Missing the Zonal by a Single Move

 

Pachman

    In the very first ever Zonal tournament ever held, Ludek Pachman missed qualifying by a single move. At the time Pachman was not a top-rated player; according to Chessmetrics he would have been rated in the mid-2500's which put in down around number 80 on the rating list. By 1959 his assigned rating had climbed to near 2700, placing him number 14 in the world. That rating was sufficient to place him in a group that included Mark Taimanov, David Bronstein, Ratmir Kholmov, Yury Averbakh, Bobby Fischer, Lev Polugaevsky, Laszlo Szabo, Miguel Najdorf and Samuel Reshevsky.
     The Zonal held in Hilversum 1947 was the first Zonal to be held under the new FIDE-run world championship cycle. In 1946, at the first post-war FIDE congress after the war, it was discussed how the world champion should be chosen as Alekhine had died under mysterious circumstances in Lisbon a few months earlier. The congress decided that the world champion would be decided by a match tournament of the six strongest players of the day: Botvinnik, Smyslov, Keres, Reshevsky, Fine and Euwe. Fine declined so the tournament was a 4-game round robin with five players. 
     At the same time a decision was made on a system of qualifying tournaments which would produce a challenger to the world champion two years after the match tournament. The flaw was that apart from the Soviet Union there was to be only one zonal tournament for all of Europe which meant that the countries with several strong players were at a disadvantage. But at least it was a better system than previously when the title holder, if he felt like it, played a match against whomever could meet his conditions. So, in a very hot July of 1947, the champions of fourteen European countries assembled for the first ever zonal tournament. The right to move on to the next stage went to the first place finisher only. Ties were to be broken by the Sonnenborn-Berger system. Later the number of qualifiers was increased.
     When Ludek Pachman arrived in Hilversum he didn't have a lot of international successes on his resume and so had nothing to lose by going for broke which he did by scoring six wins in the first 6 rounds. 
     In round seven he met O'Kelly and gained the advantage, but was unable to press home the win and had to settle for a draw. At the time nobody could know the effect this draw was to have on the final result. 
     A win in round 8 left Pachman with an impressive 7.5-0.5 score, but then he lost his next two games putting him at 7.5-2.5. He then regained his winning ways and made up ground by defeating Dr. Petar Trifunovic and Laszlo Szabo. 
     Going into the last round O'Kelly, who had been playing his usual solid game, and Pachman were tied for first with 9.5 while van Scheltinga and Trifunovic were tied for 3rd-4th a distant 2.5 points back. O'Kelly was playing a tailender, Doerner of Luxemburg, so Pachman knew he had to go all out for a win against the Bulgarian Champion Zvetkov even though he had the black pieces. It wasn't going to be easy because Zvetkov was well known for his solid play even though in this tournament he was badly out of form. And, if Pachman and O'Kelly tied, the tiebreaks favored Pachman.

Zvetkov

     Zvetkov was at the top of his game in 1956-57. Chessmetrics puts his rating in the mid-2500's, placing him in the top 100 rated players. Alexander Zvetkov (October 7, 1914 - May 29, 1990) was Bulgarian Champion in 1938, 1940, 1945, 1948, 195, and 1951. He represented Bulgaria in four Olympiads.
     As expected, O'Kelly beat Doerner, but Pachman lost to Zvetkov.

1) Albrec O'Kelly de Galway 10.5
2-3) Ludek Pachman and Petar Trifunovic 9.5
4) Theo Van Scheltinga 9.0
5-6) Laszlo Szabo and C.H.O'D. Alexander 7.5
7-8) Nicolas Rossolimo and Max Blau 6.5
9) Vincenzo Castaldi 6.0
10) Alexander Zvetkov 5.5
11) Yosef Porat 5.0
12) Kazimierz Plater 4.5
13) Charles Doerner 3.0
14) Bartholomew O'Sullivan 0.5

