Daaim Shabazz’s Triple Exclam!!! The Life and Games of Emory Tate, Chess Warrior may be short on great games, but it provides a compelling picture of a remarkable chess life

Michael Healey

“Russian chess players use the somewhat untranslatable word творец [tvorets] to describe a particularly inspiring chess player. A tvorets prioritises elegance over rating points, values the quality of his games rather than his standing in the tournament. Above all a tvorets is someone who keeps the beauty of our game alive, inspiring us to follow in his footsteps. Emory Tate was most definitely a tvorets.” – GM Daniel Naroditsky 

Emory Andrew Tate Jr, aka “Dennis” aka “The Exclam kid” aka “Emory Mate” aka “Indomitable Warrior” aka “Tactical Assassin” aka “ET the Extraterrestrial”, tvorets, was an American IM, martial artist, intelligence officer, poet, father, drunk and general weaver of chess dreams. He claimed the only chess book he ever read was Vladimir Vukovic’s Art of Attack in Chess, and this is born out by the games we’ve been left. He distrusted computers and databases, but took the scalps of many grandmasters. He died in 2015 at the age of 56 after a heart attack playing chess. Opening theoreticians will be aware of his contribution, Alekhine’s Defence Tate variation, an early rook development: 1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. c4 Nb6 4. a4 a5 5. Ra3.

To the world at large, however, he is now more famous for producing Emory Tate III, aka Andrew Tate. He was the father of one of the most influential and controversial figures of our times. 

Tate the father ticks a lot of the “tortured genius” boxes. From a good family, ill-disciplined but brilliant in high school, he achieved a scholarship to Northwestern University in Illinois at 17, but dropped out both here and then at Alabama University. He joined the US air force and entered intelligence, picking up Russian in a record time of three weeks (one of his eight languages). While based in the UK he snuck away to Camden for blitz with Limey locals, among them IM Malcolm Pein (who shares his memories in the book and contributes an analysis of one game). He formed a family, took them back to America, separated from his wife (who returned to England), split acrimoniously from the air force, and continued his life as a chess player and teacher, taking cross-country buses to tournaments and living the life of an eccentric, very much at home among chess players. 

As an enjoyer of American writers focusing on this character type (Hubert Selby Jr, Charles Bukowski, John and Dan Fante), Tate very much appeals: the genius drunk living on the edge, circling the drain of life and finding beauty amidst the grime, loving and hurting everyone around him, exhilarated to suicidal from page to page. Reading through the book, the darker side is periodically hinted at: the paranoia and drinking, depression and resentments, critics and confrontations, not just involving Tate but fellow chess road warriors such as GM Aleksander Wojtkiewicz too. But we are mainly presented with the positives, chief among which are, of course, the games, such as this one against GM Leonid Yudasin in 1997.

Various Sicilians with both colours make up 20 of the book’s 35 full games, which give full rein to Tate’s penchant for sacrifices. He also shared my own desire for the holy move g5! (as did Fischer), as demonstrated in his win here against Alexander Beltre in 2001.

The main narrative thread is the paean to Tate, climaxing in a dramatic near miss of a GM norm in Curuçao 2007. Here, with White, he baffles GM Jan Gustafsson:

The question is presented: why was this man, a larger-than-life genius on and off the board, who played with such flair and scalped so many grandmasters (he claims about 80) not a grandmaster himself (he managed only – only! – IM)?  Along the way he is regularly compared to Tal and Alekhine (for their gamestyles and lifestyles) but also Fischer (showing more determination against Russians). “You’re afraid of success,” he was told. “You could be the first black grandmaster, but you’ll never become a grandmaster unless you get serious.” Serious? This was a man who ended up in positions like this, as Black against Glenn Bady (somehow, the game was eventually drawn):

The book’s tendency towards hero worship is a definite feature of American chess culture (try disparaging Fischer or Nakamura to any US player). The über-competitiveness and trash-talk also comes across (play chess online and stars and stripes tend to be a decent predictor of insults in the chat). We’re constantly told people’s scores and placings in open tournaments, using a strange match system of 7-2 rather than 7/9. There is only one game given from a team match, something truly bizarre compared with our own domination by league chess culture. Tate himself is constantly aggressive, trying to dominate on and off the board with words and pieces, often simultaneously. Everything is a fight, even with his friends. Here he is in action in 2013 against GM Artur Chibukhchian.

