The latest of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them

“With every game a door to a mysterious world of fantasy, adventure, enigma and exact mathematical calculations is opened for me” – Rashid Nezhmetdinov

 “Nobody sees combinations like Rashid Nezhmetdinov” – MIkhail Botvinnik

Rashid Nezhmetdinov was one of a kind. At his best he was a true force of nature, who by sheer determination could turn dismal positions into crushing wins. He could calculate tactical variations with more depth and imagination than most anyone of his time. He annihilated future world champions Mikhail Tal and Boris Spassky a combined five times, as well as a slew of other big names. Uncompromising and exuberant, he attempted to stretch the boundaries of chess reality. He also played the most insane Queen sacrifice of all time, which I’ve already written about here: https://kingstonchess.com/confessions-of-a-youthful-romantic/

Here are a couple of famous examples of what SuperNezh could do:

Rashid Nezhmetdinov isn’t just a hard-to-say name, with a cool nickname. Only those in the know have even heard of him. I got to know of him many decades ago through my university friend Kevin Henbest, whereupon Nezh became a spirit to invoke whenever a crazed attack was in prospect.

Tal is the far more famous player, but Nezh was Tal’s Tal. Each of the pair’s tournament games are remarkable, inspiring Tal to select not one of the dozens of weighty names available but Nezh as his second for the 1960 match against Mikhail Botvinnik. Nezh’s ideas and camaraderie helped Tal unseat the great Botvinnik. Surely the greatest day of his life? Yet Tal later declared the day he played, and lost, this game was “the happiest of his life”.

In Nezh, Tal had a fellow playmate who strove to do the incredible with the pieces. Tal lost 3-1 to Nezh in tournament chess (strangely all with Black), and the win was extremely lucky. Tal said of his friend and rival: “His games reveal the beauty of chess and make you love in chess not so much the points and high placings, but the wonderful harmony and elegance of this particular world.”

Nezh won the Russian championship five times (also coming second in draughts in 1950). He carried off many brilliancy prizes and became a respected coach, even writing the first Tatar book on chess. Coming from the most humble origins possible, a Tatar Muslim orphan, Nezh grew up literally starving during the Russian revolution. He was self-taught, a late starter (11), his interest split with draughts (where his progress came quicker, master level by 19). He had to gain proper employment (at one point working as a stoker), then spent many years in the army, somehow surviving the second world war intact. By 1945 he was in Berlin, 33 and starting again with chess. We don’t know too much about his early games; possibly because, according to Russian chess writer Iakov Damsky, Nezh never recorded his games. Many are fragments, with the initial moves unknown.

There’s a lot to love and respect about Nezh, but playing over his games again for the past few months one thing in particular suddenly inspired me – his best results came after 1950, when he was 38. Guess what birthday I just had! He only really got to play in serious competitions at the age of 35, being awarded the title of chess master two years later, finally debuting in the Soviet championships at 41. 

The opportunities for being selected for foreign tournaments were few, requiring the favour and trust of the Party. Unfortunately Nezh had a tendency to enjoy life off the board as much as on it, as well as being much older than the Soviet rising stars. Indeed he was banned from Soviet tournament chess for a year for off-the-board antics (a light punishment – others were executed or sent to the gulag). Finally selected for Bucharest in 1954, he came second by half a point to Viktor Korchnoi, producing several gems, among them this game:

Nezh’s calling card is this brilliant game:

It was even made into a painting called “The Board of Destiny” by Galin Satonin (see detail below).

When playing over Nezh’s games, it’s hard not to feel swept up in the utter joy of the initiative, the sacrifices, the rampant pieces storming recklessly across the board towards the enemy king. Nezh finds ideas which look impossible, playing in that chaotic space between utter collapse and perfect coordination. He battles on against top players in positions that look completely hopeless, and fights not for draws but wins! When the spirit is with him, every game is a search for double exclamation marks.

But he was a player of inspiration and without it he was not Super-Nezh. “For playing well, I need inspiration,” he explained. “Like a capricious woman, it either visits me or it stands me up. Without inspiration there is no playing well. I am not rational enough; therefore games where one should play positionally and capture necessary squares, and hold back the opponent, most often end unhappily for me.”

Nezh’s chess was impossible to predict. The crosstable of the 1957 Soviet Championship tells its own story:

Early in Nezh’s career, Pyotr Romanovsky praised his fiery imagination, resourcefulness and far-sighted calculation, but warned that he suffered from poor knowledge of opening theory and lacked solidity and self-control. Often, Nezh simply could not resist “interesting” moves, unbalanced positions and juicy sacrifices. He abhorred dull chess and lengthy strategic battles, possessing little patience. He couldn’t stand to defend passively, often turning down material gains lest his opponent got a sniff of counterplay. He often overestimated his own ideas and positions, while underestimating his opponents and their resources. He could play a fantastic game, then overpress or implode; that is if he didn’t drift off in boredom or fall into time trouble as the game lengthened. Nezh was thus both an attacking genius and a highly flawed player. 

