Dragoljub Janosevic. Giant Killer!! And Some Endgames To Study.

Afternoon Everyone. Something simple today.

July 8th was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Grandmaster Janosevic. The fact that it was noted made me smile! Not exactly a household name, but it is possible that he was the first grandmaster who I actually watched play. My memory for such thing is not so good.

I first studied some of his games in one of my favourite anthologies, of which he was a co-editor.

Ah! Informator books. they were the cutting edge chess literature of the time. The games here are from the book, complete with the languageless Informator notes of the day - by the man himself unless otherwise stated. They will show you the kind of material we had to work with back then, when Informator was the Chess Bible. Hopefully some of you will remember!!

All the games here are taken from that volume. Happy days working things out for myself, with wooden pieces and a book.

The Introduction to Janosevic from the book.

He was a Grandmaster on merit - by that I mean that he was capable of playing against the world elite with reasonable expectations of getting a result - apart from games here the book contains a draw with Korchnoi and a win against Larsen - not a bad C.V.

O.K. Perhaps the 14 year old - much younger then than it is today - Simaginfan, was there when he played this next game.

O.K. Let's get onto some of the bigger fish, fried by Janosevic.

Not many bigger than Mikhail Botvinnik. A fascinating game from start to finish! It also illustrates some of my thought on Botvinnik's chess. I think the general view of him is wrong. He was very strong in strategically complex positions. His opening preparation was outstanding, However, unless he had found a concrete winning or drawing procedure in his adjournment analysis, he was not as great in the endgame as many will tell you. Love this game, and I learned a lot about Rook endings from it. Botvinnik goes after the h-pawn at the cost of allowing the White King to penetrate. Lot's of errors on both sides, but a great battle.

Over 3 games Janosevic had a plus score against Fischer - not so many could say that! Geller comes to mind, but I am struggling to think of anyone else. Any offers?

And another World Champion. Iron Tigran. It's light on notes, so you will have to do what we did back then and study things for yourself!

And finally this one. Bronstein's games are - like Lasker's - almost always full of content. I studied this opening line a lot back then - the Caro-Kann was one of my back-up defences, and this line was trendy at the time. Fascinating battle, and another Rook endgame!

That's all for today's trip down Memory Lane. I feel a lot younger today! Take care everyone, and remember that it is not only the 'Greats' who can play chess.

 



.