Tate clearly had a remarkable ability to impress himself on an audience, resulting in legions of fans on and offline. Not only his moves, but his general patter and joy were infectious, sprinkled with cheeky expressions. Apart from the eponymous “Triple exclam!!!” here are a few other Tate-isms:

Light laser: light-squared bishop
Swizzle sticks!: castling
Sweeper/sealer: a “tai-chi pawn move”
ROVER: Rook-up-and-over
Intruder alert! Intruder alert! (with klaxon)

After meeting in 2009, Tate formed a friendship with the American rapper RZA, legendary founder of the Wu-Tang Clan, probably bonding over chess, philosophy and martial arts. For the youth and aged among you, Wu-Tang were a disparate group of competitive street rappers who shared an appreciation for all the above. Indeed their debut album featured Da Mystery of Chessboxin‘.

When you look into the Clan, the sense is of a brotherhood of young black fatherless men, dropouts in and out of jail, becoming a mutually supporting family, going their own way and working together in an often predatory record business. They had built up their skills by travelling the New York boroughs competing against any contender in battle rhymes in front of an audience, before the best were selected for the Clan, with a famous promise from RZA that if they gave him five years of their lives, he’d take them to the top (he did). Did Tate wish he’d met RZA decades before, to focus him on that GM title?

This is something else that comes across strongly in the book – the plethora of references to a community of black chess players, not just in the US but across the world. “Tate’s Black Imperative”, “Rest in Power” and “The Black Bear School of Chess” mark out this especial American phenomenon. The need to support each other in the quest for rating, prizes and titles even led Daaim Shabazz in 2001 to create a website called The Chess Drum. Tate felt great solidarity with Pontus Carlsson of Sweden and Amon Simutowe of Zambia before he’d even met them. Back in America, future GM Maurice Ashley credited Tate for berating him into a switch from 1. c4 to 1. e4. When he plays other black players, another layer of meaning and importance is added:

I was lucky enough to play a few games with Simutowe, aka the “Zambezi Shark”, while he was at Oxford, sharing the spectators’ hysterics at various sound effects (the helicopter and Bruce Lee in particular). Were some of these adapted from the time he spent with Tate in the US?

One suspects this is the world Tate was happiest in – the fun, silly, competitive, adrenaline-fuelled buzz of blitz, a crowd of adoring spectators at hand. Yet his pride and ambition thirsted for achievement in classical chess, both in titles and prestige. He repeatedly brought up his five US Armed Forces Chess Championship titles. At one point he runs out of the tournament hall to celebrate a win over IM Georgi Orlov, noted for his expertise in the Black Knights’ Tango. “I beat the Tango guy!”, Tate shouts, determined to instantly demonstrate the game.

As the story comes to a conclusion, the tone becomes palpably darker. Tate himself was prone to a sense of foreboding about his end: “When you screw up the opening and the middlegame, then you’re going to have a bad endgame.”

A decade ago Simutowe put out a shortlist of his best games, intending to work on an autobiography. Sadly Tate did not compile his own games (he played in roughly a thousand classical tournaments, as well as rapids later in his career), so what remains are those collected and commented on by others (bar three taken from Tate’s lectures, with his own unique patter). There are also some tactical problems taken from his games but, quite frankly, there aren’t many jewels.

“I hope that for our younger students and our aspiring players, they will study my play and emulate my style,” said Tate in 2006. “I hope I’ll have a lasting influence. I understand that I’m creating a legacy per se, and I’m very aware of that. There is never a time when I play that I’m not aware of that.” So let this be a lesson to all of us: if you think you have games or positions which will be of interest to the wider world, get them organised and ready to go. Death always wins in the end.

I enjoyed the story of Tate and his world, more so than the actual games. It’s a wonderful tribute to the man that so many have contributed to this book in so many ways; Tate clearly touched many, many lives. We’ll leave the last words to his son, Andrew (Emory III): “The only thing that makes me feel better is knowing that he doesn’t know he’s dead. If he did, he would be furious!”

