Alicia Mason hadn’t played in a major Fide-rated tournament since she was traumatised by a bad loss 12 years ago. So how would a tough nine-rounder at the London Chess Classic go? Photographs by Lula Roberts

Prologue

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Fide-rated classical chess tournament is not for the faint-hearted. The under-2000 section of the 2024 London Chess Classic proved to be no exception. Before we delve into the thrills and spills, let me set the scene a little and explain how I ended up there.

Brighton, 2012. I was a bright young thing, playing in the e2e4 Congress. I had had a good tournament, and going into the last round, I only needed a draw to win my section. Playing on the White side of a Closed Sicilian, I reached the following position after over four hours of battle.

It was here, short of time, panicked and exhausted, that I resigned, upon seeing that 39. Nh7 loses to Qxg6. I seemed to be all smiles and stoicism after the game, batting away my opponent’s sympathetic overtures, but inwardly I was devastated at the loss and saw it as a damning indictment of my skills and future in chess. This feeling was further compounded when, after checking the final position with an engine, I realised that 39. Qh7! would have led to an immediate draw after 39…Rxh7 40.Nxh7, when, with the f-pawn about to queen, Black has nothing better than perpetual check .

I had learned how the pieces moved at around the same time as my baby legs first held me upright, but now, as an ambitious and highly strung teenager, I was falling out of love with the game. For quite some time, the relief of a win had paled in comparison to the despair of defeat, and I was bitter at being beaten by the same old rivals who seemed to make quantum leaps in playing strength at every tournament. My heart strained in my chest every time I obtained a good position, struggling to bear the possibility that I might once again mess it up. But this loss was the last straw. “I can’t do this to myself any more,” I decided. “I’m done with chess.”

From that day on, I barely picked up a chess piece for the best part of 10 years, and was reduced to surreptitious glances at the chess column in the Times supplement. But it seems the chess bug never really leaves you, and as for so many people it was The Queen’s Gambit and the Covid chess boom that brought me back to the game. I found solace in GothamChess, GingerGM and the Botez sisters at a time when I was living alone in a New York City apartment, barred from human interaction for weeks at a time due to US quarantine laws.

When I came back to the UK in June this year, I resolved to return to the chess world with a bang and put the Brighton 2012 ghosts to rest. As well as becoming a paid-up member of Kingston Chess Club, I watched ChessMood courses and solved Puzzle Rush problems religiously. Still, I knew that the only way to banish my demons entirely would be to play in another Fide nine-rounder. Enter the London Chess Classic.

Pre-tournament

For about a month before the tournament, I had adopted a daily training plan involving half an hour’s work on chess exercises, a game (either online rapid or classical at the club), and analysis of that game. I knew that I needed to get into the habit of playing as much as possible to prepare myself for the rigours of the tournament and subject myself to exposure therapy to get over my fear of losing.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but I felt that with sustained effort I had begun to outplay people who had comparable ratings to mine. In general, though, I wanted to pay as little attention as possible to the numbers. Those who know me from playing for Kingston will remember that I prefer not to know my opponent’s rating before I sit down to play. I also wanted to pay as little attention as possible to my own rating fluctuations, trusting that with continued hard work, the elo would take care of itself. Where I had collapsed under the pressure of trying to clinch victory as a teenager, I hoped that I would now be able to ignore the glittering temptations of prizes and rating gain and remain unruffled by the tournament situation.

Day 1

Such feats remain easier said than done, of course, and I was immediately starstruck on arriving at the Emirates Stadium that first chilly afternoon. Kingston’s very own newly minted GM, Ameet Ghasi, was waiting behind me in the bag check queue, and as I made my way up the escalator and turned the corner, I saw Lawrence Trent holding court in front of a crowd of players, and Malcolm Pein and Peter Svidler in deep conversation by the bookstall. It was a very exciting place to be, but one thing my recent arguments with Stockfish hadn’t prepared me for was how lonely I would feel, sat in a booth on my own waiting for the round to start. I can’t imagine how professional chess players handle that feeling week in, week out on the tournament circuit.

Those thoughts evaporated as soon as my first game began, and I entered combat mode. I was paired against the sort of junior who moves instantly and with palpable disdain, and gets up from the board at every turn. Still, I think I gave him more of a game than he was anticipating – close to 2000 Fide, he outrated me by exactly 200 points. His overconfidence led him to go for a hasty combinatorial sequence where I was gifted two minor pieces for a rook and pawn, and his king was at the mercy of my two bishops. I sensed that I was doing well, but didn’t fully appreciate just how well I was doing.

Here, playing White, I have the rather nice threat of 28. Bxd5, followed by 29. Nb6+ and 30. Qa3+, which will lead to mate. My opponent played 27…b6 to deal with that threat, and had I simply thrown my a-pawn up the board with 28.a4!, heading for a5 and further exposing his king, I would have had a completely winning position. Instead, though, I thought that the best course of action would be to bring my knight on d2 to a better square, and so I played 28. Nf1?, aiming to shuffle the knight around to e3. Indeed, I proceeded to fritter away my advantage over the next few moves, even blundering back the two pieces for a rook. We exchanged further mistakes until the following position was reached.

While in the previous position, I’d underestimated the extent of my advantage, here I thought that I was winning when the position is in fact at best level. My plan is h7 and Rd6+, and if my opponent plays 49…Ke7, then I would play 50. h7, threatening 51. Re8+ and 52. h8=Q, and after 50…Rh2, 51. Ra8! will win because 51…Rxh7 loses the rook to 52. Rxa7+. An old trick.

Here is how the game continued: 49… Re2+! 50. Kd3?? Rh2 51. h7 Ke5! Had I played 50. Kf4!, continuing to cover the e5 square, the game would be drawn, because my opponent would have nothing better than to keep checking me on f2 and e2 with his rook. But after 50. Kd3??, the black king reaches e5, where it is shielded from checks by the white rook, and so I can never move my rook away from h8 because I lose the pawn on h7. Once he has consolidated his queenside pawns with a5, Black can play Kf6, when if Rf8+, Kg7 is in time to stop the white pawn.

Still, I managed to fight back to this position, when I thought I should be able to draw fairly easily.

Indeed, this position is an easy draw, if I find the move 61. Rf1! Black can make no progress: for instance, if 61…e5, then 62. Re1 Kf4 63. Rf1+ Ke4 64. Re1+, and the king has to stay defending the pawn. Black can try defending the pawn with the rook, but this would allow my king back into the defence, so White is holding this ending.

Unfortunately, though, I instead played 61. Re8??, adhering to the old adage that rooks belong behind passed pawns, and after 61…Kf5 62. Rf8+ Ke4, Black is making progress. I played on for a few more moves, but sadly for me, my talented young opponent was familiar with the Lucena position, and I had to resign on move 81.

I wasn’t too downcast after this loss, though – in fact, I was proud of myself for giving my opponent a thumping good game, and after all, I’d expected to face strong players. In a strange way, it was nice to see the Lucena position played out on the board, even if I was on the receiving end of it this time. I made my way home still in reasonably high spirits.

Day 2

I woke up considerably less cheerful at 6:15am the next morning. The very late dinner after the previous night’s game and the lack of sleep were taking their toll on my body. The sun slowly began to rise as I made my trek back across London for the second round, and I found myself thinking, “Do I really want to do this? Do I really want to devote the next week of my life to this?”

I knew I had to do something to address the loneliness I was feeling. Soon before the second round was due to start, I plucked up the courage to go and introduce myself to another young woman who was playing in my section. I recognised her as Lula Roberts (known to the Internet as lularobs), a chess streamer and YouTuber whose content I enjoyed watching.

Even though she only learned to play chess three or four years ago, she’s already a WCM who has played on top board for her native Jersey at the Chess Olympiad. She also has a good eye for a chess meme, and even managed to convince Malcolm Pein (and the Mirror) earlier this year that Taylor Swift was a chess aficionado who had recently dropped the London System in favour of the Queen’s Gambit (hence the song title ‘So Long, London’). Luckily for me, she proved to be very friendly, and invited me to go for lunch with her after the morning round, which significantly eased my tournament blues.

Both of us won our second games within an hour, Lula with a deadly kingside attack, and me by default when my opponent failed to materialise. It’s always a shame not to get a game, but still, I was glad of the extra point, and if I had to win by default, I was happy it happened on the day when I was supposed to be playing two games. In stark contrast to the previous afternoon’s nerves and solitude, I could conserve my energy chatting with Lula and her friend Caitlin Reid, a fellow U2000 entrant and member of the Scottish women’s team. It didn’t seem to do my chess much good, though, as calamity struck in Round 3.

This was not a game I’d found particularly enjoyable up to this point, on the Black side of a Maroczy Bind. Now, though, I sensed that there was a way out of my difficulties. The obvious move here is, of course, 21…Nc2, counter-attacking the pawn on a3, so that 22. Bxa7 Nxa3 preserves material parity. In the resulting position, though, I was worried about the move 23. Nd4, taking away the c2 and b5 squares from my knight, when after 23…Nb1 24. Rb2 Nc3 25. Rc2, my knight is pinned.

I therefore thought I was being clever when I spotted the move 21…Rc2, when there’s no danger of my knight getting trapped or pinned after the exchange of rooks, and I assumed that 22. axb4 wasn’t possible because I could take White’s rook. So I went for 21…Rc2?? pretty quickly, and promptly received a cold shower when my opponent did in fact play 22. axb4. Somehow, I’d missed that the White rook is defended by the bishop on e3, so I’d simply lost a piece for nothing. I played on for a few more moves, somewhere between disbelief and disgust, but it wasn’t long before I felt I’d seen enough.

