Trifunovic Trounces Aaron

    One of my favorite openings was the Torre Attack. In the Torre white develops his dark squared Bishop actively outside the Pawn chain and aims for an attack on the K-side. 

    It’s sometimes advertised as a “system” that you can play almost automatically, but that’s not true. White's strategy will depend on what type of formation black chooses. 

    The downside is that the Torre Attack doesn’t create any early Pawn tension in the center and so black has many options against it. What that means is that if you are going to play the Torre, you will have to be familiar with the correct strategy to use against any number of black setups. Nevertheless, white can often develop a very dangerous attack. 

    The Torre Attack came into being in 1925, when the young Mexican star Carlos Torre used it at the top level important international tournament in Moscow. The Torre does, however, setup allows white to develop harmoniously, has great flexibility and offers white good attacking potential. 

    In the following game you see just how effective the Torre can be. The winner was Yugoslav GM Dr. Peter Trifunovic (August 31,1910 - December 8, 1980) who was a five-time Yugoslav Champion. For many years Yugoslavia was the world's second strongest chess nation and so it is a measure of his strength that at the first and second Yugoslav Championships held 1935 in Belgrade and 1936 in Novi Sad, that Trifunovic finished third in ‘35 and second the following year. Later he won the Yugoslav championship five times (1945, 1946, 1947 (shared with Gligoric), 1952 and 1961). 

    Trifunovic played in seven Olympiads between 1935 and 1962, the most memorable being Dubrovnik 1950 where his 10-3 score earned him the board 3 gold medal. 

    He obtained a Law degree in 1933, followed by a Doctorate. He received the IM title in 1950 and the GM title in 1953. 

    Originally, in the 1930s, he had a reputation as a fierce attacker, but like Flohr, he eventually began relying on positional play and defensive technique. As a result he became a drawing master. In his drawn match with Miguel Najdorf at Opatija 1949 the score was +1 −1 =10 and at Leipzig in 1965 he drew all 15 of his games. 

    One amusing tournament took place on his US tour was in 1962. In an open tournament in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma he was expected to win, but draws with Senior Master Kenneth Smith and the Dallas Expert Robert Potter resulted in his ending up in a ten way tie for first! 

    In the following game Trifunovic played the Torre Attack and used his positional assets (control of an open file, N outposts, weak square complex, good B vs. bad B) to gain complete dominance of the position and ended the game with a surprising tactic. 

    Manuel Aaron (born December 30, 1935) was the first Indian master in the second half of the 20th century. He dominated chess in India in the 1960s to the 1980s and was the national champion of India nine times between 1959 and 1981.