Nezh tried to do something about one of his weaknesses, forcing himself to take on proper openings, becoming a respected expert on the Spanish, the Jaenisch, the King’s Indian Defence, the Sicilian Rossolimo and the “Poisoned pawn variation“. He still enjoyed sidelines, but was now prepared to do the work. Learning at the last minute his “examiner” for the title of master had been switched to the experienced Vladas Mikenas, he looked up a recent article he’d authored, then crushed him in his own Alekhine line, twice!

Nezh is perfectly happy breaking opening rules, throwing forward pawns and ignoring classical tropes. Here his uncompromising opening play bamboozles no less an opponent than Paul Keres. In typical manner when the position slows down and requires torturous manoeuvring, Nezh loses patience and goes for a forcing but hopeless option:

His games are filled with fanciful knight dancing and sacrifices. “There is nothing more enigmatic than a knight,” he said. “Its possibilities surpass any imagination. A knight is presented sometimes as a dragon, as a force that cannot be either held back or tamed.”

In spirit, Nezh was playing along with me at the end of last season when I reached the following position against FM Alan Hanreck:

After Nezh’s death, Tal gave a commentary to the following game, where Nezh shows such great mastery and control of the position that Tal, the ultimate master of power play, holding a seemingly imperious pawn centre, is completely paralysed:

“I feel it would have been more correct to have resigned several moves earlier, or to play Ke8 and let White have the pretty ‘aerial’ mate Bf7. Shortly after these notes were written the chess world heard with regret of the death of the great chess artist Rashid Nezhmetdinov. Players die, tournaments are forgotten, but the works of great artists are left behind them to live on for ever in the memory of their creators. Let this game and notes remain as my modest tribute to the memory of a fine player.”

Nezh could be strategic, patient and calm after all! And still win beautifully. His favourite phrase was “Our day will come.” Age is no obstacle; setbacks are nothing; the beautiful chess is out there, just waiting to be found. So remember, next time you’re in a crazy lost position, ask yourself – what would Nezh do?!

Bibliography

• Alex Pishkin – Super Nezh: Rashid Nezhmetdinov, Chess Assassin (‎Thinkers’ Press, 2000)
• Cyrus Lakdawala – The Greatest Attacker in Chess: The Enigmatic Rashid Nezhmetdinov (New In Chess, 2022)
• Ray Keene – Learn from the Grandmasters (chapter on Mikhail Tal) (Batsford, 1998)

Video

• Documentary on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BUZ2zyWRh0&t=2325

The latest of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them. Photograph by Koen Suyk/Anefo

“Before Geller we did not understand the King’s Indian Defence” – world champion Mikhail Botvinnik

Why, over the years, have I regarded the Soviet-era grandmaster Efim Geller (1925-98) as my favourite chess player? There are several reasons. Geller (pictured above) achieved prominence in many aspects of the game. He was an exceptionally strong over-the-board player, achieving distinction in world championship competition, international tournaments and Soviet championships, and was member of the all-conquering Soviet team in Chess olympiads. He had a profound knowledge of opening theory, contributing many ideas to modern chess practice. He was a dedicated analyst of all aspects of chess, and was twice used as a second in world championship matches. He was an authoritative chess author.

Geller was born in 1925 in Odessa, a major Black Sea port now in Ukraine but then in the Soviet Union. In 1962 Geller wrote a short monograph about his life and career to date. The Nottingham-based Chess Player, under the editorship of Bernard Cafferty, published this work in 1969. From his autobiography we learn that he took an interest in chess when he was about four by watching his father, a strong amateur, playing with friends; though as he points out he had to be taught how to play (when about six), contrasting his experience with Capablanca who famously learned merely by observing his father and then telling the old man where he had gone wrong.

The 1935 Moscow International tournament made a big impression on Geller and he began to apply himself, moving up the junior ranks. At this time he was more interested in football and swimming, and skating in the winter. One day, in the local People’s Palace, Geller went to enrol in the football section, but was too late. While wandering through the building he came across a room where a chess section was meeting. The members were analysing the Botvinnik-Alekhine game which had recently been played at the AVRO Tournament of 1938. Geller made a few contributions and so came to the notice of a local first-category player who encouraged him to take part in local junior competitions, where he did well.

At the end of 1939 he qualified as a first-category player – at the age of 14. Over the next few years, the war impacted on his development, especially after 1941. Nevertheless he made steady progress, and after the war he was able to resume his chess career. In 1949 Geller came second equal in the Ukrainian Championship, held in Odessa.

In his early days, Geller played the following game against Efim Kogan:

Geller was quite critical of his play in this game, saying: “I did not yet understand the strict logicality  of the laws of chess strategy, which I frequently broke for the sake of cavalier attacks.” More than a whiff of Marxist dogma, I think.

Geller and I go back a long way – to 1962, in fact. Early that year I acquired my first chess magazine – Chess, edited by B H Wood. This issue was devoted entirely to the Stockholm Interzonal of 1962, and on the front cover was a cross-table of the tournament from which I saw that Bobby Fischer (of whom I had heard!) won by a large margin, scoring 17½ points, with two players second equal on 15 points. The unfamiliar names of the various competitors made the chess world seem wildly exotic.