     Pachman included the following game against Zvetkov in two of his books: Modern Chess Strategy (published in 1963) and Decisive Games in Chess History (published in 1972). Curiously, the notes were different. 
    In Modern Chess Strategy he gave 13...Qb4 a “!” commenting that the Q was actively placed as it would lead to an exchange of Qs should white play Nd5 in reply to ...c5. In Decisive Games he gives 13...Qb4 a “?” commenting that it was not very accurate as demonstrated by white's 14.Nb4.
    In MSC he comments that white's best move was 14.g4 followed by Ng3 which initiates operations on the K-side. In DGCH it's obvious from his comment about 14.Nf4 that it was the best move.
     In MCS he discusses this 18...Re8 explaining that three moves previously it went to the d-file to counter a possible ...e5 by white. In DCGH he gives 15...Rfe8 a “?” because it soon must return to the e-file.
     He also changed his opinion of Zvetkov's 19.g4. In MCS it was given a “?” without comment. In DGCH it was given a “?!” and Pachman said that psychologically his inaccurate play induced his opponent to abandon caution and initiate an attack that was not really justified and that he should have played 19.Nf4-d5 instead.
    In both MCS and DGCH Pachman gave his 29...Ne5 a “??” which is correct.  He explained that he saw the immediate win with 29...Rxe4, but suffered an hallucination at the last moment thinking that white could successfully play 30.Bxg7. His analysis of 30.Bxg7 turned out to be inaccurate in both books.
    In my notes I have decided to ignore Pachman's comments and let Stockfish and Komodo determine the best course of action.

Foul Weather Chess

 

    Friday morning's commute will be inhibited once again...there are school closings and delays with this system. Counties near the lake will have higher amounts with 2-4″ possible.
     With the worst of the foul weather we've been having coming during the morning commute my wife has spent a few days working in her home office and I've been busy keeping the driveway and sidewalks, both ours and the elderly neighbor's, clear, it's been a good time to play some online chess. 
     My preferred site is Instant Chess. Founded in February 1999, Instant Chess is a privately held software company based in Oxford, United Kingdom. Membership is a hefty $7.99 per month, but you can play for free. The only problem with playing for free is the limitation that your games are random opponents t a random time limit, but the “norm” is 15 minutes per game which is just about right for me. The other is that upon reaching a rating of 1700 they nag you to join, but at other times I have not been allowed to continue once my rating hit that benchmark. Very confusing! 
    My solution has been either to delete cookies, but the downside of that is that cookies for site I regularly use are also deleted. My preferred method is to simply sandbag and lose a few games. Maybe that's not right, but any rating on an online site is pretty meaningless anyway, so I am not really concerned.
     If one of the random games ha a time limit of anything other than 15 minutes, I just resign or cancel the game. For the 15 minute games, opponents are random and if you get one rated over 1800 they will often cancel the game, so most opponents are somewhere around 1600. The thing is, because most of them are playing as guests, a 1600 can be anywhere from a beginner to a pretty decent player. That's OK because the games are just to while away some time. But, every once in a while a game does turn out to be pretty interesting.

Gyula Breyer at Berlin 1920

 

The venue

    In the year 1920 a long forgotten tournament was the 10-player Berlin Masters played at the Cafe Kerkau which was owned by World Billiards Champion and chess lover Hugo Kerkau. From 1921 it was the meeting place of the Berlin Chess Society. 

