyèresHalberstadt, Duchamp and O'Hanlon
19308th placeParis City Chess ChampionshipJosef Cukierman
19316th placeParis City Chess ChampionshipEugene Znosko-Borovsky
19323rd placeParis City Chess ChampionshipOscar Blum
19389thParis 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".