In fact, after 21…Nc2 22.Bxa7 Nxa3 23.Nd4 Rc3!, threatening …Bxd4+ and …Rxb3, Black is at least equal and probably better. Sometimes it can be hard to explain howlers like this, but I suspect the earlier dissatisfaction with my position, coupled with excitement at the thought that I had found a way to equalise without endangering my knight, caused the internal blunder-checking system, which is imperfect at the best of times, to go haywire. This was not a fun game to lose, but I reminded myself that even the best sometimes blunder, and that there were still six more games to play.

Day 3

I was eager to turn the tide of two games played and two games lost, and received welcome support in the form of my husband, who gamely accompanied me to the Emirates to watch me play in the afternoon. Though not a chess player himself, he appreciates any game involving extensive strategising and opportunities to ruin your opponent’s day, and he listens patiently to my post-game “war stories”, as he calls them. When he tells friends and acquaintances that I play chess, he likes to recount one memorable day out in London earlier this year, where I spent an hour so absorbed in trying to solve a particularly fiendish blindfold chess puzzle that not even the delights of Hotel Chocolat could distract me.

This was his first real foray into the chess world, though, and I was curious to see what he would make of it, and at what moment his patience would run out if I ended up embroiled in yet another five-hour struggle. Perhaps he brought some good fortune with him, as I managed to win my game in around three hours. Playing Black against the English, I didn’t play perfectly, but was able to use a tactic to bag a pawn and reach a winning king-and-pawn ending, as shown below.

“So, what did you think?” I asked my husband after the game. “Did you enjoy watching everyone play?” “I knew you were going to win,” he said. “How so?” “I counted the pieces, and saw you had one more than he did.” It seems like, in that ending, he had more faith in me and a better grasp of the position than I did at times!

Day 4

After soaring to my first win of the tournament the previous day, round 5 saw me brought back down to earth with a bump. One lesson I was taking from this tournament was to ask myself, at every turn, how I can cause my opponent as much annoyance as possible? But this game provides an example of where I failed to do this.

I have White here, and chose the insipid 12. Qd2. While the position is still fine for White after this, 12. Nh4 would have been a much more irritating move for my opponent to face. The knight is angling to come into f5, hitting the undefended bishop on e7. If Black prevents this with 12…g6, then it might seem like White hasn’t achieved all that much, as the knight will eventually have to return to f3, but this weakening of the Black kingside means that, if White ever plays Ng5, it will be much harder to dislodge the knight with h6. A knight on g5 in combination with the bishop on a2 would be a real pain for Black, who would constantly have to keep an eye on his f7 pawn and watch out for any funny business on e6. Otherwise, if Black plays 12…Rfe8 to defend the bishop, then after 13. Nf5 Bf8 14. d5 c5 15. g4, White’s kingside initiative looks to be building quite nicely.

I seem to remember briefly considering 12. Nh4 during the game, but decided to prioritise simple development instead, and perhaps this illustrates a tendency of mine to eschew concrete calculation in favour of easy moves and general principles. This is a tendency I will have to overcome if I want to take my play to the next level. In this game, after a couple more questionable decisions, like exchanging bishop for knight for no good reason and rushing to play Nd2 and f3 to defend my e4 pawn, my opponent broke through on the c-file and I slumped to a deflating defeat.

In some ways, I found this loss the toughest so far, as I wasn’t sure immediately after the game where exactly I’d gone wrong. I’d simply had the sense that my position was gradually getting worse and worse before things finally collapsed. Not quite as infuriating as a one-move blunder, but perhaps more depressing. Still, I gritted my teeth and reminded myself how much I would learn from this game, and so it proved.

Day 5

As I was preparing to head to the stadium, I received an email from the arbiters to say that my intended opponent would not be able to play due to illness, and so I had another win by default. Though I wasn’t going to complain about the extra point, I felt rather uneasy at the fact that I’d now earned two of my three points without playing so much as a single move.

I decided to make the best of it and head to the stadium anyway to cheer on Lula and Caitlin, and enjoy Peter Svidler’s commentary on the elite event. This featured the likes of Vidit Gujrathi, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, and the eventual winner Gawain Jones, along with five other world-class players. There was an amusing moment early on when GM Ilya Smirin, who was playing in the Masters event, reached over the barrier to grab a bottle of Pepsi that was clearly intended only for competitors in the elite section, and received a telling-off from the long-suffering arbiter.

By this point in the tournament, I was eager to make the long trip, take in the atmosphere and talk to people. I’d had conversations with Ameet, Peter Large (another fellow club member at Kingston), and FM Peter Sowray, who remembered me from way back when I used to attend his sessions as a junior at Richmond Chess Club. I was particularly glad of Lula and Caitlin’s company, of course. Although there has been a definite uptick in female participation since I first started playing competitive chess, and more concerted efforts to make us feel welcome, twentysomething women are still a fairly rare breed on the tournament circuit, among the sea of juniors and seasoned male veterans, and so when we do encounter kindred spirits, we tend to stick together.

Before their games started, Lula and Caitlin made use of their state-of-the-art camera equipment to take photos for their online chess content. I managed to get in on the action too.

Day 6

A rest day, and one that was much needed even after my unexpected reprieve from combat the previous day. While I’d harboured some vague dream of analysing the games I’d played up until that point, I realised that that was going to have to wait until after the tournament was over, as I was simply too exhausted.

I dread to think how those who’d played all six rounds were feeling, since I’d only played four games. In particular, it seemed to me that juggling tournament play with content creation, as Lula was doing, would be particularly draining – not only did she have the added pressure of thousands of spectators watching her every move, but after every round she’d had to dash off to film, edit and post her game recap video on YouTube and chat with viewers on her live Twitch stream. It gave me a renewed sense of appreciation for all the hard work that goes into the chess content I watch every day.

Day 7

I wanted to come back stronger after the disappointing loss in round 5, and try and get another win so I could at least say that half my points had been won thanks to my efforts over the board. Round 7 proved to be extremely tense. My opponent and I were both short of time, and though I managed to grab a couple of pawns and expose his king, my king wasn’t exactly safe either. Here is how the game finished.

After another five-hour game, I mainly felt relieved and exhausted rather than elated at my win, but despite my best efforts not to get wrapped up in the tournament situation, with 4/7 I did start to dream of winning the women’s prize. I knew that I would likely have to win my last two games to make that happen, which would be a tall order. Could I do it?

Day 8

The caption to the above photo probably gives some indication as to the answer to that question. I had forgotten my theory by move 5 in another Closed Sicilian (ghosts of Brighton 2012 revisited?), and, though I reached a reasonable position out of the opening, I severely underestimated my opponent’s attacking chances.

Unfortunately, that defeat put paid to all my hopes of a prize, but I comforted myself with the thought that I could at least try and win my last game.

Day 9

Here is the final position from my game in Round 9.

Yes, that is checkmate, and yes, I am playing White. In some ways, this game bore quite a strong resemblance to my loss in Round 5, where I’d been bothered by an annoying Black bishop on a6, got tunnel vision and started simply reacting to my opponent’s ideas, missing chances to stir up trouble on the kingside, and eventually collapsing. It was rather a sad end to the tournament, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed to lose five games and win only two (not counting the two wins by default). Lula also lost in her last game and was clearly upset with herself – I gave her a hug and told her we’d come back stronger.

Post-tournament

That last sentence, I think, is the key difference between London 2024 and Brighton 2012. While I like to think that my chess understanding has now improved to the extent that I’d have the presence of mind not to resign and to find 39. Qh7! (though stay tuned for my inevitable future article, “Why I Resigned in a Winning Position”), I want to learn from these games and carry on battling, rather than giving up chess for another 10 years.

In my more pessimistic moments since the tournament, the vast difference between some of the computer evaluations when looking over the games and my initial assessment of the position has led me to question whether the hard work I’ve put into my chess over the past few months has really resulted in all that much progress. But in my heart of hearts, I know that I’m a far better player now than I would have been had I not looked at a chessboard in 2024.

That said, the prescription for my future chess improvement is the same now as it would have been back then: in the words of my coach, Graeme Buckley, “More calculation, less panic!” In many of my games, I came unstuck when I was unduly worried by my opponent’s ideas, or played moves based on general principles rather than concrete variations. I would often analyse the same line over and over again, rather than checking all the forcing moves, and then blunder when short of time.

In 2025, I’ll continue with the training plan I’ve established and pay particular attention to my emotional state during a game and how it affects my ability to focus. If anyone reading this has figured out how to maintain the necessary self-discipline to look at all the checks, captures and threats and stay cool, calm and collected with just a few minutes on the clock, I’d love to hear from you.

Though playing in the tournament will undoubtedly prove beneficial for my chess, what was even more valuable to me was the sense of community I eventually came to feel there. I’ve made new friends in Caitlin and Lula, and I’m sure my husband is grateful that I now have other people to engage in conversation over the finer points of the c3 Sicilian and the Caro-Kann.

I know it’ll make a big difference to see friendly faces in future tournaments. While I don’t think another Fide nine-rounder is on the cards any time soon (though I’m holding out hope for Hastings next year or the year after), I do plan on entering the odd weekend congress next year, and, of course, continuing to play regularly for Kingston.

So even though the results didn’t go entirely my way this time, I think we can conclude that, from the point of view of my re-entry into the chess world, the London Chess Classic was a resounding success for me. As a wise person on Reddit recently said, “Chess is a lifelong pursuit”, and whether I win or lose, I want to continue to learn and grow.

The latest of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them. This profile is being published in three parts over the course of a month, building to a comprehensive overview of the life and career of the 10th world champion

Part 1: The young attacking genius

“Boris Spassky has had a curiously uneven chess career for a world title-holder,” said Leonard Barden in the foreword to Bernard Cafferty’s 1972 book, Master of Tactics. “Teenage prodigy, junior world champion and the youngest ever qualifier for an interzonal at 18 (Fischer later lowered the record), Spassky was already the crown prince of international chess before he was 20. Then came years of disappointments, quarrels with his trainer and chess officials, and divorce before a second surge carried Boris to the summit in 1969.”