Larry Evans was just 16 when he wrote his first book – a self-published monograph on the great Vienna tournament of 1922. Some of the analysis is a little wayward, but it’s still a remarkable achievement

Michael Healey

This season I have been mainly losing to people younger than myself. Other people as well, but it’s the youngsters doing the most damage. In revenge, I felt the need to savage a book written by a teenager.

In 1948 Larry Evans, aged just 16, was already a strong player. In three years he would be US champion, then go on to become an IM, a GM, US champion a further four times, and a second to Bobby Fischer. He would also become one of the most celebrated chess columnists and writers, famously co-authoring Fischer’s My 60 Memorable Games (which I still have not read).

As part of his development, the teenager not only discovered the 1922 Vienna tournament‘s scores, but took it upon himself to annotate each of the 103 games, and then self-publish the result. At 16! As Evans later admitted, “Youth is so presumptuous!” Sixty-two years later, he was asked to review his first work for a new edition of Vienna 1922, with computer assistance, sadly dying before the result was published. Thus this is both Evans’ first and last book – an alpha and omega one might say.

Vienna 1922 was a 15-player all-play-all tournament featuring a lot of big names, though lacking Capablanca and Lasker, who had contested the world championship the previous year. The field was as follows, with Chessmetrics December 1921 world ranking in brackets: Alekhine (3); Rubinstein (4); Tartakower (6); Tarrasch (7); Bogoljubow (10); Spielmann (11); Maroczy (12); Réti (13); Grünfeld (20); Sämisch (23). Bogoljubow and Rubinstein were perennial world championship contenders; Alekhine would succeed to the title in 1927. Some other names may also ring bells!

Completing the field were local bunnies Sándor Takács, Heinrich Wolf, Imre König, Hans Kmoch and Vladimir Vuković. Kmoch and Vuković went on to become better known as chess writers. Kmoch’s most notable book is Pawn Power in Chess, published in 1956, while Vuković produced two of the most famous chess books of all time – The Art of Attack in Chess (1963) and The Chess Sacrifice (1968). 

In Vienna 1922, Evans’s comments are pithy, but usually humorous and accurate in equal measure. Each round is given a succinct summary, and each game a brief prologue. So what happened? Here is the scoretable:

This was to be Rubinstein’s last great hurrah. He won five in a row between rounds 10 and 14, and went undefeated all tournament, but was clearly leading a charmed life in some games. Tartakower was a deserved second, hunted down after a start of 6.5/7. Third was … Wolf?! Indeed, Wolf led the tournament in round 10, only to receive 0 from the next two games. Though several games from this tournament made his own best games collection, Alekhine lost a whole three games, despite benefiting from a bye against Spielmann, who missed the last two rounds due to illness. It is quite clear that König and Kmoch suffered, even when their games were looking promising, and sought out draws whenever possible. Neither won a game. Maroczy had a very solid tournament, only losing one game. 

Whilst going through the book I realised the drama of the tournament wasn’t coming across very well, so I made my own progressive (if slightly messy) scoretable.

Here I discovered one issue with the book: several round summaries feature the wrong match pairings and results. The table I constructed demonstrated just how well Tarrasch had finished (six wins and two draws in the second half of the tournament). In round 10 he defeated Réti with a lovely king march.

34. Kh2 Nd6 35. Rg7+ Kh8 36. Rd7 Nb5 37. Kg3 Nxc3 38. Kf4 Nb5 39. Ke5 Re8 40. Kf6. Black resigns. The plan is Kf7 and Bg7#. If Rg8 Kf7 and the threat of Rd8 is game-ending.

The openings played are testament to their era and the influence of “hypermodern” ideas. Because these ideas were new, openings can look inaccurate or overindulgent to modern eyes. However, the differences in strength are also a factor. Weaker players strive for drawish lines; stronger players play some slightly fishy stuff. For this reason, many of the most entertaining games are those against König and Kmoch, whom everyone was clearly desperate to dispatch. This was how Rudolf Spielmann, with Black, did the job against Kmoch in round 4.

