Hungary- A Special Brand of Chess!
We all know about the Soviet School of Chess, and most of us are consciously or sub-consciously familiar with the great players of that style of play. The Soviets were so successful, players from the West adopted their openings (and style, sometimes). Who can blame us? Everyone wants to be successful!
This is going to be short post, as I have no time today....but I could not resist the impulse! When something sparks my creative mind, in chess or music, I follow it. It is my own unwritten rule: follow the path your intuition is guiding you to.
Leafing through a wonderful book by Andras Adorjan, "Black is Back!",
I was startled by the play of an unknown (to us), IM Tamas Horvath.
Note: This book is extraordinary if you are looking for creative, dynamic and exciting play! As a matter of fact, I can say that about all of Adorjan's books in the "Black is OK!" series.
In one of the last chapters of this book, Adorjan plays tribute to ......43 players!
Let us look at what he has to say"
CHAPTER 12
CONNECTIONS
A Tribute to......
" There are people who pretend that ll their achievements are theirs alone. They are the lonely heroes. For this book I got the idea to pay tribute to those of my partners whom I learned, worked with, or taught in my chess career, as a second, or maybe the opposite. For each of them I wanted to give a game which he won with Black. The outcome was astonishing. I don't know how many partners I had expected to come up with, but 43 was surely more than surprising. I have to note that some of the people on this list I don't like very much by now (and vice versa), but all the same we once worked together and that cooperation was fruitful."
IM Tamas Horvath (1951- )
IM Tamas Horvath (1951- )
"Horvath Tamas was a good buddy and he did well on all the occasions when he was my second. Also with the preparations. He helped me to become a World Champion Candidate against Ribli in our dramatic match (1979). He was with me during my tragic match with Hubner (1980). Halfway our 10-game match, Hubner was leading by 2 points, just like Ribli (1979) who had a 2 1/2- 1/2 lead in 6 games against me in 1979. But aganst him I won the next two games, and with a final draw I qualified thanks to my better Berger-Sonneborg in Riga. Miracles are usually not repeated, so against Hubner I won the 6th and was almost winning the 7th, but finally, in game 9 I made an awful blunder and stalemated him in a rook ending instead of taking another pawn, in which case he would have been ready to resign. Tamas also helped me in the Toluca Interzonal. He was the captain of the Hungarian (men's) team from time to time- a normal person on this responsible post.
We were 'believers' in the Sveshnikov. We wrote two books on the subject, and later on published another, exclusively with his own games. We had some complicated analyses of the crazy kind. In the Riga Interzonal I made 2.5/3 with the Sveshnikov, including a fine win against Ljubojevic.
Tamas claims that he was the first who played the Sveshnikov. I personally saw the scoresheet. The trouble is there were quite a few others, and all of them pioneers. To my knowledge, Tal-Shamkovich was the very first game, in 1955.
Anyway, in the next game he plays originally, sacrificing his Queen. Bravo!"
The following game is spectacular, and on move 20 he sacrifices his Queen....an exciting game!
Looking at the games of different Hungarian players featured in this book, I notice their style is different from the Soviet style.....I cannot quite put it into words, but it is definitely different! This is where chess is Art!
Another game that captured my attention is Sapi-Barczay, Budapest 1963. Black engages in a piece sacrifice based on the strength of his passed pawns, and the weakness of White's back rank!
GM Laszlo Barczay (1936-2016)
Adorjan writes about Barczay:
GM Laszlo Barczay (1936-2016)
"What a wonderful person "Laci" was! He was one of those very rare players who carried the grandmaster title both in correspondence chess and in "normal" chess. He even wrote poems, which are brilliantly strange. At the time we first met I was 14, and he became my mentor.
if I remember well, we analyzed mostly crazy gambits such as the Marshall, The Traxler and a bit of the King's Gambit. I was amused by his sparkling fantasy and was lucky to be a board boy when he played his game against Sapi during the Hungarian Championship in 1963. As the age difference became unimportant, we became friends. And that is what we remained. Thank God!"