When Spassky was playing his first world championship match against Tigran Petrosian in 1966, my best friend at school and I decided to play our own match concurrently. We played on a travelling set on our daily train journeys; I wanted the Spassky role and he preferred to be Petrosian. Unlike the real match, “Spassky” defeated “Petrosian” in our contest.

I think one of my reasons for liking Spassky was his advocacy of the Kings Gambit. My first game with it was in a Glasgow Schools Congress. I was losing at move five, winning at move 11, but lost in 23. In contrast, Spassky’s record in the gambit was remarkable, playing 30 games without loss at the top level, defeating Fischer, Karpov, Portisch and Bronstein amongst others. This Bronstein game was used in the Bond film From Russia with Love:

Boris Vasilievich Spassky was born on 30 January 1937 in Leningrad, from whence the family were evacuated after the German invasion. He learned chess at the age of five while billeted in a house with older children. Returning to Leningrad after the war, Boris began to visit a summer chess pavilion, at first watching as a spectator before playing. He recalled that there was little food at that time and he would spend all day there, being devastated when it closed in September.

The following year he joined the Palace of Pioneers, where he met met his first chess trainer Vladimir Zak. Genna Sosonko tells how Spassky credited Zak not only with teaching him the King’s Gambit and introducing him to opera and the works of Mark Twain, but also arranging financial support for his family. At the age of 10, he defeated Mikhail Botvinnik in a simultaneous. In discussing his style, Garry Kasparov suggests that Spassky liked a strong, mobile centre and free development, with Zak cultivating his attacking prowess. I think this game – played by 12-year-old Boris – is a good example.

In 1951 Spassky changed his trainer, replacing the able pedogogue Zak with the attacking genius Alexander Tolush. They had first met in 1947 in the Palace of Pioneers when young Boris, given the responsibility of transmitting the moves in a telegraph match, was also given the honour of going to the buffet to buy Tolush more cigarettes. Valentina, Tolush’s wife, recalled that having no children of their own, they regarded Borya as their son.

Viktor Korchnoi, who had turned down Tolush as a trainer in 1950, testified that he soon noticed a dramatic improvement in Spassky’s play as he fought for the initiative in the style of Tolush. Spassky continued to improve in subsequent years, coming second to Mark Taimanov in the 1952 Leningrad Championship and receiving praise from Botvinnik. Before he had even played in a USSR Championship semi-final he was selected to play in the strong 1953 Bucharest international, where he played Vasily Smyslov in the first round.

This was Smyslov’s only loss in a tournament. “Smyslov didn’t talk to me for the rest of the tournament,” said Spassky. At a later date Spassky told how instructions had been received from Moscow, after the Hungarian player Laszlo Szabo had taken the lead, for the Soviet players to draw their remaining games with each other, so Spassky drew with Tolush, Petrosian and Isaac Boleslavsky. He now qualified as an international master.

1955 was a good year for Spassky – celebrating his 18th birthday during his first appearance in the USSR Championship Final, becoming world junior champion and qualifying for the Gothenburg Interzonal. This game was played in round 6 of that USSR final, where he finished equal third behind Smyslov and Efim Geller.

Spassky narrowly qualified from the Interzonal for the 1956 Candidates Tournament, becoming the youngest to earn the grandmaster title at 18. He was now appearing in the Soviet press, recognised for chess while also studying journalism at Leningrad University and achieving sporting success in the high jump with a leap of 1.80 metres.

Everything seemed to going well for Boris at this time, but there was a serious threat to his future progress. The interpreter for the Sports Committee reported Spassky for his inappropriate remarks and questions during his foreign travels. Fortunately an official in the committee, Dmitri Postnikov, decided to give him a terrible scolding but did not take the matter further. “Postnikov was my guardian angel”, said Spassky.

In 1956 Spassky shared first place in the USSR Championship, finishing a point ahead of another rising star, Mikhail Tal, but losing the subsequent first place play-off to Taimanov. On the journey to the Amsterdam Candidates, the Soviet delegation stopped over in Paris to attend the opening of a monument to the first Russian world champion Alexander Alekhine, at Montparnasse cemetery. Alekhine was always one of Spassky’s favourite players.

In Amsterdam Smyslov won the event, losing only to Spassky, who finished joint third with four other players, including Bronstein, Geller, Petrosian and Szabo. The main “prize” for him was the granting of a two-room apartment for him, his mother and two siblings, double the size of his previous one. Tal won the 1957 USSR championship, with Spassky fourth equal. Here is a celebrated game from that tournament.

Later that year Spassky led the Soviet team to victory in the World Students’ Olympiad, where they won every match, and finished first in his USSR Championship semi-final. Spassky now looked forward hopefully to the final in Riga, which would also be a zonal for the world championship, with four places at stake. At the age of 20, the chess world was at his feet.

Part 2: Reaching the summit

The 1958 USSR Championship was a qualifier for the Interzonal Tournament, with three future world champions and eight candidates fighting for four places. Spassky started well, celebrating his 21st birthday with a win against David Bronstein before having a run of five games with no wins. In the last round, playing White against Mikhail Tal, he needed a win to avoid having to join a play-off; Tal only needed a draw. Spassky refused an early draw offer, and the game was adjourned and resumed the next day. Overpressing he drove Tal’s king into his own camp, only to find that he had created a mating net for himself.

Tal became USSR champion and began his ascent to the global throne, winning the Interzonal and the Candidates, before in 1960 defeating the reigning champion, Mikhail Botvinnik. Spassky, by contrast, would now miss out on the battle for the world crown for the next six years.

Garry Kasparov suggests that Spassky’s nervous system was not yet ready for these challenges. However, Spassky did have some good results subsequently, including second in the 1959 USSR Championship, equal with Tal but behind Tigran Petrosian. That year he also got married, and in 1960 he and his wife had a daughter. But 1960 proved to be a difficult year: he suffered health problems, some poor results and even a breakdown in his marriage. He said that he and his wife had become “like opposite-coloured bishops” and in 1961 they divorced. He also parted company, though amicably, with his coach Alexander Tolush.

Early in 1961 Igor Bondarevsky became his new coach just as Spassky was playing in another Zonal USSR Championship. Despite a good start, a run of losses meant that yet again he failed to qualify when he lost his final-round game against Leonid Stein.

Bondarevsky was a very experienced professional coach and quickly established a good rapport with Spassky, succeeding in making him work much harder in training. This game in the subsequent USSR Championship (the 29th edition, also held in 1961, from 16 November to 20 December) shows the practical application of his improved understanding, provoking Tal into a gambling attack.

Spassky had finally won the USSR Championship, defeating the second-placed Lev Polugaevsky as well as Tal along the way. He admitted afterwards that he gained a lot of confidence from this victory and demonstrated this with good results in 1962.

Spassky first played against Viktor Korchnoi in the 1948 USSR Junior Championship, losing quickly after an early blunder. It was said that the young Boris left the tournament hall distraught. They both came from Leningrad and met each other many times in subsequent years, playing their last game together more than 60 years later. Spassky didn’t need to rely on attacks for his victories. In the game against Korchnoi below, played at the Moscow Zonal in 1964, the universality of his style is illustrated by the simple knight retreat on move 12 that leaves Black unable to maintain his centre.

At his best Spassky was described as having a universal style, comfortable in all positions, perhaps because he played a wide variety of openings. As White he mostly played e4 (sometimes with the King’s Gambit), but with a third of his games beginning d4. He was known for playing the Leningrad Variation (Bg5) against the Nimzo-Indian. As Black he mostly responded to e4 with e5 and had a good record in the Ruy Lopez, but he also played the Sicilian throughout his career. Against d4 he defended the Queen’s Gambit Declined and the Nimzo. One of his most notable and successful lines as White was the Closed Sicilian, used so effectively against Efim Geller in their 1965 and 1968 Candidates Matches. Having seen these games, I also started playing the Closed line. This was game 6 of the 1968 match.

In order to qualify for his 1966 World Championship match with reigning champion Tigran Petrosian, Spassky had to play 98 qualifying games, starting with the USSR championship semi-final and ending with his match wins against Paul Keres, Geller and Tal. Coach Bondarevsky had proved successful in overcoming Spassky’s famed reluctance to overstrain himself, with results showing the benefit of his hard work.

The 24-game Petrosian-Spassky match was held in Moscow between 9 April and 9 June 1966. Spassky was the favourite to win, but suffered a narrow 12.5-11.5 defeat. Afterwards he described his opponent as “first and foremost a stupendous tactician”. The first six games of the match were drawn, but Petrosian took the lead with a win in game 7. Games 8 and 9 were drawn, but in game 10 Petrosian produced the famous finish shown below to take a two-game lead. Both players’ seconds, Igor Bondaevsky and Isaac Boleslavsky, agreed that this was the best game of the match.

Spassky then fought back, equalising when he won the 19th game. However, winning games 20 and 22 gave Petrosian the 12 points he needed to retain his title (the champion kept the crown in the event of a drawn match). Spassky had the consolation of winning game 23 (shown below), although it would be fair to say that Petrosian may have been below par having just retained his title.

In the last game of the match, Spassky tried vainly to equalise the score – though, even in the event of a drawn match Petrosian would still have retained his title – before eventually agreeing a draw on move 77.

Despite the disappointment of coming up short against Petrosian, Spassky continued to play at a high level, winning Santa Monica without losing a game later in the year, beating Bobby Fischer during the tournament. In 1967 he played 70 games, losing only with Black to Hungarian GM Lajos Portisch and his old rival Efim Geller, and in the following year’s Candidates matches he defeated Geller, Bent Larsen and Korchnoi, each by three clear games. After losing to Spassky, Korchnoi stated: “I do not doubt for a minute that we are going to have a new world champion.”