I saw that in round 1 Miguel Cuellar of Colombia (a relatively low-ranking player) beat the highly rated Efim Geller. Notwithstanding this loss, Geller made up ground and achieved second place with Tigran Petrosian. Players in the first six places qualified for the Candidates Tournament, the winner of which would have the right to challenge the world champion (Mikhail Botvinnik) for the crown. By the way, Cuellar showed himself to be no pushover – in the second round he beat Viktor Korchnoi.

Over the next few years I became interested in Geller’s style of play, whereby the game appeared to commence on classical lines but would suddenly develop into violent attacks. In the same period Mikhail Tal had become much more celebrated for his style of attacking play, but it seemed impossible to hope to play like Tal, much as one enjoyed the product.

An example of Geller’s style, again from his early days:

In his annotations Geller criticises his move 26 ( “…the false romanticism that I still hadn’t overcome”). What should Geller have played?

In Geller’s short 1962 monograph he gave a description of his life and career in chess up to that date. In this account he included just three games – those against Kogan and Kotlerman, as shown above, and a 1949 game against Alexander Kotov. In a later game collection, in his introduction to the game, Geller (writing in 1984) says: “Even today this game is dear to my heart. Not only because, for the first time, it won me a creative award – the prize for the most brilliant game of the championship. The point is that even today, more than 30 years later, I aim, as an ideal, for this kind of dynamic play. Each of Black’s moves in this game is subordinate to one all-consuming idea: attack, attack and again attack.” I think I had better include it!

In the 1969 English version of Geller’s autobiography the game content was increased from three to 86, the editor pointing out that he had found so many interesting games. The text is a curiosity, but we must remember the times and the circumstances in which it was written. It is, to say the least, tendentious and shows a very blinkered attitude. Only the year before Geller’s memoir had appeared in Russian, an article appeared in Chess in the USSR for December 1961 entitled  “The Moral Code of a Builder of Communism”. The article praises the achievements of leading Soviet players as well as their tact and their bearing.

 “Two other things are well known about them – their modesty and their simplicity of manner,” says the article. “Unfortunately one cannot say this about grandmaster E Geller. He has rendered undoubted service to Soviet sport, but has begun to overemphasise this and to be conceited. This has given rise to a disdainful attitude towards his comrades and a disinclination to take account of their opinions. In our country we don’t like braggarts and big-heads.”

Geller’s blood must have frozen when he read this, and his autobiography of the following year should perhaps be read in this light. Bernard Cafferty says that he (Cafferty) had edited out the most bigoted material. To give a brief flavour, here is Geller’s view of Fischer (Geller explains that his wins against Fischer in the Curacao Candidates Tournament of 1962 had a major bearing on the overall result): “As I see it, the reason for his defeat lies in the fact that the Soviet school of chess, of which I am a representative, makes a fundamental study of the laws which lie at the basis of the game, whereas representatives of foreign countries, even Fischer, are characterised by a less deep approach to the chess art and by a certain incompleteness in their strategical and tactical concepts.”

All this is a bit rich coming from Geller. Events at Curacao 1962 were much more sinister than a mere clash of philosophies, as we will see. Geller goes on: “Moreover, he [Fischer] himself certainly doesn’t suffer from any lack of modesty. Fischer’s trouble is that he looks at the game only from the point of view of business. It is unclear how his chess will develop, but one thing is clear – the strongest of this world can only be a person of high conviction, of deep moral fibre, a person free from the faults and ulcers of the rotten capitalist system.”

Geller even manages a bit of a swipe at the incomparable Mikhail Tal: “What exactly is Tal’s style? Is there such a thing as Tal’s style? Is there a school of imitators following Tal’s example? The answer to the second and third questions must be in the negative. There is not and there cannot be a school which does not have laws and firm theoretical bases. It is no coincidence that blind imitators of his style have normally been very disappointed.”

Tal showed some magnanimity, because he wrote a very complimentary introduction to Geller’s second game collection, The Application of Chess Theory (1984), though he makes a telling observation about a weakness of Geller – his tendency to make one-move blunders  (more than other grandmasters of similar strength).

In appearance Geller was a shortish man, but very powerfully built. In his youth he had enjoyed a number of sports, but eventually he excelled at basketball. He earned a doctorate in physical education. He transferred the energy and aggression from the sports arena to the chessboard.  It has been said that a number of opponents agreed draws rather than continue to be confronted by the violent energy coming across the board.

In 1965 the great Vasily Smyslov was drawn to play in a Candidates match against Geller. Smyslov, though much the taller man, took boxing lessons to counteract the waves of aggression that would emanate from his opponent. Unfortunately it did not help him. Geller won the match 5½-2½.

The following remarkable game was played in the match:

If you have ever seen a photo of Geller at the chessboard without a lit cigarette, it probably wasn’t Geller. He was an inveterate smoker and even by the standards of the time his consumption of cigarettes was prodigious. The modern reader may be appalled to contemplate having to face, for hours at a time, an opponent puffing away on a foul cigarette or strange-smelling herbal mix in a pipe, but this was commonplace until, I should say, the late 1970s.

This problem persisted even at the highest level. When preparing for a match against a known heavy smoker, Mikhail Botvinnik directed his seconds to sit opposite to him as he studied at the board and blow smoke constantly into his face. When Geller died in 1998, New in Chess published an obituary by Gennadi Sosonko, who had known Geller very well.