 Hugo Kerkau

    The Kerkau-Palast had billiard 48 tables and was famous for chess playing also. The world championship between Emanuel Lasker and Dawid Janowski took place there. The house has been demolished in 1994. In the basement a book was found which describes the legendary match between Capablanca and Lasker in 1914 which has been believed lost.
    The winner was 28-year olf Gyula Breyer of Budapest. Although Breyer suffered defeats at the hands of Tartakower and Mieses he scored 6.5-2.5 and pocketed 3,000 marks. 
    During a period between 1918 and January 1924 the German mark suffered hyperinflation which caused considerable political instability in the country. German currency was relatively stable at about 90 marks per dollar during the first half of 1921. Because the Western Front was mostly in France and Belgium, Germany came out of the war with most of its industrial infrastructure intact, but the London Ultimatum in May 1921 demanded World War I reparations in gold or foreign currency to be paid in annual installments of 2 billion gold marks, plus 26 percent of the value of Germany's exports. The first payment was made when it came due in June 1921 and it marked the beginning of an increasingly rapid devaluation of the mark, which fell in value to approximately 330 marks per dollar. Since reparations were required to be repaid in hard currency, not the rapidly depreciating paper mark, one strategy that Germany used was the mass printing of bank notes to buy foreign currency, which was then used to pay reparations. That greatly exacerbated the inflation of the paper mark.
     Bogoljubow and Tartakower tied for second and third, splitting 3,000 marks. Reti finished 4th (800 marks). Maroczy, Mieses and Tarrasch split 1,100 marks. Spielmann's last place finish was said to have been due to his reporting on the tournament and other chess related work.
     Gyula Breyer (1893-1921) is not well known today, but as a teenager in 1912 he won the Hungarian championship. In 1921 Breyer set a new blindfold chess record by playing 25 games simultaneously. He also edited Szellemi Sport, a magazine devoted to chess puzzles, and composed at least one brilliant retrograde analysis study. A highly successful and imaginative player, he wasn't satisfied with just scoring point. He was first and foremost a revolutionary in his chess thinking and was concerned with the artistic side. He died in 1921 at the age of 28 in Bratislava. He was buried in Bratislava and after exhumation in 1987, was reburied in the Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest.

     Breyer's crush of Spielmann in the following game is most instructive because it shows the value of centralized pieces.

Local Chess Player Robbed and Murdered

    William C. Wilson, a prominent member of the Franklin Chess Club, owned a bookstore and the Philadelphia Circulating Library, a private, subscription lending library. The Franklin Chess Club was at that time located on the third floor above Wilson's library. Wilson was murdered in his store on the evening of August 16, 1897.
     Wilson was born in Rutland, Massachusetts on September 11, 1842 and after graduating with honors from high school he clerked for some time in a book store in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was during that time that he learned to play chess and soon demonstrated considerable talent. He defeated two college champions and was known for his blindfold ability. 
     At the outbreak of the Civil War he was preparing to go to college, but instead elected to recruit a company which then joined up with the 104th New York Infantry. At that time he was a first lieutenant. On the first day of the battle of Gettysburg he was captured by the Confederates, but refused parole.
     Parole was a rather unique thing. The release of prisoners of war on parole actually predated the Civil War. On February 18, 1861, after Texas seceded, Major General David E. Twiggs surrendered all Union forces in the state to the Confederates. The officers and men were soon on their way north, carrying with them paroles stating that they would not serve in the field until formally exchanged. On April 14, 1861, the opening shots of the war were fired at Fort Sumter and the entire Union garrison was not only paroled to their homes, but the Confederates also provided them with transportation.
 