Now he would face Petrosian again, and this time he was ready. He intended to keep the Tiger under constant pressure. The 1966 world title match between Petrosian and Spassky had produced just seven decisive games. The 1969 encounter, played in Moscow between 14 April and 17 June , and once again giving the holder Petrosian the advantage of retaining his title if the 24-game match was drawn, saw 10 decisive games.

Petrosian won with Black in the opening game, outmanoeuvring Spassky in an endgame, but Spassky returned the compliment with Black in game 4. Spassky went 3-1 up in the match, but Petrosian hit back to level at 3-3. Spassky then struck a crucial blow by winning game 17 with White against Petrosian’s Sicilian Defence – a surprisingly double-edged opening to choose given that the champion was tied at 3-3 and only needed to draw the match to retain his crown. Spassky then stretched his lead to +2 in game 19 (see below), emphatically refuting another Sicilian.

Spassky and Petrosian exchanged wins in games 20 and 21 to give Spassky an 11.5-9.5 lead, while Game 22 ended in a draw. Spassky was now ahead by 12-10, meaning that Petrosian had to win the final two games to retain his title. Petrosian essayed another Sicilian in game 23, but once again Spassky got the better of the play and, when the time control was reached, had to seal a move in the position shown below.

Spassky sealed 41. c6 and offered a draw in a winning position. Petrosian, on the day of his 40th birthday, accepted the offer. Spassky, after decades of struggle, had tamed the Tiger and become 10th world champion at the age of 32. The Soviet Union had a new champion, cementing their 20-year stranglehold on the title, but little did they know that a whirlwind was about to blow away their assumptions of global domination.

Part 3: The match of the century – and beyond

Spassky was an active world champion in the years immediately after his victory. He won in San Juan in 1969 and in the Leiden and IBM tournaments in 1970. He also played the most famous game – the win against Ben Larsen shown below – of the first USSR-Rest of the World Match in Belgrade, where the elo system was used for the first time to determine seeding. Surprisingly Fischer agreed to concede board 1 to Larsen, perhaps because he had not played in tournaments since September 1968.

In round 3 Spassky blundered in mutual time trouble, turning an equal position into a win for Larsen. In round 4 he ceded his place, ostensibly due to a cold, to reserve Leonid Stein, who also lost.  Although the USSR narrowly won the overall match by 20.5-19.5, it proved a major shock to the supposedly superior (Tal on board 9!) Soviets, especially as they lost on the prestigious top boards, with Larsen, Fischer, Portisch and Vlastimil Hort all beating their opponents.

In contrast, the 19th Olympiad in Siegen, West Germany, was a personal triumph for Spassky, who won the gold medal on board 1 as part of the USSR team’s 10th consecutive victory. Kasparov considered this to be the crowning point of Spassky’s period as champion.

The sixth-round USA-USSR match, with Spassky up against Fischer on board 1, was much anticipated, and tickets sold out early. The organisers relayed the moves to a separate hall and placed four extra demonstration boards in the foyer. Korchnoi said that the Americans were so confident of victory that they arranged a post-match banquet. Edmar Mednis noted that Spassky was obviously nervous, smoking one cigarette after another. (Incidentally Petrosian extended his unbeaten record at olympiads to 90 games. His only olympiad loss (out of 148 games) was to Robert Hübner in the 1972 event.)

Kasparov thought that Spassky rested on his laurels after this, didn’t play enough tournaments, didn’t exert himself enough in training, and crucially parted company with trainer Igor Bondarevsky before his match with Fischer.

Spassky had mixed results in 1971. He was joint first (with Hans Ree) in a relatively weak Canadian Open, third in Göteborg (undefeated but behind Ulf Andersson and Hort) and, perhaps worryingly, seventh in the second Alekhine Memorial held in Moscow in November/December. Spassky had been obliged to play in this tournament by the Soviet Sports Committee, who were worried that he was not preparing hard enough for his title match. This was an incredibly strong tournament, won by the 20-year-old Anatoly Karpov ahead of Stein, Smyslov, Vladimir Tukmakov, Petrosian and Tal. In the same year, Fischer defeated Taimanov 6-0, Larsen 6-0 and Petrosian 6.5-2.5 in Candidates matches.

For the first time in a quarter of a century the world championship match would not be held in Moscow, Reykjavik being the eventual choice. Fide president Max Euwe had a difficult job dealing with Fischer’s many demands, but finally the match was set to open on 1 July. Fischer failed to turn up and only appeared on 4 July after the prize fund was doubled by a donation from a British millionaire, Jim Slater. Spassky said later that he could have claimed the match, but felt he could not consider himself a true champion by winning that way.

The match began on 11 July. Fischer blundered in the first game and was defaulted for not appearing for the second. The third was played in a separate room without an audience at Fischer’s demand. Spassky lost and then failed to capitalise on superior opening preparation in game 4. Spassky seemed broken after this and lost four of the next six games.

Game 6 may have been crucial to the eventual result. Spassky not only considered it the best game of the match, but he also joined in the applause for Fischer at the end.

Wins in games 8 and 10 meant that Fischer had now won five of the previous eight, and led 6.5-3.5 going into game 11. Svetozar Gligoric reported that “it seemed … like the end of the great Soviet chess empire”, while “Spassky seemed resigned to his fate.” The match appeared to be over, but the hall was still packed with spectators. Spassky opened with e4 and followed game 7’s Poisoned Pawn Sicilian for the first nine moves.

Spassky was not on stage when Fischer stopped the clock and waited in vain to shake hands, before leaving the stage. When Spassky appeared from behind the curtains, he was met by roaring applause. He seemed to be back in with a chance of successfully defending his title, but the hope proved illusory and this was Spassky’s last win in the match. A win for Fischer in game 13 was followed by seven consecutive draws, with Spassky fighting hard but unable to get the full point, partly due to his difficulty in meeting surprising new openings from Fischer – the Alekhine’s and Pirc Defences. A win in game 21 made Fischer the new world champion, winning 12.5-8.5.

Fischer’s success seems all the more remarkable when the details of Soviet preparation for the match were published 20 years later. After Petrosian’s loss in the Candidate’s, the Sports Committee set up in secret a group comprising ex-champions Botvinnik, Smyslov, Petrosian and Tal, together with Yuri Averbakh, Korchnoi, Keres and Alexander Kotov. The aim was to evaluate and report on Fischer’s style of play in support of Spassky’s preparation (which included a five-month training session). Korchnoi was the only one to suggest that Fischer would expand his opening repertoire. However, it may be that the breakdown in relations between Spassky and Bondarevsky was the crucial factor in Spassky’s eventual loss, a view supported by Kasparov.

After their debriefing following Fischer’s triumph, the only action taken by the Sports Committee was a reduction of Spassky’s stipend to that of a grandmaster. It may have been worse but for the influence of other Soviet sporting successes. On the day of his defeat, Valery Borzov won the 100 metres at the Munich Olympics, then the USSR beat Canada at ice hockey, and on the day Spassky arrived home the USSR won the Olympic gold in basketball, controversially beating the USA (their first loss since 1936).

Spassky returned to normal tournament chess in 1973, Tal commenting that he began as a shadow of his former self before “his complete rehabilitation at the USSR Championship“, one of the strongest ever held, winning by a full two points ahead of Karpov.  As an indication of the tournament strength, Keres, Tal and Smyslov finished on minus scores. Spassky won four games as White against Sicilians, including this one against Nukhim Rashkovsky.

In 1974 Spassky defeated Robert Byrne in the Candidates before losing in the semi-final 1-4 to Karpov. Now that Karpov was the new Soviet hope for the world title, Spassky was treated less tolerantly, especially when he refused to sign a collective letter against Korchnoi. Tournament invitations were declined by the Sports Committee and, in addition to his other conflicts, he left his wife, Larissa. He started a relationship with a French Embassy employee, Marina Shcherbacheva, and eventually was allowed to marry under the 1975 Helsinki Accords. He failed to qualify from the 1976 Manila Interzonal, and he and Marina left in September to live in France.

Spassky may have thought that his part in the world championship was over, but he received the news that he was being given Fischer’s place in the Candidates’ quarter-final. Learning from past experience, he began preparation five weeks in advance, playing training matches with Hübner and Czech-born GM Lubosh Kavalek.

Spassky fell ill during his quarter-final against Hort, played in Iceland. He was hospitalised and had an appendix removed, forcing him to request a postponement. Hort could have claimed the match, but sportingly he refused to win in this manner, played further games on resumption and lost. Spassky then defeated Portisch, qualifying to meet his old rival, Viktor Korchnoi, in the final.

This match, played in Belgrade, destroyed the previous amicable relations between the players. While the actual defector, Korchnoi, had to play without a flag, Spassky – now living in France – played under his Soviet citizenship. Spassky benefited from a strong Soviet team who were keen to ensure that Karpov did not have to face the rapidly improving Korchnoi, who called Spassky “a one-legged dissident”. After game 10 Korchnoi held a 5-0 lead in the 20 game match, before Spassky incredibly won the next four in succession. However, Korchnoi recovered his poise and went on to win 10.5-7.5. After this match, Spassky and Korchnoi did not speak for six years.

In the following title cycle, Spassky narrowly lost to Portisch and in 1982 failed to qualify from the Interzonal. His last truly strong tournament result was his win in Linares 1983 ahead of Karpov. His last game under the Soviet flag was in Bugojno in May 1984, where he discovered that he would not be selected for the next USSR vs the World Match.