“Now, a quarter of a century later [Sosonko is referring back to 1974] I can picture well the Geller of that time. A man of few words, with a characteristic facial expression, frequent rocking of the head, accompanied by a sceptical raising of the eyebrows, his checked jacket hung on the back of his chair, and the ashtray, full of cigarette ends, always alongside him … Obstinate, with a dimpled chin and a slow waddle, Geller’s entire appearance was more that of a former boxer, or an elderly boatswain who had come onshore, rather than the world–class grandmaster he was.”  

Geller was famous even among his peers for the depth and thoroughness of his analysis, both of opening preparation and during the conduct of a game. Sosonko recalls that in 1974 Vladimir Tukmakov, who was winning the IBM Tournament, told him that he was contemplating offering Geller, his opponent in the last round, a draw. Geller was on a 50% score, so out of the running. The next day Tukmakov told Sosonko what happened. He went to Geller’s room. Light was coming from under the door and there was a “Do not disturb notice on the door”. Tukmakov could hear the sound of pieces being moved on a chessboard, so he went away. He was beaten the next day.

Geller’s remarkable skill at analysis was manifest throughout his career. In 1962, at the Varna Olympiad, Botvinnik was playing Fischer and at the adjournment (there was no playing to a finish in those days) this was the tricky position faced by Botvinnik, playing White:

White to move. Other players and seconds and probably the whole Soviet entourage were dragooned into trying to salvage a draw. Late at night Geller came up with the right solution and Botvinnik was able to escape with a draw. If you haven’t seen the position, perhaps you would like to see if you can find the drawing procedure.

Geller had an unrivalled opening knowledge. He contributed many ideas in such openings as the Ruy Lopez, the Sicilian (the modest-seeming Be2); Geller’s “Quiet version” against the Modern; the Queen’s Gambit – 1. d4 d5  2. c4 dxc  3. Nf3 Nf6  4. e3 e6 5. Bc4 c5 6. 0-0 a6 7. e4 (known as the Geller variation) and similarly: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 dxc 5. e4 – the Geller Gambit), and above all the King’s Indian Defence – hence the quotation from Botvinnik at the beginning of this article.

Twice Geller’s knowledge was used in world championship matches. First, Boris Spassky selected him as his key second in the match against Fischer in 1972; then Anatoly Karpov used his services. Spassky says that Geller could be very obstinate and at one point in their preparation for the Fischer match there was a disagreement about a particular line, “but he kept insisting on his own view, he was very obstinate. His diligence was extraordinary. He developed his talent by sitting on his backside, and his backside in turn developed thanks to his talent.” Geller said: “ If I feel anxious or uncomfortable, I sit down at the chessboard for some five to six hours, and gradually come to” [in the sense of wake up].

There was a price to be paid for all this effort. He would spend long periods in a match trying to get to the heart of a position and end up in terrible time trouble. This would often lead to blunders (as observed by Tal). Geller’s notes to his annotated games often refer to a shortage of time. One case which had dire consequences for Geller was in the 1973 Interzonal at Petropolis, Brazil against the (relatively) low-ranking Canadian grandmaster Peter Biyiasas. During the game Geller reached a position which was objectively won for him, but he got into bad time trouble, his position deteriorated and he lost on time. This led to his failure to qualify for the Candidates matches.

Geller’s record in qualifying for the Candidates tournaments/matches was remarkable. He was consistently among the top players in the world vying for first place and the chance to play a match for the world championship. He qualified for these final stages five times. In 1953 the Candidates Tournament took place in Zurich. On this occasion 15 players took part, each playing Black and White against the same opponent, making this a brutal contest of 28 rounds. It is interesting to note that as recently as the 2024 Norway Tournament a commentator describing a game involving Hikaru Nakamura referred to a game played at Zurich as an important stem game for the game taking place, thereby emphasising the contribution made to opening theory by … Efim Geller.

The winner of the tournament was Vasily Smyslov, who in 1954 went on to draw his match for the World Championship with Botvinnik, who thereby retained his crown. Geller finished a creditable equal sixth, though he did suffer seven losses, including this one to former world champion Max Euwe:

David Bronstein took second place (equal with Paul Keres). He wrote a book of the tournament, which has become a classic. In his introduction to the game Smyslov– Geller in round 22 Bronstein makes the following pertinent observation. “One of the postulates of opening theory reads as follows: in the opening, White should always play to gain the advantage, while Black should always play to equalise. I do not know the precise formulation of Geller’s views, but to judge from his games he apparently believes that whichever side he happens to be playing is the side that ought to get the better of the opening. The chief characteristic of Geller’s creativity are an amazing ability to extract the very maximum from the opening and a readiness to abandon positional schemes for an open game rife with combinations, or vice versa, at any moment.”

In 1956 Geller qualified for the Candidates Tournament, held in Amsterdam. This time 10 players took part, playing each other twice. The winner was again Smyslov with 11½/18 and second was Paul Keres with 10/18. Five players (Geller, Spassky Bronstein, Petrosian and the Hungarian Laszlo Szabo tied for third place with 9½/18. Smyslov went on to beat Botvinnik in the 1957 world championship match, only to lose the title back to Botvinnik in a rematch.