Deep in the bowels of Libby Prison

     After refusing parole Wilson spent 20 months in Libby Prison and Charlottesville, North Carolina where he played chess to pass the time. While at Charlottesville he escaped and walked about three hundred miles and after many adventures, made his way to Union lines and returned to duty, was wounded in the leg in battle, recovered and went on to serve on the staff of, or command, three other regiments. He emerged from the Civil War with the rank of Major.
     One of the outfits Wilson served with was the Tenth Indiana Regiment and in a letter to Brigadier General W. S. Rosecrans, Wilson's Commanding Officer describing the Battle of Rich Mountain wrote, “The officers and men under my command behaved with a great degree of coolness and courage during the entire engagement. I would call especial attention to Major William C. Wilson, who gallantly led forward the left wing, although severely wounded...”
     Wilson played no known match or tournament games, but in simuls he defeated Steinitz, Zukertort Chigorin, Blackburne, Gunsberg, Weiss and Bird. Had he devoted more time to chess no doubt he would have progressed further. It was Wilson who did most of the analysis that helped the Franklin club beat New York in a correspondence match in 1886. For several years prior to his death Wilson was vice-president of the Franklin Chess Club
     Wilson moved to Philadelphia about 1875 and started his circulating library which at the time of his death was one of the largest in the country. A circulating library was a business with the intention to profit from lending books to the public for a fee. They offered an alternative to the large number of readers who could not afford the price of new books in the nineteenth century.
     On the evening of August 16, 1897, shortly after 7pm, while working on his books in the front room on the first floor while his friends were waiting for him to show up at the club, he was brutally murdered at his desk with a hammer or other blunt instrument and the desk, cash drawer and closet were broken open and ransacked. Wilson's watch and money were taken.
     About a half an hour later a patrolman found the store gate open and the door to the store ajar. Upon investigation the policeman found closets, drawers and trunks had been broken into and the contents scattered on the floor. He also found a blood-stained hammer lying on the floor. Near the front of the store was a pool of blood with a trail of blood leading behind the showcases where the policeman found Wilson's body with his skull crushed. Wilson's face was nearly unrecognizable and his pants had been almost pulled off and the pockets had been turned inside out. There was a towel around Wilson's neck which apparently had been used to strangle him.
    Wilson was last seen alive at about 6 o'clock when he left his boarding house to return to his store. The men who killed him were evidently familiar with his habits and apparently forced an entrance to the store while he was out and waited for his return. Wilson was supposed to keep a large sum of money in the store. There were no clues as to the identity of the perpetrators.
     Enter William Harris. On the night of October 4, 1897 Harris turned himself in to Philadelphia police, claiming he was one of three men who had murdered Wilson. Harris said he accompanied two men to Wilson’s store with the object of robbing him then beat him to death. Another account indicated Harris claimed they had beaten Wilson to death with a hatchet and that Wilson’s missing watch could be found in a potato patch in New Jersey two miles south of a town named Gloucester.
     Detectives couldn’t find the watch and believed that other parts of Harris’ confession could not be corroborated. Philadelphia’s District Attorney and Director of Public Safety considered Harris not to be of sound mind and not guilty. They had also discovered that Harris' real name was John Tittemary and that was that. 
    Then in February, 1898 a fellow known as “Big Bill” Mason, who was reputed to be a well-known crook, somehow became a person of interest.  One anonymous source claimed that Mason had Wilson’s watch in his possession. 
    “Big Bill” was William Mason, described as one of the most desperate criminals in the country.  He was arrested in July 1898, along with three others: George“Red” Spencer, Thomas Reilly and Jim Coffey. Big Bill had been arrested in New York City on Monday night, July 11, 1898 and was extradited to Pennsylvania on a murder charge within four days of his arrest. Police had the serial number on Wilson's watch, but Big Bill wasn't carrying it.
     On September 7, 1898 on an unrelated charge of carrying burglar tools, Red Spencer was sentenced to nine months in the penitentiary and Thomas Reilly was given a year. 
      After that the trail goes cold and nobody knows whatever happened to Big Bill Mason because he and the Wilson murder case just vanished from newspaper accounts!  Even such a prominent researcher as John Hilbert couldn't dig up any further information.

Alekhine – Euwe Matches

 