In November he played for France in the 1984 Thessaloniki Olympiad, the only ex-champion present, as Karpov and Kasparov were in the middle of their marathon, ultimately abandoned match. I include the game below from the Olympiad, played for France against Australia, because I was there, attending as an accredited reporter for the Glasgow Herald and travelling with the Scottish teams. In the airport the Scottish delegation encountered Boris at the airport awaiting the hotel shuttle bus. One excitedly whispered “Isn’t that Boris Spassky?” He was on his own now – no KGB minders – and we were all a bit starstruck, even more so when he got on our bus.

Eventually one of the Scottish team could resist it no longer and boldly joined Boris on the adjacent seat. They chatted amiably until the bus reached our hotel, and it was confirmed that Boris was perfectly charming, happy to chat about chess matters with a fellow player. Leonard Barden, in his foreword to Bernard Cafferty’s book on Spassky, had written: “Your first impression of Spassky is of charm, relaxed good looks and an easy acceptance of strangers.” We witnessed this at first hand.

Spassky played all 14 games at the Olympiad, drawing 12 and winning two, helping France to seventh place. All but one of his draws was under 30 moves, leading to speculation that he now preferred playing tennis.

Spassky was now in his late 40s. He played in the 1985 Candidates and came a respectable joint sixth with 8/15, but that was just short of a play-off place and he never appeared in the Candidates again. He was in the world top 10 for the last time in 1987 – at the age of 50. He was near the bottom of the field at Linares in 1990, and thereafter played mainly lower-level tournaments, veterans’ events and exhibition matches.

The most famous (or perhaps notorious) of those was the “rematch” with Bobby Fischer in the autumn of 1992 – a match played in war-torn Yugolavia and sponsored by a Serbian millionaire. Fischer won 10-5 – he had always insisted that a world title match should be first to 10 wins, the ostensible reason he refused to defend his crown against Karpov in 1995 – and there were 15 (discounted) draws.

Both players were rusty, but Fischer’s victory was impressive given that he had barely played for 20 years (though he had taken the precaution of arranging a 10-game warm-up match with Gligoric to get used to playing with the incremental time controls he insisted on (in 1988, always ahead of his time, he had patented a clock with increments).

After the match, FIscher proclaimed himself to be still world champion, but no one was really listening any more. Playing in ex-Yugoslavia meant that he was deemed a sanctions-buster by the US government and his life as an exile was confirmed, ending with his death in his adopted home of Iceland in 2008 at the age of 64. The coincidence of his age at death and the number of squares on a chess board, where in truth he had lived his life, was commented on at the time. For Spassky the match had been a chance for one last big payday – the match was played for a purse of $5m, of which the winner took two-thirds. Spassky, thanks to 1972, is destined always to be twinned with Fischer, in some respects obscuring his own tremendous achievements, but in 1992 at least being dragged along in the wake of Fischer’s global fame proved a nice little earner.

The game below was played in 2009 as part of an eight-game rapid match between Spassky and Viktor Korchnoi that was seen as a reconciliation between the two old Leningraders, who had reached a combined age of 150 that year. Spassky said of Korchnoi’s incessant playing activity: “We were all blown out long ago, but he continues to fight.”

On 26 December 2009, in the concluding game of this match, Boris Spassky played his last competition game – a draw that made it 4-4 in the match. In the end, the two old rivals – the man who had made it to world champion and the player who had never quite made it to the top of the tree and is seen as one of the great “nearly men” in the history of chess – could, perhaps appropriately, not be separated.

After the match, Spassky said that he had lost all ambition, without which it is impossible to play chess. Korchnoi, though the elder by six years and despite suffering a stroke in 2012, ploughed on relentlessly until his death in 2016. Korchnoi lived for chess – he was still in the world top 100 at the age of 75 – but then perhaps he felt he still had something to prove. Spassky had been world champion and had nothing left to prove. He will always be seen a foil for Fischer in the great psychodrama that consumed chess in the 1970s, but to portray Spassky only in that way would be grossly unfair. He was a great champion in his own right, and one who overcame many obstacles to reach the pinnacle of winning the world title.

Afterword

I began by explaining why at the age of 15 I wanted to play like Spassky – he played the King’s Gambit and later I tried to copy his Closed Sicilian. Only later did I develop an admiration for his sportsmanship, especially as he could have won his 1972 title match by default. Thankfully his decision did not deprive us of the match that led to a chess explosion in many parts of the world, including the UK.

Understanding his difficult relationship with a system that supported his talent but suppressed his individuality, I related his life to another famous Leningrader whom I also admire. I discovered the music of Dmitri Shostakovich (actually born in St Petersburg) in the same year as the Spassky-Fischer world title match and it has since held a special place in my musical life. Shostakovich also achieved fame as a teenager with his First Symphony and fortunately, unlike many others, survived the Stalin era to produce many more great works.

Sources

The Soviet School of Chess, Kotov and Yudovich (1958)

Soviet Chess, compiled by R G Wade (1968)

Boris Spassky, Master of Tactics, Bernard Cafferty (1972)

Fischer v Spassky, Svetozar Gligoric (1972)

Russians versus Fischer, Plietsky and Voronkov (1994)

My Great Predecessors, Part III, IV & V Garry Kasparov (2004), (2004) and (2006)

Finding Bobby Fischer, Dirk Ten Guezendam (2015)

Spassky’s Best Games, Bezgodov and Oleinikov (2023)

Alan Scrimgour is chair of Kingston Chess Club and plays for the Scottish senior team

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

The second of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them. Illustration by Theo Esposito Bennett

Like many partially prepared exam students and politicians, my entry into this series on favourite players answers the question I choose to answer, rather than the one suggested by the examiner. As a child (in chess terms) of the early 1970s, I admired Bobby Fischer, who seemed to play the best and most exciting games, and broke the apparent monopoly of the eastern bloc on top-level chess. But he was not the player, or rather writer, who most strongly influenced my development.

Svetozar Gligorić was born in Belgrade in what had recently become Yugoslavia in 1923. He learned to play chess at the age of about 11 from a boarder in his mother’s house.  The family was poor, and his mother disapproved of chess, so he carved his first set with a razor blade out of pieces of cork. During the second world war he joined the Yugoslav partisan army, and ended the war – when he was still only 22 – with the rank of captain and two medals. 

He became a journalist, both as a writer, in Serbo-Croat and later in English, and as a broadcaster for Radio Belgrade. Despite his professional career, he was able to become a grandmaster in 1951. He won the Yugoslav championship on 12 occasions, and reached the Candidates tournaments in 1953, 1959 and 1968. Although he progressed no further in world championship cycles, he did have some individual successes against the elite: +4 -6 =8 v Fischer, for example, and +6 -8 =28 against Vasily Smyslov, a near contemporary. Gligorić was known for sportsmanship, sympathy and integrity. He was a rare player able to have good relations with Fischer, perhaps after showing kindness towards the raw 16-year-old at his first Candidates in 1959, and in 2019 Fide named its fair play award after him. He died in 2012 in Belgrade, aged 89.   

How did Gligoric influence my chess? In my early teens, I had very few chess books, and none on openings. So unsurprisingly, although I had been primary school champion of Southampton at the age of eight, I improved very slowly by today’s standards.  Hampshire was still in the Southern Counties Chess Union in the early 1970s (it had moved to the West of England Chess Union by 1974). Rather strangely, it happened that the 1971 SCCU championships were held in Bournemouth, a remote corner of the southern counties, which enabled me to tie for the under-14 championship with a rating of not much over 1600 in modern terms; all the far stronger London juniors of the same age were presumably deterred by travel distance and accommodation costs. 

My prize was Gligorić’s Selected Chess Masterpieces, a collection of his monthly articles for the American periodical Chess Review (his name is spelt Gligorich in the book, but I prefer to use the more common spelling). With very few chess books to read, I devoured this new one, and soon realised that it was an unusual and remarkable book.

Gligorić was noted for his own deep expertise in the King’s Indian Defence, but he brought the same thoroughness to the opening phase of all the games he presented.  He would comment on individual moves by reference to multiple games played in other recent tournaments, which for me at that age was a more effective way of learning mainstream lines than seeing a specialist opening book with tabulated variations; my memory followed the logic of the games. 

Sometimes these annotations were taken to extremes; he gave 1. e4 an exclamation mark in Larsen-Portisch, Porech 1968, commenting: ”In the middle stage of the match, Larsen came to the conclusion that he could not do much against Portisch’s excellent preparations for the Queen’s Gambit. So here he starts with the king pawn once more in the most important game of the match, even though the open systems are not his forte”. And he commented extensively on each of White’s first five moves in a game starting 1. e4 e5  2. Nc3 Nc6  3. Bc4 Nf6  4. d3 Na5  5. Nge2 Nxc4. In the very next game in the book, Keres-Schmid, Bamberg 1968, he gave Keres, who normally played 1. e4, an exclamation mark for 1. d4, to avoid Lothar Schmid’s French defence. I remember thinking that even I could earn an exclamation mark or two if that was the standard.

This was the peak period for the poisoned pawn variation in the Najdorf Sicilian. Juniors like me were imitating Fischer and playing it with either colour.  So I very much enjoyed the following two games from the book, played around six months apart. In the first game, Fischer, who had already won the tournament, came unstuck against Efim Geller, in a game played in Monte Carlo in 1967.

A few months later, IM Rajko Bogdanovic repeated the line for Black against Mikhail Tal, who was ready with an improvement.

There was real excitement for me – we might nowadays call it a sense of jeopardy – in the idea that in these very sharp positions the evaluation was unclear (in the days before computers, of course), and new discoveries could be made which would change the result. But what if Black did not go for the poisoned pawn? Gligorić showed a brilliancy in ostensibly a quieter line.