Geller had participated in the Amsterdam Tournament as a result of his tied fifth place in the Gothenburg Interzonal of 1955. Twenty-one competitors took part. During the Interzonal an extraordinary event took place. The strong Soviet presence included Geller, Keres and Spassky and in one round they were drawn (all with White) against three of the Argentine contingent, Oscar Panno, Miguel Najdorf and Herman Pilnik. This represented a bit of a problem for the Argentinians because they all liked to play the  Najdorf Sicilian and in an earlier round Panno had received a battering from Keres.

What to do? The three Argentinians used the rest day to come up with a cunning plan. There was at the time a well-known line in the Najdorf involving a knight sacrifice. What if it could be refuted? They spent their time well and found an excellent line for Black. Surely one of the three of them would have a chance to spring the refutation against their formidable opponents. The games started and incredibly all three games – Geller  v Panno, Spassky v Pilnik, and Keres v Najdorf – followed the same early moves. Geller was ahead of the others in terms of moves:

Geller did not appear in the next Candidates Tournament (Bled-Zagreb-Belgrade 1959). In fact he did not even qualify for the Portoroz Interzonal of 1958. As we have seen, Geller did well in the Stockholm Interzonal of 1962, and he qualified for the Candidates Tournament which was to be held later that year. The venue selected was the West Indian island of Curacao. The eight competitors faced a demanding schedule of 28 games in tropical heat – nice for a holiday but not perhaps for the rigours of a major chess tournament.

No fewer than five of the eight were from the USSR – Petrosian, Geller and Korchnoi as qualifiers from Stockholm, to whom were added Tal and Keres in recognition of their achievements in the previous cycle. The remaining three players were Fischer, Pal Benko (USA) and Miroslav Filip (Czechoslovakia).

The Soviet delegation also included grandmasters Alexander Kotov and  Yuri Averbakh, but at the last minute Kotov was replaced by Sergei Gorshkov, who was an amateur chessplayer but a KGB officer – sent no doubt to keep a watchful eye on his charges. The pre-tournament favourites were Fischer and Tal, but Tal’s ill-health prevented him from playing to his usual high standards. In fact he ended up in hospital and failed to play in the last sequence of seven games. Incidentally, only one of the competitors went to see Tal in hospital, and that was Robert J Fischer.

The problem all eight competitors faced at the outset was how to manage their energy and mental strength. Two of the players (Geller and Petrosian) had been good friends for years and they persuaded Keres (who was by some way the oldest competitor – he was born in 1916 ) to join in an “arrangement” whereby they would agree short draws with each other, leaving them with more energy for the rest of their games. Thus the number of moves in their head-to-head games were:

Geller v Petrosian             Keres v Petrosian       Geller v Keres

         21                                     17                            27

        18                                      21                            17

         16                                     22                            22

         18                                     14                            15

All the games were of course drawn.

Did this scheme work? The final standings seem conclusive:

1 Petrosian 17½
2. Geller and Keres 17
4. Fischer 14
5. Korchnoi 13½
6. Benko 12
7. Tal (out of 21) and Filip 7

There was alas another incident involving Geller and Petrosian. In round 27 – the penultimate – Keres was playing Black against Benko and at the point of adjournment – the game was set to be finished on another day – Keres was in a lot of difficulty. If he managed to get a draw he would go into the last round on equal points with Petrosian, and half a point ahead of Geller. That evening Benko heard a knock on his door, and Geller and Petrosian explained that they were visiting to offer to help Benko by checking his analysis. Benko handed over his notes and some time later they were returned – Geller and Petrosian could see nothing wrong as Benko was a very strong player in his own right. The next day Benko won easily as Keres went wrong very quickly.

There is one further element which might be relevant. In 1953 a major tournament had taken place in Bucharest. There was strong Soviet representation including Alexander Tolush, Petrosian, Smyslov, Spassky and Isaak Boleslavsky – Tolush was the eventual victor. But it was a Hungarian grandmaster, Szabo, who took an early lead. In a Soviet team meeting, a telegram from the Soviet sports committee was read out: “Stop fighting each other. Make draws. Stop Szabo.” To be fair, Spassky (one of the competitors) said that Szabo was stopped because he was not strong enough to win, but an unhealthy precedent was set. Curacao represents the nearest Geller got to challenging for the world title – just half a point behind the winner, Tigran Petrosian, who went on to defeat Botvinnik in 1963.

There was fallout from Curacao. Fischer in particular complained at what he regarded as outright cheating. Fide, the World Chess Federation, changed the format for the challengers and, instead of an all-play-all tournament, for the next 50 years (if we disregard the Ilyumzhinov years) the eight candidates played in knockout matches. Only in 2013 was the format changed back to a tournament. Also, arbiters were instructed to make sure that players did not agree draws within 30 moves, but this rule did not last long as it was found to be impractical.

In 1965 Geller qualified for the Candidates only because Botvinnik decided not to take part. Geller was drawn to play Smyslov and, as we have seen, he won impressively by  5½-2½ ; in the semi-final he lost by 2½-5½  to Spassky who went on to challenge Petrosian. In the following Candidates cycle in 1968 Geller lost again to Spassky in the first match, once more by by 2½-5½, and in 1971 he lost to Korchnoi; and that was Geller’s last appearance at this exalted level. Nevertheless, Geller had had a remarkable run of qualifying for and taking part in the Candidates’ cycle between 1953 and 1970.