This was not the only game where I had cause to doubt the teenager/septuagenarian’s commentary. In round 9, Kmoch was again the victim of a crazed stronger player, Ernst Grünfeld:

As the tournament progressed I found myself really rooting for Kmoch, only to be disappointed each time. The summary before Vuković-Kmoch pretty much covered being a Kmoch fan (“Black hangs his queen!”). I genuinely bashed my head into the table. 

There were a number of blunders throughout – possibly because it was a long tournament, but more likely because back then they didn’t register thousands upon thousands of tactical puzzles and tomes of theory. They had to reason things out themselves, without a bank of patterns and tricks. Sometimes it’s utter nonsense, as in this game between Vuković and Spielmann.

The positional chess can be quite impressive though, as in the following game between poor old Kmoch and Siegbert Tarrasch.

Certainly, as a disciple of chaos myself, I didn’t really trust young Evans’s nous in the crazier positions. Which was a lesson in itself: given most chess books these days are written by grandmasters with supercomputers, it’s useful to be able to challenge what you’re being told, and sometimes find out you’re actually correct. Sometimes.

As you might expect from conversion of an old descriptive book without diagrams to algebraic with plentiful diagrams, there are regular typos; these don’t detract from the games though. In all seriousness, to achieve what he did in this work is quite astonishing. Evans the teenager found the time, determination and sheer cojones to analyse games from the top tier of chess a mere 26 years before – games by players who, he admits, were at that stage all stronger than he was. Not only did he contribute to chess scholarship in the process, but he protected chess legacy and brought obscure games to a wider audience:

“My main reason for writing in 1948,” Evans said, “was to preserve the games which were then largely unavailable except for a handful of collectors.” It is little wonder he went on to be so beloved by chessplayers in America, and around the world.

How would 11-year-old Kingston junior Jaden Mistry fare at the outdoor “Chess Arena” on the seafront in India’s bustling commercial metropolis?

Malcolm Mistry

A recent holiday back home in our native city Mumbai was meant to be a relaxing Christmas break with family and friends. Little did I imagine the intended time off from my demanding work schedule, and a well-deserved pause for my 11-year-old son Jaden from doing his homework and playing league chess for Kingston, would have some surprises in store.

With an estimated population of 27 million, Mumbai is the second most populous city in India after the capital New Delhi. Located on the west coast of India overlooking the Arabian sea, Mumbai never sleeps: it is the epicentre of fashion, the commercial and entertainment capital of India, and home to both the mega-rich and the poor.

As in most parts of India, cricket is the sport that defines the city and unifies people across all social groups. Chess may not yet have the universal appeal of cricket, but it is catching up. Encouraged by a growing number of enthusiastic parents, schoolchildren now take chess seriously as a sport, aiming to emulate old heroes such as former world champion Viswanathan Anand (“Vishy”) and new stars such as Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa (“Praggy”).

Both Vishy and Praggy hail from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and in part thanks to their achievements chess is most popular in the south. Club chess and coaching are increasing in Mumbai, though still not at the same pace as in the south of the country, but intriguingly one can also now often find chess being played in cafés, malls and workspaces.

An interesting open-air spot along the picturesque Arabian sea where I accidentally discovered street chess being played by young and old alike was on the promenade at Carter Road in Bandra, an up-market suburb of Mumbai. The promenade itself, a mile-long walkway along the Arabian sea, is popular with fitness enthusiasts and casual walkers. Carter Road is one of the most expensive areas in Mumbai, filled with cafés, street food stalls and fine-dining restaurants.  

Strolling with Jaden on a pleasant Christmas Eve morning, we were intrigued by an array of marble tables and makeshift benches and chairs made from a mix of wood, stone, iron and steel at the northern end of the Carter Road promenade. We asked some locals about them, and were told that players and spectators were usually to be found in the evenings at the so-called “Chess Arena”, as well as occasionally in the mornings on weekends and holidays.

A local resident who was himself a social chess player gave us some background on the arena. He said that, drawing inspiration from open-air chess in the parks of New York, two chess boards set in marble and stone were initially erected in 2009 by the Carter Road association, with help from the local council. Subsequent interest from visitors prompted the council to add another 14 boards, though the monsoon rains from June to September and the salty sea breeze have since corroded some of the metallic structures, reducing the number of playable chessboards to about a dozen.