Here is the 1959 Candidates game cited by Gligorić.  Fischer was only 16 at the time, but even so, it confirms that Gligorić was no mug. Characteristically, he was too modest to mention in Selected Chess Masterpieces that he had won the game, although g4 would have been less likely to become part of the canon had he not done so.

Those sorts of games appealed greatly to me.  So when in May 1974, in a tournament at Bournemouth, by now rated about 1850, I sat down opposite Marshall Thompson, then the champion of Hampshire, rated 2180 having been 2200 for several years, I knew what to do when he played down the Parma-Bogdanovic line.

That was the most exciting game I had ever played. The time limit was 42 moves in 1¾ hours, and I recorded that at the end my opponent had half a minute remaining for seven moves, while I had less than 10 minutes. That was time trouble by my standards at that age, and I recall in my excitement banging the coffee cup at my right hand rather than the clock at my left, to the mirth of the crowd of spectators which had gathered round the board.  

The round was played in the morning, and as a hungry teenager I raced off to get some lunch before the afternoon round. When I arrived back in the tournament hall half an hour later, I found Thompson still analysing the game with the remaining spectators.  The rest was anti-climax. In the afternoon, I played a boring draw on the black side of an English with a 1750-rated player. And it was infuriating that Thompson’s grade had just slipped below 200 (in old money, 2200 now). It was nearly six years before I managed to beat someone of that strength, and by then I was 2100 myself so there was not the same underdog triumph about it. 

Unfortunately, by the mid-1970s, perhaps influenced by a crushing win by Spassky against Fischer in the 1972 match, fewer players chose the Najdorf with Black, and players on the White side were playing less critical lines against it. In more humdrum lines the Gligorić book was less help, and my progress stalled.  But its impact at a time when I was starting to play stronger adult opposition was unforgettable.

Q&A with Epsom Chess Club’s president Marcus Gosling (pictured above). Kingston’s Stephen Moss, Marcus’s friend and arch-foe in the fight for Surrey club honours, asks the questions

Kingston play in two local leagues – Surrey and Thames Valley. All our rivals in division 1 of each league are dangerous, but some are more dangerous than others. Epsom are more dangerous than most, and in the 2023/24 season they pipped us to the Surrey League title. Their triumph was remarkable in several ways. They had been promoted from division 2 the previous season, so won it at the first attempt. But even more startling is the fact that the club has only existed in its modern form for six years. It was refounded in 2018 by the then 23-year-old Marcus Gosling , the old Epsom club having foundered (like many other clubs) decades previously. In this Q&A, I ask Marcus how he managed not just to get Epsom up and running again, but to turn it so quickly into a powerhouse of Surrey chess.

Q: Cast your mind back to 2018, Marcus. Why did you decide to refound Epsom Chess Club and what did you hope to achieve?

I have always believed I am a creative person, but I probably lack the raw talent, and in truth probably the self-discipline, to be really competent in a particular field. I am always adamant to do things my own way, and that attribute is mainly a curse, but it can also be a blessing. A person’s greatest strength and biggest weakness are rarely far apart. In a competitive sense, my ambition in 2018 was for Epsom to reach Division 1 of the Surrey League within five years. This seemed laughably unlikely, not least after finishing next-to-last in our first season in Division 4.

Q: I believe the old Epsom club had originally been founded in 1929. How long did it exist, what had it achieved, and when and why did it fold?

That’s right. Here, I must pay tribute to the late Surrey League archivist Martin Cath, who was instrumental in helping me delve a little into the history of the original Epsom club, which existed from 1929-67. These records actually dated back to 1931, and it was only thanks to Streatham & Brixton Chess Club sending us a local newspaper cutting from December 1929, heralding the arrival of a new club in Epsom, that we actually managed to trace the club back to source.

The original Epsom club was led almost throughout by a legend of Surrey chess, Hector Marshall. He was quite a strong player by all accounts and was still playing despite failing eyesight until shortly before his death in 2000. I managed to get in touch with his granddaughter, who was pleased to hear that we had reformed. By an unusual twist of fate, the flat where I am living at the moment was built on the site of a large house formerly owned by Hector Marshall. When I looked through the plans before moving in, I could hardly believe my eyes. The only regret is that we don’t have a picture of Hector to hang up somewhere prominent at the club.

It doesn’t sound as though the original Epsom club won much in the way of silverware, only thrice winning the “Waechter Shield” (which may have been the third or perhaps fourth tier of the Surrey League at the time, and is now the trophy awarded to the winners of the Surrey Border League). We certainly never won the Surrey Trophy [the Surrey Div 1 title], our best finish being third in the top tier, or the Alexander Cup, where our best effort was losing to Battersea in the final in 1939.

As far as I am aware, our downfall began when a new chess club in Stoneleigh entered the fray in the 1960s, masterminded by “an ambitious and flamboyant man with a penchant for self-promotion”. Hmm, sounds familiar…

Q: Was there a community of chess players in Epsom eager for the club to be reformed, or were you taking a shot in the dark?

I had no idea, but I figured that there must be dormant chess players lurking somewhere. There are plenty of chess aficionados, and surely Epsom was no exception. The initial plan was to rely on a mixture of loanees from other clubs and home-grown players to get the club off the ground, before gathering enough momentum to stand on our own two feet. Within a couple of seasons, we were able to wean ourselves off the multi-club players and greatly expand our number of teams. We recommended this approach to Chessington Chess Club when their club was launched during the pandemic, and that has brought them moderate success too.

Q: I believe there you have one member who played for the old Epsom club. He must be very happy to see the club back in business.

Yes, that man is Mike Wickham, who is an absolute delight. Mike played briefly for the original club in the 1960s when it met at the Cricketers pub on the fringes of Epsom, before heading off to university. By the time he’d completed his degree, the club had folded. A mere 52 years later (surely some kind of record), Mike attended our reformation celebration at the Rising Sun pub and played in our first match in 2018 against Dorking. I am pleased to say that Mike has been instrumental in our rise as a club, overseeing our monthly blitz events as tournament controller, captaining various league teams, representing his county, attending the occasional congress and generally being as reliable and supportive a member as any club could hope for.

Q: You could have joined another club and happily played there. Why did you feel the need to start (or perhaps restart) a new club?

After returning from Russia [Marcus speaks and teaches Russian] a second time in 2017, I swiftly joined Surbiton Chess Club on the recommendation of Chris Briscoe, who had run the lunchtime chess club at my school. Surbiton are a fantastic entity, led by the inspirational Paul Durrant and supported by a host of other aficionados. I consider the one season I played for them in 2017-18 to have been an important step, as I was able to observe from the backbenches how a successful chess club is run. Midway through that season, the thought of setting up a new club was already germinating in my mind.

Q: Did you find other local chess clubs unsatisfactory in some way? Best not to name names – we want to keep on friendly terms with all our rivals! But was there really no other Surrey club that suited you?

Surbiton were great, but I would say that almost half the clubs in the Surrey League are poorly run and deeply unappealing to potential newcomers. I could probably go on a long rant here, so here is a short one instead.

Without wishing to appear ageist, many clubs, both in Surrey and around the UK, are in desperate need of a fresh perspective. Many seem to be run by middle-aged men, probably ex-bank clerk types, Luddites trapped in loveless marriages, lacking liveliness, libido and enough holes on their belts, angry at what they believe the world owes them. They use chess as a counterbalance – a way of taking out their frustration and disdain for everyone and everything. Running a chess club is, for them, a power trip rather than a community project and God forbid that anyone should try to challenge them. Everything they touch turns to ice. Now imagine a twentysomething woman in this environment. How long before she turns around and walks straight back out the door? This sounds harsh I know, and I am playfully exaggerating, but I really do think there are clubs who exist like this.

Q: What were your founding principles?

To be the polar opposite of what I have mentioned above. It is very important to me that Epsom Chess Club is a hospitable place with community spirit at its very essence. When a new player rocks up, we try to welcome them with open arms.

Q: What makes a good chess club?

That is certainly a harder question. I think it has to be something to do with meeting the needs of all members and this is certainly an area that Epsom can improve. Some clubs are very competition-orientated with no social element, whilst others are effectively social clubs who happen to play chess. The key is finding a good balance and regularly consulting members to hear what they have to say.

Q: Your Surrey League success has, I think it’s fair to say, been founded on having three IMs – Peter Large, Graeme Buckley and Susan Lalić – on boards 1, 2 and 3. Did you go out of your way to recruit what might be called these “bedrock players”?

It was quite funny when IM Peter Large walked into the club one day, modestly introducing himself and telling us he “played a bit online”. After challenging him to a handful of games and losing all of them, I dared to ask who was the strongest player he had faced in a tournament. “I drew with Smyslov once” was the reply. Safe to say we had a talent on our hands and it wasn’t long before the unfortunate board ones in the Surrey fourth division were finding that out too.

Graeme and Susan are more recent acquisitions, who were perhaps attracted to the story behind our revived club and wanted to be part of it. I would imagine they also saw Peter in our ranks and realised we had at least one player who would give them both a decent game. The trouble is bridging the gap between the IMs and the mere mortals, although with Peter leaving the club soon there may not be a gap to bridge.

Q: You also lured former British champion Peter Lee, who is now 80 years old, back into chess after a 50-year gap in competitive play. How did you manage that?

That was mainly down to Graeme and Susan, who know Peter quite well and live close to where he does. Many thanks to them for their efforts, not least with providing the former British champion (of both bridge and chess) with a lift to matches. As I mentioned previously, strength tends to attract strength, so having three well-known top-class players at Epsom probably had some positive effect.

I am proud that Epsom Chess Club has been able to welcome Peter and reignite his passion to compete as part of a team. He even played on top board for the Surrey Open team earlier in the season, albeit off a Fide rating dating from the early 1970s. For an octogenarian, this is nothing short of magnificent.

Q: Was your intention to grow through proactive recruitment or organically – waiting for players to come through the door?