Later on, in 1991 Geller came first equal (with Smyslov) in the World Senior Championship and in the year following he took the championship alone. Over his long career Geller took part in numerous tournaments all over the world. As a young man he was part of a Soviet delegation sent in 1954 to play a match against Argentina, then one of the strongest chess-playing countries (after the USSR) and visit various clubs and organisations. About the same time the USSR played a match against the USA on American soil. Geller has a few digs at American bureaucracy in his autobiography.

He took part in tournaments all over the world,  including Copenhagen, Havana, Santiago, Beverwijk, Monte Carlo, Las Palmas and in 1990 New York (sharing first place at the age of 65). He even played in a tournament on Teesside, which he won. Spassky said of Geller’s visits abroad: “There he would relax. For him this meant the following: he would light up his Chesterfield, drink Coca-Cola, and be outside of time and space.” At one time,  says Gennadi Sosonko in his masterly account of Geller’s life, the family thought about going to America – a striking contrast to the attitude set out in his early autobiography.

As a sample of the chess played at Geller’s peak is the following brief (but complex) encounter:

In the third collection of his games Geller, who had a whimsical turn of phrase, headed this game: “A Ledge above the Precipice”.

I stumbled on this example (from a few years later) which I admit has a certain resonance* for me:

*Resonance: This is where Geller and I part company. I have played (whenever the opportunity arises) the Sicilian Sveshnikov since about 1984. The starting moves are: 1. e4 c5  2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4  cxd  4. Nd4 Nf6  5. Nc3  e5. If only I had known Geller’s assessment. Spassky recalls a training session of the Russian team where Sveshnikov was demonstrating his system. Geller made a number of interjections, essentially saying that the system was flawed and the early move e5 left Black’s position with too many holes. It is an irony that Geller made use of the system to avoid having to face a line where White fianchettoes his king’s bishop. The point is that Geller had fared disastrously in two matches against Spassky – and Spassky was an expert in the closed Sicilian.

Between 1952 and 1980 Geller represented the Soviet Union in seven Chess olympiads, winning six medals either silver or gold for his individual performance. He played 76 games, winning 46, drawing 23 and losing only seven times. He had similar success when representing the USSR in the European Team Championship. He played on six occasions, winning the individual gold on his board four times. He played 37 individual games, winning 17 times, drawing 19 and losing only once.

Geller played a remarkable 23 times in the Soviet championship. He won aged 30 in 1955 and a second time in 1979 at the venerable ages of 54 ( the oldest  Soviet champion). In terms of his performance in all competition, according to the retrospective assessment by Chessmetrics, Geller was ranked No 2 in the world between May and July 1963 and was in the world’s top 10 during the 1950s and 1960s. After the elo system was recognised by Fide, Geller appeared three times in the top 10 – 1971, 1976 and 1981. I remember reading somewhere that Botvinnik reckoned that at one point in the 1960s Geller was the strongest player in the world.

One measure of a top player’s strength is how he has performed against the very strongest players – the world champions. Geller’s record is exceptional:

World Champion                            Won                 Loss              Drawn

Max Euwe                                          1                       1                       0

Mikhail Botvinnik                              4                       1                       7

Vasily Smyslov                                 11                      8                       37

Mikhail Tal                                         6                       6                       23

Tigran Petrosian                                5                       3                       32

Boris Spassky                                     6                      10                      22

Bobby Fischer                                    5                       3                        2

Anatoly Karpov                                  1                       2                        5

Garry Kasparov                                  0                       1                        2

Viswanathan Anand                          0                      1                         1

                                                  

Total games played 206                  39                     36                       131

Here is one interesting game against an ex-world champion:

Here is another victory against a player destined to become world champion:

Geller was deeply involved in the “Match of the Century” – Spassky v Fischer in Reykjavik 1972. While Fischer was completing the demolition of his three opponents in the Candidates matches in 1972 (6-0 v Taimanov, 6–0 v Larsen and 6½–2½ v Petrosian), Spassky was setting about preparation for the world championship match. He selected a small team: GM Bondarevsky, GM Krogius, GM Geller and IM Nei. Each was allotted a particular task. Bondarevsky (Spassky’s long-standing trainer) was commissioned to study 500 of Fischer’s games to identify weaknesses. Krogius, who held a doctorate in psychology and was effectively a sports psychologist, was to appraise Fischer’s psychology, for example his attitude to defeat, and to compare Fischer’s psychological make-up with Spassky’s. Geller was to work on the openings, an aspect for which he was famous. And what of Nei, a mere IM? Well, he was a good tennis player and Spassky loved his tennis. 

Tucked away in a dacha, there should have been a devoted, dynamic squad concentrating solely on securing a win for the Motherland. The reality seems to have been a bit different. It looks as if Spassky was confident of victory from the start. Later on, when recriminations started to fly, Krogius said that Spassky ignored his studies and Geller complained that Spassky did not follow his opening advice. Bondarevsky left the group early because of various disagreements. Also, Spassky pointedly ignored letters of advice from other leading Soviet grandmasters.