Armed with this history of the Chess Arena on a promenade where I walked with my wife on our first date (on 26 May, 2007, to be precise), I couldn’t help but reflect on the positive changes that my childhood city had undergone in recent years. Encouraged by Jaden, who in a café not far away from the promenade was being told about his parents’ first date, our natural instinct was to try to play a quick morning game on one of the medieval-looking marble boards. To our disappointment, we discovered there were no pieces – and no players either. I promised Jaden we would come back in the evening with our own chess pieces.

For Jaden, the wait until evening was the longest in his two-week of holiday back home in India. When the time arrived, I don’t think I have ever seen him get ready more rapidly. Soon we arrived at the same spot as in the morning, and were pleasantly surprised to see five of the chessboards already occupied. These were serious chessplayers, though playing without clocks.

There were also a number of onlookers loudly offering advice in a mix of local (Marathi) and national (Hindi) languages. I was impressed by the focus of the players and their indifference to the banter. The post-mortems after the games were even more intriguing, with the spectators having memorised the moves better than some of the players, who generally did not keep score.

Sensing Jaden’s impatience, I approached one of the players, who had just won a close game, to see if he would play a game with my son. He agreed, and with twilight descending we moved to another chessboard nearer a streetlight. Jaden’s first Chess Arena opponent was called Raju, quite a common name in India. He said he was a frequent player at the arena and reckoned he was rated about 1500.

Raju asked Jaden in a strong south Indian accent if he was a newcomer to the arena. Jaden explained how he had got involved in club chess in a pub in Kingston, London. Jaden’s recently acquired southern English accent, accentuated by a tinge of an Italian accent left over from having spent the previous eight years in Italy, and his opponent’s south Indian accent meant each of them repeated the same sentence twice to ensure they understood each other. But the beauty of chess is that, as with mathematics, it has a language of its own. A few moves into the game, Jaden and Raju seemed to understand each other perfectly. So here we were, within no time, my son making his international street-chess debut in his birth city and opting for e4 as White.

Faced with high-decibel traffic in this busy Mumbai suburb, and surrounded by curious and vocal onlookers, this was a spectacle Jaden had never encountered in the UK during his short chess career. He asked me if I had any earbuds to reduce the sound – not something I consider carrying in my pockets. Soon the focus of the onlookers at other boards shifted to Jaden’s game. The fact that he was by far the youngest player that evening encouraged the vocal chess engines to offer even more uninvited expert opinion. Raju politely reminded the spectators that their shadows falling on the board were dimming the already obscured streetlight.

The game lasted about 45 minutes and, after a rapid exchange of material towards the end, the players agreed a draw. The result drew applause from the spectators. One of them introduced himself as a chess player and coach, and invited me to visit his Facebook page, claiming to be a 1600 Fide-rated player and offering to coach Jaden. Raju later told me it was quite normal to be greeted by self-acclaimed chess trainers and experts, who might or might not have the credentials to coach.

As for Jaden, he appeared relieved to be off the mark in his international chess career. Inspired by his new-found confidence, he quickly made a New Year resolution to score his first points for the Kingston third team. Raju, perhaps sensing he had let an 11-year-old off with a draw, quickly asked Jaden for a rematch. The two of them ended up playing twice more, with honours even at the end of the evening – Jaden had won one, lost one and drawn one. Much to my amusement, our two hours at the Chess Arena had seen a succession of players and spectators observing and commenting on different boards in a variety of regional dialects, some of which I couldn’t fully comprehend myself.   

We visited the Chess Arena a few more times during our stay in Mumbai. I lost count of the number of games Jaden played, but what is embedded in my memory – and perhaps in Jaden’s as well – are the buzz and vibrancy around the Chess Arena. In many ways, it felt nothing less than a carnival of street chess.

The Czech super-grandmaster’s games collection doubles as a memoir and is full of humour, passion, wisdom, raw honesty and an unquenchable love for chess

Michael Healey

David Navara has always been one of my favourite players amongst the elite, but I’ve never really understood why. Are his games really that interesting? Is he actually a thoughtful character? A super-nice guy? A calculation machine? A true chess artist? Turns out – yep!