    Everybody knows that Alekhine and Euwe played two matches for the world championship, but few realize they actually played three matches. In 1921, Alekhine left Soviet Russia and emigrated to France. In 1926, after a four-month stay in South America, he returned home in December and a week later was in The Netherlands to play an exhibition match against Euwe which had been arranged a year earlier.
     For Alekhine, he was playing for the first time with the new time control of 40 moves in 2-1/2 hours which he felt was strange. Because of the new fast time limit, Alekhine committed a lot of mistakes. Even so, he took the lead by two points then Euwe equalized but lost the last game. Alekhine squeaked by with a score of +3 -2 =5.
     Like Emanuel Lasker, who was World Champion for 27 years from 1894 to 1921, Alekhine has also been criticized for avoiding his most dangerous challengers and avoiding a rematch with Capablanca. However, Alekhine was only asking for the same conditions that Capablanca had wanted for their match: the challenger had to provide a stake of $10,000 (that's about $150,000 today). At the time though poor worldwide economic conditions made it impossible for Capa to raise the money.
     During his Easter break from his teaching duties in 1928 and the Christmas break in 1928-29, Euwe lost two matches to Bogoljubow, both by a single point. Then in 1931, he lost a match to Capablanca (=0 -2 =8). According to Wiener Schachzeitung they were playing for the right to play a title match against Alekhine. The following year Euwe defeated Spielmann and drew Flohr in matches. Remember that Flohr's playing ability peaked in the mid-1930s and he became one of the world's strongest players and a leading contender for the World Championship.
     Like Lasker, Alekhine has also been criticized for avoiding his most dangerous challengers and avoiding a rematch with Capablanca. With his old opponent, Bogoljubow, no longer a viable challenger, if he ever was one, Alekhine picked Euwe, possibly thinking he'd be an easy opponent because Euwe had lost two matches to Bogoljubow. The fact is, as Arnold Denker pointed out, as late as the 56th game between the two the score was even. 
     It was only when Alekhine won game 7 of their second match that Alekhine went ahead and their final record was 44-36 in Alekhine's favor. If Alekhine thought Euwe was going to be an easy mark, he was wrong because after 30 hard fought games, Euwe won the match. The match was close; after the 24th game the score was tied, but then Euwe won two games in row and Alekhine was only able to win one more. In the last game Euwe agreed to a draw in a winning position only because a draw was all he needed.
     In 1937 Alekhine challenged Euwe to a rematch and always a gentleman and sportsman, Euwe agreed. The match was played in the Netherlands from October to December in 1937 and this time Alekhine did not underestimate his opponent and scored an overwhelming win, winning 10, losing only 4 with 11 draws. 
    Of Alekhine's play Euwe wrote that Alekhine exhibited perfect technique and combinative talent, his conduct of the endgame was shining and he admired most how he finished the adjourned games. Euwe wrote that he had great admiration for how Alekhine created ingenious ideas and finished them in unexpected ways.
     What of Euwe's play? Alekhine himself wrote that the general chess playing public as well as the critics realize that Euwe almost never made an unsound combination even though he occasionally failed to take them into account for his opponent. Alekhine also wrote that when Euwe had the initiative in a tactical situation his calculation was impeccable. Reti probably put his finger on Euwe's weakness when he wrote that Euwe believed, perhaps a little too much, in immutable laws. Euwe may have had a dry and uninspired style, but he was a formidable opponent who was only a shade beneath Alekhine and Capablanca.
     The following game is not widely known, but Fred Reinfeld called it a titanic struggle in which Euwe successfully withstood one of Alekhine's dangerous attacks. Alekhine lost because he tried to win the game at all costs, but it demonstrates Euwe's cool and resourceful defensive play. Also, in analyzing the game with Stockfish, it discovered some endgame errors by both sides that nobody seems to have mentioned before.

Scientific Advice For Women Players

     Many conservative men have contested the claim that a woman could play a consistently good game of chess. They persistently declare that, though the play of this or that woman may be, at times, of a fair order, it is inevitably erratic and subject to those illogical aberrations which science, as exemplified in chess, most severely frowns upon. 
     Now, if there is any foundation for this charge, it is evident that the woman's game must be affected by some extraneous cause that does not influence the men, and there has been much puzzled inquiry as to what that cause can be. 
     It has remained for the Troy Times (New York) to solve the great mystery. It declares, on the authority of a great scientist (what a pity we don't know his name), that the cause of the present intellectual activity of our women folk is due to the use of wire hair pins! 
     He explains the matter in a charmingly lucid manner which, as so often happens with scientific explanations, leaves the unscientific reader in rather more of a muddled entanglement than ever, but when boiled down it amounts to this: That wire hairpins excite “counter currents of electricity,” whatever they may be and so bewilder the wearer's brain with strange vagaries and lead them to do whimsical things. 
     Now it would be well for players to take note of this for the Wire Hairpin Theory explains many things. It is evident that when a woman wears a handful of wire hairpins there is an amount of electrical disturbance going on around her scalp that puts good chess out of the question. 

     When she wears shell contrivances her head is clear and cool and she plays the fine, winning game her friends admire. So, in future tournaments one of the rules governing the play should be: All ladies players are requested to wear shell hairpins. 
     This observation and advice was published in the American Chess Magazine of 1897-98 and maybe it explains why female payers of today play so much better...they no longer wear hairpins! 
     There was a lot of quack theories about electricity in those days...American Artifacts.  There still is.

