Pavel Pavlovich Bobrov

Pavel Pavlovich Bobrov (1862–1911) – Russian chess and checkers journalist, chess composer, publicist, theoretician.

Born on August 29, 1862 in Ryazan. Nobleman, official of the Ministry of Finance.

Together with his wife's brother D. Sargin, then independently (1901–1904, 1909–1910), he published the magazine "Chess Review" (in 1891 it was called "Checkers") – one of the best chess magazines of the time. As an appendix to it, for the first time in Russia, three literary collections were published: “Moscow Chess Almanac” ( 1894 ), “Chess Evenings” ( 1901 ), “Black King” ( 1903 ), where Bobrov was the editor and the author of a number of important articles and essays about A. Solovtsov , G. Pillsbury and other chess players.

He headed chess sections in a number of magazines, including the Moscow Illustrated Newspaper, the magazines Family, Okhotnik and Rainbow (1883–1888); in the pages of “Rainbow” he held for the first time in Russia a competition for writing two-move problems , in which he himself acted as a judge.

He was the secretary of the Moscow Chess Circle, one of the initiators of the All-Russian chess tournaments, the rematch between E. Lasker and W. Steinitz (1896-1897) , an invitation to M. Chigorin , G. Pillsbury, G . Marko and others on tour in Moscow . He contributed to the promotion of many talented chess players (for example, A. Goncharov ).

As a checkers theoretician, he is known for developing a number of normal endgames and opening schemes; one of them bears his name: “Borov's game”. Participant and one of the organizers of the first checkers tournament in Russia (summer 1884 at the dacha of V. Erdeli near Orel ).

In 1891, Bobrov, together with ten fans of checkers, took part in a correspondence tournament organized by him in the magazine “Checkers” – the second tournament in correspondence play in Russia.

Together with P. Bodyansky, Bobrov took an active part in organizing and holding all four All-Russian checkers tournaments; for the first tournament he provided premises - the hall of the Moscow Savings Bank, where he served as director.

He died on December 23, 1911 in Moscow.

His wife is children's writer Anastasia Ivanovna, née Sargina (she wrote under the pseudonym A. Galagan). Their son Sergei Pavlovich Bobrov (1889-1971) is a futurist poet, prose writer, literary critic, verse theorist, artist, publisher and mathematician.

Source: ru.wikipedia.org