My Chess World really is a most charming book, as the Roman poets would say – except that at 616 pages it’s not exactly brief. In fact due to its weight this became a bedside book, where I would read a chapter or two a night (a couple of games) stretching through 64 (of course!) games. Before nearly every game is an article about his experiences as a professional chess player.

The dominant theme is Navara’s unstoppable love for chess, through ups and downs (even finishing up with a “Chess Poem”). Every page resounds with passion and strain, humour and wisdom. Despite this chess addiction, he finds time to read books (“I normally take three times as many books to a tournament as I manage to read”), partake in philosophy and art criticism, spend six years at university, follow Christianity and even have a girlfriend (on page 568 – by which time the reader has sadly already fallen in love). He also likes to take note of everything around him and find amusement everywhere.

The book is filled with stories and gossip, opinions and jokes, and one particularly surreal photo of himself with a large fish. He even has the occasional hilarious adventure, walking about between games. It may help that we seem to share a sense of deadpan humour, which of course can be a big hit-or-miss with chess books (and people.)

Navara is immensely courteous, making excuses for opponents, complimenting them, pointing out other instances when he was on the receiving end or how they proceeded to outscore him in the tournament. Before a game from his match against Nakamura, he writes about “UNPLEASANT OPPONENTS”. Is Navara about to unleash? No, he explains that certain players’ styles he finds hard to play against. The rudest he gets is a slight argument with someone who steals his seat on a plane, and remarking he has possibly heard one of Nigel Short’s stories before.

Harsh criticism is saved for himself. Games are filled with comments on things he missed, or ways he was lucky, or how computer ideas are beyond the mind of a mere 2700(!). One senses the mischievous wit of Tal, proclaiming himself the youngest ex-world champion, when Navara notes he has probably lost more chess matches than any other player (local sponsorship often invited strong players for mini-matches, which tend to go badly for him). However, he seems justifiably proud of certain stellar individual results, and team results are a source of great joy. There are moments which seem incredibly raw, and one particularly sorry comment that he used to have more supporters in the past. Everything is so honest it is impossible not to join in the emotional journey.

The self-deprecating bulk of the book comes under the title “Blog past its sell-by date”. This may be the secret of what makes this book so impressive. Navara clearly took his blog very seriously, investing time immediately after games to analyse and give his thoughts, sometimes to the detriment of the following day’s games. Through the various editions and translations, despite myriad lines I found very few errata. He gives move times, tournament placings (pre-game, post-game and final), team scores and podium scores. All this provides far more context (and interest) than your normal game collection.

Nevertheless all this would be fairly pointless if the games weren’t up to much. The 64 games chosen are obviously overwhelmingly interesting, although as Navara explains:

1. Substantial games are interesting
2. Substantial games require extensive annotations
3. Extensive annotations are boring

The Navara calling card is this king march, a superb concept coming from computer preparation and practical skill.

Here Carlsen is put on the back foot with White, coming up with a clever rejoinder.

Invited for a match in China against whizz-kid Wei Yi, Navara uses a Queen sacrifice to unbalance the position.

The powerful usage (and discarding) of a queen recurs in several games, both for himself and his opponent. Sometimes Navara neglects development and defers castling. He seeks out unbalanced positions, but often with not kings at stake but better coordination of pieces. Chaos – but more treading water amidst a tsunami than running to escape a volcanic eruption. It’s never that obvious what the end goal is or what we’re avoiding, just that it’s all completely bewildering hard work. A number of games finish in unusual rook endgames, which can become remarkably engaging, even for philistines like me.

Here are two games which felt particularly joyful. The first, against Indian GM Krishnan Sasikiran, appealed to me instantly because Navara randomly picks up an opening I play and finds ideas I’d never considered – and of course there are the tripled pawns! Drama explodes from a “level” position, but is tamed by piece coordination, accurate choices and a very cute finish.

Here the future world championship challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi, contributes to a wonderfully unorthodox game, where Navara has to keep an eye out for perpetuals, fortresses and … blunders!

I would thoroughly recommend this book to chess lovers. If you end up falling in love with Navara as well, that’s just the cost.