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Monday, September 10, 2018

An Endgame Lesson by Flohr

     I did a post a few years back on how Nottingham 1936 by Alekhine is one of my favorite chess books and many instructive games were played there. One such game was Flohr – Vidmar. 
     During the mid-1930’s Flohr was one of the world's strongest players and a leading contender for the World Championship and in 1937 FIDE nominated him as the official candidate to play Alekhine for the World Championship, but with World War II looming, Flohr couldn't raise the money. In 1938 he played in the AVRO tournament where he finished last and that put an end to his world championship hopes. Flohr went from being a brilliant and dangerous attacking player to a pacifist that was content to take a quick draw. 
     Writing in The Bobby Fischer I Knew, Arnold Denker devoted a chapter to how he was approached by a pharmacist named Koback in 1946 who showed him news clippings, maps, etc. to “prove” his story that Koback's family had collected millions in gold and jewels by smuggling the rich out of Russia and claimed the Russians were willing to make a deal for hard cash. Denker could keep half if he acted as a go-between during his trip to Groningen that year. Flohr was to be Denker's contact. 
     From the Groningen tournament Denker went to Moscow for the USA vs. Russia match where he discussed the matter with Flohr and made arrangements for Flohr to contact him when the money was ready. Eventually a telegram arrived from Flohr claiming there was no gold and jewels, so Denker duly informed Koback and that was the end of it. 
     Years later Denker discovered Flohr was divorced and living with a much younger woman. The two were living pretty high on the hog and traveling back and forth between Moscow and Prague. Suspicious of how they could afford such a life style, in the early 1980s Denker went to Moscow to visit Flohr and was met at the airport by a younger women who claimed she was Flohr's second wife. 
     On the way to meet Flohr she informed Denker that he had suffered a stroke and when Denker saw him, Flohr was nearly unrecognizable. The woman claimed to be Koback's daughter. Her story was that after Denker delivered the bad news to Old Man Koback that there wasn't any gold and jewels, he had sent her to Moscow where she met Flohr and the ended up getting married. 
     She explained to Denker that they had gotten the money to live so well from Flohr's father, who had been one of the richest men in Czechoslovakia. After returning home Denker learned that Flohr had seemingly made a remarkable recovery and had moved to Prague. Then when Flohr died in 1983, Denker read in a Russsian chess magazine that Flohr had been an orphan and the only home he had ever had as a child was in an orphanage. Denker's point seemed to have been that Flohr had cheated him out of millions by recovering Koback's gold and jewels then lying about it. Do you believe Denker's story?! 

    Dr. Milan Vidmar (June 22, 1885 – October 9, 1962) was a Slovene electrical engineer (ee was a specialist in power transformers and transmission of electricity), GM, theorist, arbiter, philosopher and writer who was among the top dozen chess players in the world from 1910 to 1930. As an arbiter, he was chief referee for the 1948 World Chess Championship in The Hague/Moscow. 
     I first saw the following ending in Peter Griffiths' The Ending in Modern Theory and Practice and it has appeared in endgame books by both Dvoretsky and Levenfish and Smyslov as an example of weak Ps and weak squares and related piece activity. 
     In the following game Flohr demonstrates how the more active R wins against an inferior P-structure. Vidmar's R becomes rather than being active. Observation by the authors include: 

Dvoretsky - The Rook's activity is the main principle for evaluation and practical play in R and P endgames. It can take various forms: attacking the enemy's Ps, supporting its own passed Ps, cutting the opponent's K off or attacking the K. Also, in some cases the R must be used for defense. 

Griffiths – He discusses how weak square are also closely related to weak Ps inasmuch as the squares in front of an isolated or backward P is usually at least as vulnerable as the P itself. And, the square in front of the P becomes an excellent maneuvering point. 

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