With the exception of Peter Large, strong players rarely just walk through the door of any club. I reckon in another life I could have been a football scout – part of the fun of running a club is sourcing talent. This is helped by the fact that I am just looking for chess enthusiasts, not necessarily master-level players.

Personally, I enjoy playing in tournaments outside of the Surrey League umbrella, so get to meet quite a few players that way. In the first round of one Kensington Rapidplay event, I was paired with the brilliantly shirted and effervescent GM Stuart Conquest. The game quickly went south, but of course I did not pass up the opportunity to try to reel him in. A bit of a long shot, given that I think he lives somewhere near Heathrow airport (and was probably tempted to jump on a plane following our conversation, or even in front of it), but I would like to think I was playing the long game. Not on the board though of course.

Q: What marketing methods did you use?

A mixture of 21st- and 20th-century methods. It is of paramount importance for a modern chess club to have a strong online presence, including good SEO (search engine optimisation) and this is an area I was keen to get on top of back in 2018. Thanks to another keen member, Anthony Hunter, our website has recently been revamped, and we also have an active Twitter/X feed and a Facebook page. That said, we need to start uploading match reports like Kingston do. Maybe setting up TikTok and Instagram pages will be next.

But equally, we have relied a little on printed flyers and strategically placed banners outside the club on match nights, as well as the occasional public event. Last summer, we set up a few boards in Epsom town centre, but that wasn’t particularly successful. However, one of our most active and supportive members, David Flewellen, was recruited at a sort of village fête.

Q: What innovations did you introduce? I recall your club videos and also your electronic scoreboard at matches. Were you always determined to do things differently?

We can certainly do more in this area, but for sure I am determined for Epsom to remain a lively and innovative club. I always imagine myself as a new member stepping through the door for the first time – would I see a vibrant group of people or a glorified morgue? When I enter the club, would I be warmly greeted and introduced to other members or just ignored? From next season, we hope to bring back a projector screen and also a “welcome board” by the front door, explaining in writing what is going on at the club that night. I also want to introduce club merchandise for extra publicity, which is something that London clubs such as Battersea and Hammersmith do well. Maybe we could even shell out on the odd DGT board.

Q: With so many very strong players, where does that leave the rest? How does a club satisfy the needs of both the elite player and the less strong player? How can a club appeal successfully to IMs, 2000-strength players and 1500-strength players. Can it be one club, or is it a club with two or even three layers which in reality rarely intersect?

In all honesty, that is something Epsom is yet to master and we have paid the penalty by losing one of our IMs [Peter Large] and a few of our beginner-level members. I think Kingston are the gold standard in the Surrey League in this area, in the sense that top players are catered for with invitational events and all other members can attend lectures on a fairly regular basis. Our most successful whole-club events have been our blitz tournaments and Christmas meals, which bring together the whole club. A big thank you to Mike Wickham and Susan Lalić (and not forgetting her husband Graeme Buckley), who have been in charge of those events.

Q: Where do juniors fit in the club? I know you have a junior club and teach chess yourself. Are you satisfied with the club’s junior offering – something which at Kingston we are still striving to get right. Do you feel you have cracked the puzzle?

From unveiling a new Epsom Junior Chess Club with barely a dozen children in October 2019, we now have over 70 pupils attending our junior sessions, which I run with support from our punctilious club secretary David Flewellen and upcoming teenager Maya Keen on Thursday evenings. Both classes have been fully booked every term since the pandemic, and there are even more pupils on the waiting list. I am constantly staggered by the amount of interest, and without wishing to toot my own bugle I am immensely proud of this – it is a very pleasing endorsement of my chess teaching.

One thing I should mention is that I have always run the junior club independently, ie as a business opportunity, and parents pay me directly. I then feed the strongest juniors into the adult club setup (without saturating it). Currently we have around half a dozen children regularly competing in the Surrey League and doing very well. All the adults are immensely supportive of the juniors who play alongside them. This is different to at many clubs, where the junior wing is more closely tied to the adult club and is used as a money-making scheme for it, while the person in charge of teaching the kids is often an underappreciated volunteer.

I have enjoyed writing chess books for children too – probably the best ones I have written are Rambunctious Rooks and Quixotic Queens and Lunar Octopuses Can’t Play Chess.

Q: You have been successful at attracting women players. How have you achieved that?

Yes, I think we have more female players than the rest of the league combined. Just treat women with respect, involve them fully in club events, listen to what they have to say, meet at a comfortable venue in a well-lit area and they are more likely to enjoy coming along regularly. We are pleased that our club treasurer and diversity officer, Lucy Emery, has been asked to join the Surrey League board – a long overdue decision – and I am satisfied that positive steps are being taken to diversify the decision-makers in the SCCA.

Q: What can chess clubs – and the sport generally – do to become more female friendly?

Shut down the bigots more effectively. Unless misogynistic and abusive players and fans are identified and excluded, progress will remain slow and insignificant.

Q: How has running the club affected your own chess? My sense is that you haven’t progressed quite as much as you would have done if you were just concentrating on your own game.

It is certainly true that my own game stagnated some time ago, although that is in part due to teaching chess for a living. After teaching the beloved game five days a week, studying it in the remaining hours feels like a busman’s holiday. That said, I do immensely enjoy playing and I think there is progress still to be made, if only I could be bothered to set my mind to it. I know I won’t reach master level, but I enjoy the game nonetheless.

Q: Do you ever think you made the wrong choice: that you should have concentrated on your own play rather than on running a club?

Chess has never been the most important thing in my life – I have a number of other interests and hobbies – but it is somewhat true that I have neglected many of these to put plenty of effort into running Epsom Chess Club. That said, I get almost as much pleasure out of seeing my students and team-mates play well as I do from my own games. This is probably because my games aren’t especially pleasant to witness.

Q: What are your ambitions now for your own game? To get to 2000 ECF? To beat your eternal rival Peter Lalić?

Yes to both. Reaching 2000 ECF is a realistic target and I am almost within touching distance now. Whether I get there in the near future is another question, but I reckon it can be done. As for failing to beat Peter Lalić, that is surely one of the three certainties of life, along with death and taxes. It is a rivalry that dates back many years to our school days and Friday-evening matches in the Briant Poulter League. Peter and I are similar in some ways (other than sharing a birth year, 1994): I think he is very creative on the board but I am much more creative away from it.

Q: You are very much all or nothing when it comes to running Epsom. You have high standards and want it to succeed. You have strong administrative allies at the club, but I think it is fair to say that much of the dynamism at the club relies on you. You have admitted that this can be draining. Does the amount it is taking out of you worry you?

I don’t particularly see the point in accepting mediocrity. Creating a chess club was the easy part, but making it successful is a different kettle of fish. I could take the easy way out and leave the dirty work to everyone else, but that isn’t really my style. However, the Epsom committee is superb. I have already mentioned Mike Wickham’s evergreen tendencies, but David Flewellen is absolutely tremendous at putting the club philosophy into practice and engaging with members in a positive way. I should not forget Lucy Emery too, for her hard work behind the scenes, namely managing the club’s finances. I could also mention many more members.

If I were to have a meltdown and step away from Epsom, there would be a plethora of dynamic members willing to drive the club forward. That is immensely reassuring and allows me to delegate responsibility a whole lot more these days, which is a lot better for my own well-being.

Q: Running a club and really trying to push it forward is something of a Faustian bargain: one enjoys the challenge but knows that it is exhausting and often frustrating. Do you ever reach a point of wondering if it’s all worth it?

Winning trophies brings a lot of joy to members, as everyone at the club is invested in how all of our teams are getting on, no matter what level they are. Usually at least one person is able to provide live updates on a particular match via our club WhatsApp group, and members regularly chip in with humorous and encouraging comments. I am fortunate not to be the only Epsom member with drive and determination, so together we are able to share the workload and continue to push the club forward.

Q: The Dutch GM Hans Ree said chess was a game “worth wasting your life on”. Can the same dictum be applied to running a chess club?

I don’t feel I am wasting my time at all, and in fact I am hugely proud of the community that has flourished at Epsom Chess Club – a group of people who otherwise would never have met or be playing chess at all. What matters most to me is that members look forward to attending the club – for some it is perhaps the highlight of their week. As for chess itself, I regularly dream about those cursèd 64 squares and playing in imaginary tournaments in made-up places that have been amalgamated in my mind – I cannot escape chess’s grip for long. I sometimes even “sleep-teach”, where I start reciting the Lucena position to an imaginary audience whilst half-asleep. Perhaps I should be worried!

Q: You have suffered considerable problems with venues since the clubs was reformed. Can you briefly explain the problems and do you feel you now have a venue, the Epsom Christian Fellowship, which will offer long-term stability for the club.

Yes, we have been round Epsom more times than Lester Piggott. The struggle to find a suitable venue is an issue that every chess club knows all too well. Until recently, I was of the opinion that pubs were the most natural stomping ground for chess clubs, with serious matches played in a separate function room and casual games in the bar. However, pubs tend to be more profit-orientated than places like church halls and community centres and of course chess players are naturally ascetic and stingy when it comes to buying drinks.

We were initially hampered by a lack of funds, having opted to keep our annual membership fees low, so I often orbited Epsom searching for quid pro quo agreements with down-at-heel pubs, who were desperate for extra trade. This once led to an embarrassing situation where we spent less than a month at one venue, which turned out to be entirely unsuitable for our needs. However, things are finally looking up, as our current venue – Epsom Christian Fellowship – is ideal.

Q: Is it fair to say that half (perhaps even more than half) the secret of running a chess club is finding a good venue?

Yes, that is probably true. An ideal venue would be close to the town centre and a railway station, quiet, well-lit, not too expensive, accessible to disabled players, junior-friendly, with separate areas for serious and casual games. But of course, it can be nigh-on impossible to tick all those boxes. “The Fellowship” (as we call it) is as close to perfect as we are likely to get.