Anthony Santasiere Plays the King's Gambit

     Anthony Santasiere had a running argument with Larry Evans back in 1961. Writing in Chess Life Evans said, "His games are characterized by plodding, timidity, and opening repetition. He enters even the romantic debuts such as the Vienna and King's Gambit with reams of prepared analysis, strives constantly to keep the draw in hand and prevent complications from getting away from him over the board. Where are the glorious games which qualify Santasiere as the darling spokesman of romanticism?"
     "The Queen’s Gambit is neither a gambit nor an honor to any Queen. It is like a piece of dead flesh kept overlong on ice." wrote Santasiere in Essay on Chess. Speaking of Essay on Chess, if you ever get the chance to read it, don't bother. It's a wretched little book. In it he denigrates positional chess and praises tactical chess.
     It's also full of inane ramblings. Did you know Frank Marshall died on his way to play Bingo? Or that he was wearing clean underwear? How Santasiere knew that I have no idea. He also makes a lot of psychological observations: 
* If Emmanuel Lasker loved anybody, it was himself until the last two years of his life.  
* Capablanca was cold, selfish and was insane with conceit. 
* He called Capa an anti-Christ. 
* Tarrasch was an egotist and spiritually bankrupt. 
* Chigorin was vain.
* Herman Steiner had a colossal ego.
* At one time Rossolimo temporarily insane. 

     The only great player he liked was Alekhine; he was spiritually born out his sufferings, had patient endurance, humility, courage...at least according to Santasiere.
     I remember reading an old issue of the American Chess Bulletin in which Santasiere annotated the games from the 1942 Reshevsky vs. Kashdan match and he complained bitterly about the boring openings they played and the boring games they lead to. For all his whining about the way they played chess, Santasiere himself was accused of roaring like a lion while essaying gambits without sacrifices and playing like a mouse. For the most part it was true, but he was capable of playing swashbuckling chess on occasion.
     Santasiere's book on the King's Gambit, The Romantic King's Gambit in Games and Analysis published by Chess Digest's Ken Smith was a pretty useless book. First, it had no chapters! It contained 138 games that weren't organized in any way whatsoever! Secondly, Santasiere prattles on and on...and on. Often about nothing...at least nothing to do with the game under examination, or worse yet, nothing to do with chess.
     Naturally for a book that was so obviously thrown together in pre-engine days there are a ton of mistakes. Even Ken Smith's revised and updated version had notes that were pretty useless because the notes explained nothing. It's of no value in a book that's supposed to teach you how to play an opening to just say such and such a move is better without at least saying why.
     Santasiere (1904 – 1977) wasn't a bad player though. Chessmetrics assigns him best ranking of 53rd in the world back in 1931. That puts him on a par with Karel Treybal, Henri Weenink, Kurt Richter, Alexander Kevitz and Sandor Takacs, Reginald Michell, Ludwig Rodl, Alfred Brinckmann, Hans Mueller, Abraham Baratz and Carl Ruben to name a few; all good players, but not “greats.” His highest rating was 2556 in 1947, most probably because of his highest ever performance rating of 2593 in the 1946 US Championship where he scored +9 -1 =8 to finish in 3rd place a half point behind Isaac Kashdan and 3 points behind winner Reshevsky. His sole loss was to Horowitz who tied for 5th-6th with Denker. Jacob Levi was 4th. 
     The 1946 US Championship games can be found on Graeme Cree's site  and adds that Louis J. Isaacs of Chicago played nine games, winning one and losing eight then failed to show up for the tenth game and was forfeited. On receiving his protest, the Tournament Director proposed that the matter be placed for final decision before the Tournament Committee. However, Isaacs replied that he did not want to put anyone to any trouble, and he did not show up for the remaining games and his is score was canceled. Soltis and McCormack make no mention of Isaacs or the incident in their book The United States Chess Championship, 1845-1996, so I have no idea what the issue was.
     As for his Chessmetrics ratings, those games were mostly against US players as Santasiere's international experience, as far as I know, was limited to losing two games against David Bronstein in the match against the Soviet Union and he tied for first in a small tournament in Milan, Italy in 1953. There were only 8 players: 1-2) Guiseppe Primavera and Santasiere, 3-4) Cenek Kottnauer and Nicolas Engalicev, 5) Enrico Paoli,6) Olaf Ulvestad, 7) Ferdinando Giorgieri, 8) Giovanno Ferrantes.
     Yes, I realize I have prattled on about stuff other than the subject at hand, but unlike Santasiere, I'm not trying to teach anything.  I was talking about Santasiere and the King's Gambit, so getting back on track…
     Santasiere may not have been among the elite in US chess, but he was dangerous, defeating the likes of Marshall, Horowitz, Herman Steiner, Denker and Reinfeld and against lesser players he was even more so. 
     Here is one of his King's Gambits from the 1847 US Open. Santasiere finished tied for second with Abe Yanofsky with a 10-3 score. Santasiere scored +8 -1 =4, his sole loss being to Yanofsky, but he did hold winner Kashdan to a draw.