As everyone knows, Fischer emerged triumphant at Reykjavik and Spassky was left to return to the Soviet Union and face the music. He encountered a lot of public criticism. On 27 December 1972 Spassky, Geller and Krogius were summoned to face the Soviet Sports Committee. There were 15 members present, including five grandmasters. Early in the meeting, Geller launched an attack on Spassky, blaming him for losing the title. Apart from disregarding the opening recommendations and other advice from his team, Spassky was criticised for being much too accommodating over the conduct of the match, as he fitted in with the numerous and various demands made by Fischer without consulting his team. At the end of the meeting, Spassky was not allowed to play abroad for nine months and his monthly stipend was reduced to the same level as other grandmasters.

In 1974 General Nikolai Schelokov, the then interior minister, was visiting the Karpov– Korchnoi Candidates match. He asked an official: “Who went with Spassky to Reykjavik?” He was given the answer and said: “If it were up to me, I would put them all in jail.”

It is sad that the professional relationship between Spassky and Geller, his most trusted second, should have collapsed into mutual recrimination

In concluding this article, here are some thoughts about Geller, as quoted by Sosonko in his obituary:

Vasily Smyslov: “As for the fact that he did not become world champion, this is granted from above, for you need to have a particular star in your fate. Geller was not granted this star, but he was a splendid, vivid, dynamic player.”

Mark Taimanov: “Geller had his own clearly formed creative credo; he possessed great strategic imagination, and he was utterly devoted to the game.” 

Anatoly Karpov: “Geller’s ideas were deep, although Botvinnik said to me: ‘All Geller’s ideas should be checked three times’.”

Boris Spassky: “He was very thoughtful, and under his completeness and thoughtfulness even Fischer often cracked. When Geller was on song, he could crush anyone.”

Let us leave the final word to David Bronstein. At Geller’s funeral, by the grave, Bronstein said that all his life Geller was engaged in seeking the truth, but what truth is in chess is elusive and illusory. All the same, day and night, he kept searching for it.

Acknowledgments and sources      

Grandmaster Geller at the Chessboard, published by The Chess Player (1969). Translated and edited by Bernard Cafferty.

The Application of Chess Theory, published by Pergamon (1984), translated by Kenneth Neat. This is collection of 100 games annotated by Geller. He divided the book into two halves. Part 1 comprises 64 games grouped according to opening, as he considered this would help the student. Part 2 contains all the games Geller had won (with one or two draws) against world champions.

The Nemesis – Geller’s Greatest Games. Edited and compiled in Russian by Maxim Notkin. Translated by John Sugden (English edition 2019). This work comprises all the games in The Application of Chess Theory, with a collection of 31 more recent games and some positions. Geller’s original annotations are included. Further notes are given where computer or other analysis throws further light.

The Zurich International Chess  Tournament 1953, by David Bronstein, published by Snowball Publishing (2012). Translated by Jim Marfia.

Curacao 1962, by Jan Timman, published by New in Chess (2005). Translated by Piet Verhagen.

Candidates Matches 1971, published by The Chess Player (1972). Translated and edited by Bernard Cafferty.

Bobby Fischer Goes to War, by David Edmonds and John Eidonow, published by Faber & Faber (2004).

“The Chess King of Odessa” (from Russian Silhouettes) by Genna Sosonko (third edition, 2009), published by New in Chess. I am very grateful to Stephen Moss for alerting me to this article and supplying me with a copy.

And if that is not enough there is always ChessBase  where you can find 3,221 of Geller’s games. (Many thanks to Jon Eckert for his help in this connection.) Chessgames.com also offer almost 2,500 of his games. Truly a timeless treasure trove.   

Peter Roche is a former chair and first-team captain of Kingston, and is a life member of the club.

Forty years ago, Kingston player Mike Tebb died at the board while playing for Kingston. It took a surprise visit from his widow Kate to recall that dreadful night – and to remind those who knew him of what was lost

A couple of weeks ago a woman dropped by at a chess mentoring session for under-11s which Kingston president John Foley and I were running at a local library. She had a pile of old chess books, mostly dating from the 1970s, so ancient they used descriptive notation. But they had clearly been carefully chosen and included Nimzovich’s My System and other classic texts which suggested the owner has been a discriminating book buyer and serious player.

As we talked to our visitor, whose name was Kate Tebb, an extraordinary story emerged. Her husband Mike Tebb (pictured above with his son in the year of his death) had played for Hampton in the 1970s, Kingston in the 1980s and also represented Surrey. John Foley did some research later and found old Surrey team lists which showed him keeping very respectable company in high-level county championship matches, and in the starting line-up for the Surrey Congress in the summer of 1976 his grade is given as 169. He was clearly a very capable player.

Kate told us that Mike had died from cardiac arrest at the board while playing for Kingston in November 1984. She had kept his books for 40 years and now wanted to donate them to the club. What was remarkable was that John Foley, who has been part of the Kingston club for almost 30 years, had never heard a word about this dramatic and appalling night when a routine home match against Slough had ended in tragedy. I have been associated with Kingston for 20 years and had certainly never heard it spoken of. Somehow this tragic event had been hidden away, too grim to contemplate or even recall. Now, on the 40th anniversary of Mike’s death and prompted by Kate Tebb’s visit and her donation of Mike’s beloved chess books, we want to properly remember him.