Q: As you know, Kingston has just completed a hat-trick of victories in the Alexander Cup. Four other clubs have completed that hat-trick – Clapham Common, Richmond, Mitcham and Redhill. Of those, only Richmond still exists and even they are now based in Teddington. I sometimes dwell on this memento mori. Chess clubs come and go. Does that worry you and how does one future-proof them? What is the secret of creating a sustainable club?

Ultimately it comes down to how many people are willing to shoulder the administrative burden. If one key member leaves, does the club have enough cylinders to run on, or will it conk out and splutter to a halt? Moreover, as I have mentioned previously, involving younger members in running the club and listening to their ideas is the best way to prevent stagnation. At Epsom, we also fundraise whenever possible – for example, we regularly make £40-£50 in donations at our blitz events and cleared £70 with an impromptu raffle at our AGM last month.

Q: You have said that winning the Surrey League is just the beginning for Epsom. What are the club’s ambitions now?

Next up is the 4NCL, which is a decidedly tougher world to conquer. The club has agreed to fund the entry fee and there are quite a few takers already. We will have to start at the bottom, but should rise fairly quickly if our stronger players are keen to take on the challenge.

However, we are looking at what other clubs in the Surrey League are doing better than us. For sure, there will be an Epsom Invitational event sometime in the next couple of years, following in Kingston’s footsteps, and we have plans to launch an Epsom Congress in 2025 to counter Guildford’s latest venture.

I also think it should be possible to re-establish a national club knockout competition, perhaps with regional early rounds and culminating with a semi-final and final at a central location. No doubt there are other ideas I have neglected to mention.

Q: You are on the verge of turning 30. Will you be running Epsom with the same energy and will to succeed at 40, or will others have to step up with their own vision for the club? I sometimes jokingly refer to you in match reports when we play you as President-for-Life, but are you?

I never like to look too far ahead actually. I don’t like the feeling of being on train tracks towards a specific goal – my interests and ideas change on a daily basis. I did laugh when you called me “president-for-life” in a recent match report, although I think that is less true nowadays with such an armada of brilliantly supportive members at Epsom. When we reformed in 2018, the joke was that everyone would vote on something and then I would make the final decision. Nowadays, I try to refrain from being too precious about my vision for the club. Maybe one day I will get off the Epsom merry-go-round for good. I just hope I don’t morph into the bitter, cantankerous ex-bank clerk type that I mocked earlier on. If I do, just shoot me.

The first of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them. Illustration by Theo Esposito Bennett

One of the first chess books I ever owned was not really a book at all, but a very slim booklet, produced by the Soviet press, with minimal production values, which somehow found itself in a bookshop in London in 1969. It contained the games of the recently concluded world championship match. The contenders were the ninth champion, Tigran Petrosian, and his successor, Boris Spassky.

I understood few of the moves, but that added to the mysterious fascination of the event. If the play of these two masters had been at all comprehensible to me it would have meant that there was nothing exalted about it. Likewise, I felt somehow – or rather read somewhere – that Petrosian was himself a player of special mystery. The American chess writer Irving Chernev, in another of my early chess books (The Most Instructive Games of Chess ever Played), had encouraged this belief by his comment on the game Petrosian-Korchnoi, 1946: “Petrosian must have the spark of genius! How else could he, with a few mysterious moves, cause the quick collapse of so eminent a player as Korchnoi?” I wasn’t aware at the time that in 1946 Korchnoi was only 15 years old.

In 1946 Petrosian himself was only 16 or 17. His already exceptional talent had its roots in a very tough childhood, as described by the man himself in an interview in Life magazine in April 1969. According to this, his Armenian parents were illiterate and he was orphaned at a young age. Growing up in wartime Tbilisi, Georgia, he had to work as a road-sweeper to earn some roubles, or perhaps kopeks, to survive. This was clearly a formative experience.

“I started sweeping streets in the middle of winter,” Petrosian recalled, “and it was horrible. Of course, there were no machines then, and everything had to be done by hand. Some of the older men helped me out. I was a weak boy. And I was ashamed of being a street sweeper – that’s natural, I suppose. It wasn’t too bad in the early morning when the streets were empty, but when it got light and the crowds came out I really hated it.”

Petrosian was one of the golden generation of Soviet players who peaked in the 1960s. This also included Viktor Korchnoi, Mikhail Tal, Spassky and Efim Geller. All of them grew up in hard times: the second world war and the final years of Stalinism. To those of us who followed the chess of that era, each player seemed to have a distinct personality and style, but Petrosian’s style was probably the most singular.

One might speculate as to whether the experiences of his early years had an influence on this. With the kopeks saved from his road-sweeping he had bought Nimzowitsch’s My System, and he often afterwards stated how significant that positional chess manual had been for him. In his games there is usually an emphasis on the permanent features of the position – pawn structures, strong and weak squares, the long-term relative values of the pieces and so on. Curiously, like Mikhail Tal, Petrosian was known for his sacrifices, but, unlike Tal, Petrosian’s were often defensive, the most famous being his exchange sacrifices. Again, in contrast to Tal, Petrosian sacrificed material not to gain time but for long-term positional reasons.

As an example, here is the position after White’s 25th move in the game Reshevsky-Petrosian from the 1953 Candidates’ Tournament, Zurich:

However, with Petrosian it can sometimes be difficult to say whether a sacrifice like this is defensive or offensive. His game against Czech (and later German) grandmaster Vlastimil Hort from the 1970 European Team Championships is an example. Petrosian is Black and plays the Winawer Variation of the French Defence.

One reason Petrosian’s style attracted me was that commentors often referred to his deep understanding of the mysteries of positional chess. Of course, as a novice player, I was far from understanding even some basic aspects of the game, let alone its deep mysteries, but I was hopeful that studying Petrosian’s games might initiate me into some of these.

One aspect of his play which I could hope to find myself copying at my own undistinguished level was his pragmatism, in particular his readiness to make the moves required by the position even if they looked ugly or humbling. Petrosian seemed to be saying that it was OK to retreat a piece or to repeat a move if necessary. The following position in the fourth game of the world championship match against Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963 is an example of this.

In retrospect, I think another reason why I was drawn to Petrosian’s style of play was my misconception that if you were a master of strategy you didn’t need to worry so much about tactical details – and I was weak at tactics. In fact, as many commentators have noted, Petrosian was actually a superb tactician. You can’t base your game on strategy if the tactics are wrong.  In addition, it’s been pointed out that Petrosian’s image as a purely defensive player is false. He could also play attacking combinations and, according to Spassky, “It is to Petrosian’s advantage that his opponents never know when he is suddenly going to play like Mikhail Tal.”  

The 10th game from Spassky’s world championship match with Petrosian in 1966 must have been the kind of thing he had in mind. Petrosian has White against Spassky’s King’s Indian Defence.

Interestingly, Petrosian had perpetrated a very similar combination 10 years before on Vladimir Simagin (Petrosian-Simagin, Moscow Championship play-off 1956):

For more than a decade Petrosian fought his way through zonals, interzonals and candidates tournaments against his peers, until he finally qualified to play Botvinnik for the world title in 1963. He won this match convincingly 12.5-9.5. It might be said that he was fortunate that Botvinnik’s right to a return match had been abolished by Fide, but Petrosian proved he was a worthy champion by defending his title against Boris Spassky in 1966 with a score of 12.5-11.5. He lost to Spassky in 1969, but he remained one of the top players in the world until his death in 1984 at the early age of 55. He won the Soviet Chess Championship four times; the only players to record more wins were Botvinnik and Tal with six titles.

The ways in which Petrosian is sometimes described make it seem as if he inhabited a chess world of his own. This could be seen as implying either his limitations (he is often regarded as too cautious, with a very high percentage of draws) or as a sign of his unique understanding of the game. I have to accept that he did draw many games, but he also lost very few (his record playing for the Soviet Union in 10 Olympiads was +78, = 50, -1).

To conclude, in my view, playing through his best games can enrich any player’s understanding of chess’s infinite possibilities. This was brought home to me again recently when Kingston’s head of training, FM Julian Way, led an online discussion of the fifth game of the match with Botvinnik. It was a great choice;  there is so much to learn from it.

John Nunn (left) with the Provost Lord Mendoza

Grandmaster John Nunn has been made an honorary fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, the highest award that a college can make. It symbolises recognition of the enormous contributions John has made to chess as well as his academic achievements. John can place this honour alongside that of honorary life vice-president of Kingston Chess Club. The college interviewed John Nunn last October, and he explained that the difference between playing chess as a young man and now is that once it was about improving and learning whereas now it is managed decline.

John played for Kingston Chess Club as a junior, winning the club championship in 1969 and 1970. He went up to Oxford in 1970 to read mathematics at the age of 15, the youngest undergraduate since 1520. He became a grandmaster and was awarded his doctorate in the same year, 1978, when he was aged 23.

John kindly returned to play for Kingston in the 2018 Alexander Cup final. He won his game in a narrow defeat to Surbiton. The previous time John had played for us was in 1974, a golden period for the club when it won both the Surrey Trophy and the Alexander Cup. The gap of 44 years in games played for the club must be a record. Kingston finally captured the coveted cup again in 2022.

John Foley

Chris Briscoe v John Nunn, Alexander Cup Final, 2018

A grandmaster class in defence. Chris Briscoe goes all out in a kingside attack, but John Nunn has it covered.

John Nunn v Matthew Sadler, Lloyds Bank, 1993

John Nunn at his peak at brushing aside the 19-year-old Matthew Sadler, who went on to be one of England’s strongest grandmasters.

See also: Why I gave up chess because of John Nunn