Igor Botvinnik, an International Arbiter, was Mikhail Botvinnik’s nephew. He was a mathematician who dedicated his whole life to chess. In 1985 he graduated from the High School of Coaching and worked with children, opening a school for them that was named after his uncle. He passed away in Moscow at the age of 61 in 2011.
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| Igor Botvinnik |
Of course, the World Championship in March was the big chess news of the year, but there were other important things happening around the chess world in 1951. The USCF published its first rating list and Fine (2817), Reshevsky (2770), Kevitz (2610), Dake (2598), Simonson (2596), Reinfeld (2593), Denker (2575) and Kashdan (2574) topped the list.
There was also another World Championship match held in June in Birmingham, England; it was for the Junior title. The Soviets and other East European countries didn’t participate, so Borislav Ivkov of Yugoslavia finished a full point and a half ahead of Malcolm Barker of England. Barker won the British Under-18 title in 1949, 1950 and 1951 then quit chess in the mid-1950s.
In July, Birmingham was also the venue for the FIDE and the BCF's celebration of the first tournament ever, London 1851. Gligoric won ahead of Pirc, Stahlberg and Trifunovic. In August, in Swansea, Ernst Klein won the British Championship. In September, the European Zonal at Marianske Lazne was won by Pachman who was undefeated. 19-year old Larry Evans won both the U.S. Open and the U.S. Championship.
In November, Najdorf won the championship of Argentina (again). The former Lithuanian master Vaitonis won the Canadian championship. In December, Keres won the USSR Championship and Zonal tournament ahead of Petrosian.
To continue...on the 16th of March, 1951 in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow the match began and it was to be one of the most controversial matches until, perhaps, more recent times. Was Bronstein forced to lose? The real answer will probably never be known.
The Chief Arbiter was was IM Karel Opocensky of Czechoslovakia and GM Gideon Stahlbeg of Sweden was the Controller. Botvinnik's second was GM Vyacheslan Ragozin and Bronstein's was Alexander Konstantinopolsky.
Virtually unknown outside of the Soviet Union, Konstantinopolsky (1910-1990) was an IM who won the first Soviet Correspondence Championship in 1951 and was five-times the champion of Kiev. He was awarded the IM title in 1950 and the correspondence IM title in 1966. In 1983 the Soviet chess federation conferred the title of Honorary Grandmaster on him. He is best remembered as a trainer of young players in Kiev at the Palace of Young Pioneers during the 1930s, including David Bronstein with whom he was a close friend. He was one of the Ukrainian pioneers who developed the K-Indian Defense and was an early advocate of the Dutch Defense before Botvinnik popularized it.
The match was interesting because of the two different styles and approaches to chess. Bronstein was a dynamic player who was at home in tactical situations whereas Botvinnik was a “scientific” positional player who was uncomfortable when things got out of hand. Besides the 11th game, game 17 (given below) was a tension filled and imperfect affair in which the 40-year old Botvinnik was unrecognizable.
After the 22nd game left Bronstein leading by a point it looked like he was going to win the match. But then came the 23rd game in which Botvinnik played one of his best games of the match. After Botvinnik's 57th move, Bronstein thought for 40 minutes and resigned. Bronstein still had a chance; he just had to win the 24th game, but after 22 moves it was clear there were no winning chances, so he accepted Botvinnik's draw offer. The match was tied at 12-12, and Botvinnik retained his World Championship.
While on the subject of Bronstein, if you're looking for a 5-star rated chess book, then I highly recommend The Sorcerer's Apprentice. There are no boring reams of technical analysis; instead the artist Bronstein talks about the moves in a way that's clear and to the point.
Botvinnik didn't take Bronstein seriously as indicated in the red notebook he kept on him. Some of his comments on Bronstein and other players are given in the appendix of Igor's book.
In The Rise and Fall of David Bronstein by Genna Sosonko he says Botvinnik thought Bronstein was “neurotic and probably plagued by obsessive thoughts, but hard-working.”
I always thought of Bronstein as a good-natured, likable fellow, but Sosonko dispelled that image when he presents the man in an entirely different light.
Years ago, when Bronstein visited the Atlanta Chess Center owner Thad Rogers said some pretty nasty things about Bronstein; Sosonko tells us why.
Sosonko knew Bronstein and had a lot of conversations with him and says Bronstein told him, “I don’t like any of my books. The one they all praise, the Zurich book, it’s stupid. I didn’t actually write it….I only provided the variations and analysis."
Supposedly Bronstein's 1950 play-off candidates match with Boleslavsky consisted of games that both players had composed beforehand.
His constant referring to his loss to Botvinnik, his complaint that modern GMs are "little squirts" who want to be treated like celebrities, his belief that the FIDE should be abolished, his griping that Vladimir Nabokov (novelist, poet, translator, entomologist and chess composer) thought he was highly intelligent because he could compose a chess problem and his acetic comments about other players all made him a crotchety old man and a chronic complainer that most people preferred to avoid to the point that some organizers didn't want him in their tournaments.
Author Tom Furstenberg referred to him as “a slightly unhinged person.” One reviewer called Sosokno's book “a nasty and unpleasant work. Reading it left me feeling dirty.” Personally, I enjoyed the book because it gives you an insight into Bronstein the man, not the chess player.
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