We turned to Peter Roche, who is a life member of Kingston and has given more than 50 years of dedicated service to the club, and asked him what he remembered about Mike Tebb. Not only did he remember him well and very fondly, but he had been playing alongside him on that fateful night in November 1984. Here are his recollections, spurred by Kate’s visit but perhaps suppressed for all these decades because he felt the remembrance so painful.

“Yes I remember Mike Tebb very well,” says Peter. “He joined Kingston from Hampton and quickly became a popular and well-regarded member. He played mainly in the first team and was very dependable. He helped arrange the summer programme (he was a devotee of five-minute chess). I am sure he shared the captaincy duties. I was present when Mike collapsed. We were playing Slough at Kingston and much to my surprise we had to start without him (he being very reliable). After about 20 minutes he rushed in [the match was being played at the now demolished Quaker Hall in central Kingston] with a hurried apology. He had thought the match was at Slough, where he worked. He started his game. Suddenly there was a commotion as he collapsed at the table.

“Immediately people sprang into action. One of the Slough players attempted resuscitation. We roused the caretaker to get an ambulance and from what I remember it came very quickly. There was a meeting in the next room and some senior police officers came to see if they could help. We contacted his wife to warn her that she must go to the hospital immediately. She had a young family so she had to arrange for them to be looked after.

“John Adams, a member of the club though not playing that evening, was a good friend of Mike’s, and he rang to tell me that Mike had passed away and asked what had happened, so I gave the description I have set out here. A number of us including Chris Clegg, James Pattle and Richard Harris, and I think Chris Carr attended the funeral. Your enquiry has prompted a very sad memory, though I should say that I have often thought over the years about the catastrophe and what a terrible waste of a fine life it was.”

Peter’s recollection of the evening chimed with what Kate had told us. Mike had been feeling slightly fluey a couple of days earlier, and an inquest suggested this had made him susceptible to cardiac arrest. The coroner’s report gave the cause of death as viral myocarditis, which can develop when the flu virus (on very rare occasions) attacks the heart muscle. He had played squash on the day of the Slough match and this, plus the need to rush to Kingston when he discovered the match was not being played in Slough, may have increased the susceptibility, though Kate says this is a moot point.

She says Mike was effervescent, exuberant, enthusiastic, ebullient – “all the E words!”, as Kate puts it. He was clearly dynamic: who else would play a game of squash so soon after feeling fluey? This assessment of Mike’s personality is borne out by Kingston stalwart (and current first-team Thames Valley captain) David Rowson’s recollections of him.

“It is very touching that Kate Tebb brought the books,” says David. “I didn’t know Mike very well as I went to work in Spain in 1981, but I still remember him quite distinctly as a very warm and sociable character with a great sense of humour. In particular I remember that when I returned to the club in the summer after my first year in Spain he joked about how annoying it was that I followed every move with a shout of ‘Ole!’ ” Kate says David Rowson’s anecdote is “absolutely typical of Mike’s humour”.

A few days after that first meeting, at my suggestion Kate visited the small group of us who meet every Wednesday morning to play some friendly social chess at All Saints Church next to Kingston Market Place. Kate talked with Peter Roche for the first time in many years and also gave me a batch of Mike old scoresheets, from which I have extracted the game shown later in this article. The other document she brought was a set of testimonials to Mike she had gathered after his death, and again what comes across is his exuberance and joie de vivre – qualities which make his loss all the more poignant and painful.

“I was really shaken at the dreadful news of Mike’s death,” wrote Hampton player David Mabbs. “Unusually for a chess player, Mike always found time to take an interest in other players as people, He wasn’t one of the intense or introverted players, as are so many of us. He was friendly, gentlemanly and good-humoured. He was also a good player and enjoyed his chess, and he will be greatly missed by his chess counterparts.”

Malcolm Groom, another former Kingston stalwart who now turns out for neighbouring club Surbiton, wrote: “Mike was one of those rare people who are somehow able to inject a sense of good humour and fun into any group of people. He even made turning up on a dark winter’s night after a hard day at the office in order to spend three-and-a-half hours playing chess enjoyable (well almost). I shall miss him very much.”

The then Kingston chair Bill Waterton, in a letter of condolence to Kate, referred to Mike’s “exuberant personality”, and that seems to have been the key to his character. As David Mabbs says, some chess players can be myopic and mean-spirited, soulless and self-obsessed. Mike was the opposite: full of energy and delighting in the game for its own sake, which perhaps explains his love of blitz chess.

Now we have firmly put Mike back in the club’s collective memory bank, we shall continue to celebrate his life and will set up a blitz tournament in his memory. Here are two games – both played at classical time controls – which show how good and resourceful a player Mike was. The first game, a victory in 1970 over the very strong Stephen Berry (who later became a Fide master), is taken from John Saunders’ collection on BritBase. The second I selected from the pile of scoresheets handed to me by Kate Tebb. The succinct annotations in the latter game, written in pen in a small, neat hand on the scoresheet, are Mike Tebb’s own.

Stephen Moss, Kingston club captain