David Bronstein - Author

 

    David Bronstein (February 19, 1924 – December 5, 2006) was not only a great player, but he was a great author and he is, I think, underappreciated in both categories. I have posted on Bronstein before: He Should Have Been World Champion and the 1951 World Championship.
     Bronstein also invented the Bronstein delay time control. This method adds time but unlike increment not always the maximum amount of time is added. If a player expends more than the specified delay, then the entire delay is added to the player's clock, but if a player moves faster than the delay, only the exact amount of time expended by the player is added. For example, if the delay is ten seconds and a player uses ten or more seconds for a move, ten seconds is added after the move is completed. If the player uses five seconds for a move, five seconds is added after the move is completed. The advantage to Bronstein's method is that it ensures that the base time left on the clock can never increase even if a player makes fast moves.
     Bronstein's books are all worth reading whether you want to study or just want to enjoy playing over great games.

Zurich International Chess Tournament, 1953 – Bronstein wrote this book just three years after the event. The 210 games are worthy of study by beginner, intermediate and advanced players and can serve as a textbook on how to play the middle game. Or, you can just set down and go over the games. GM Alex Yermolinsky wrote: “David Bronstein wrote a great book about the 1953 Zurich Candidates Tournament. What makes it great is absolute disregard to theorizing. He takes all the games from a super-strong tournament – uses no selection criteria, so no bias towards the author’s agenda is there – and just invites you to watch ‘em play. If I had to name one single book that helped me with my problems, not once but many times throughout my chess career, I’d know which one it is.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a book of his best games with interesting stories and easy-to-understand annotations.
200 Open Games - Games beginning with 1.e4 e5 amusing commentary emphasizes ideas behind moves and the resulting patterns.
Modern Chess Self-Tutor – Sort of a misnomer because what he really discusses is how GMs decide on their moves.
Bronstein On the King's Indian - puts emphasis on understanding the typical moves, maneuvers and the overall spirit of the defense.
Secret Notes - In this book he describes the chess personalities he has met and annotates 40 of his best games of the 1990s. He also recounts events from his earlier career, impressions of players such as Larsen, Spassky, and Korchnoi and expresses his views on modern chess. Interesting light reading.
Chess in the Eighties – He discusses the sport oriented nature of chess and its detriment of chess as an art. He also investigates chess psychology and the thinking processes involved in chess, the impact of computers. He coauthored this book with a psychologist.

 

    The following game was played against Najdorf in the 1954 USSR vs. Argentina match that was played in Buenos Aires and Bronstein's notes are most instructive. Bronstein sacrificed a piece for three Ps and his comments on how to evaluate the resulting position are most insightful.
     His three united passed Ps on the Q-side mutually protected each other and because there were three of them, they presented a severe obstacle to black's attempt to blockade them. In a case where three united passed Ps are pitted against a minor piece the Ps are generally superior to wither a N or B in the ending, but in the middlegame things are much more complicated because the extra piece can be used for attacking purposes before the Ps get moving. And, once Qs are exchanged, the Ps become more of a threat.
     When analyzing this game with Stockfish it found some improvements, particularly for Najdorf at move 28. But, as I have pointed out before, Jeremy Silman has made the point that when we amateurs look at master games the point is NOT to find errors, but to learn enough to appreciate the game’s beauty and learn the lessons that eventually will allow us to create that same beauty in our games. Besides that, if you're playing over games just for enjoyment, whose games would you choose? Tahl or Nezhmetdinov or Bronstein or Najdorf or the games of Petrosian or Ulf Andersson or Karpov?   As for the last three, it's more exciting watching sloths at the zoo.