CHESS PRACTICE          
Updated: November 2008  

- JOHN E HAWKES' BLOG -

John E Hawkes Chess Pages


"David Ionovich Bronstein"

"Beauty is the most important aspect of chess”
DAVID IONOVICH BRONSTEIN was born in Bila Tserkva, Soviet Ukraine, on the 19th February 1924; three times married (one son by his first wife, Olga Ignatieva), he died in Minsk (Belarus), apparently of a stroke, on the 5th December 2006.
Located 75 km south of Kiev on the road to Odessa, Bila Tserkva is a municipality of about 200,000 people, an ancient civilized culture notable for the chess players it produced or nurtured, which calls itself the "City of Kindness." – [after “Sarah’s Pages”]

David Bronstein child

The Bronstein family left the city-of-kindness for Kiev but being Jewish they met with the harshness of the Soviet authorities: in 1937 David's father was arrested as an "enemy of the people", to be freed seven years later on the grounds of ill-health. Only-child David was taught chess by his grandfather from the age of six and joined the local chess club at the Kiev Palace of Young Pioneers to receive excellent training from an excellent player and teacher Alexander Konstantinopolsky. Bronstein soon became one of the strongest young Soviet players in the period just prior to the Second World War and at 15 he was runner up to Boleslavsky in the 1940 Ukrainian Championship and became one of the youngest holders of the Soviet Master title.
The USSR championship qualifier in Rostov-on-Don in the summer of 1941 had to be interrupted when the Germans invaded. The new Master of Sport, Bronstein, fled Kiev on foot leaving everything behind (including many of his precious game records). Conscripted into the Red Army, he avoided being sent into action because of his poor eyesight and during the conflict first worked in a military hospital in the Caucasus then in Stalingrad on a steel-factory reconstruction. Those war years were not devoid of chess activity: he used them to study and develop his chess prowess, and when the Rostov event was restarted in 1944 he qualified for his first USSR Championship.

David Bronstein young

That first appearance in the USSR Championship included a win against the great Botvinnik but only a 15th place. The following year 1945 he climbed up to third place in the USSR championship, winning three games with the King's Gambit 1 e4 e5 2 f4. It is reported, however, that before the next year’s USSR v US match in Moscow, Botvinnik reminded the team of their patriotic duty to win and – looking directly at Bronstein – insisted against risky opening adventures - the King’s Gambit, for instance!
Bronstein was now firmly established among the elite Soviet masters. Playing for Moscow in a match against Prague in 1946 he won two now extremely famous games with black - against Pachman and Zita – using a remarkable dynamic concept worked out with Boleslavsky that would set the trend of a future half-century of opening theory and practice. The King’s Indian Defence was no longer considered passive and second-rate – it was henceforth the thing to play – and play to win - against the Queen’s Pawn opening!
Bronstein twice finishing joint-champion of the USSR: in 1948 (with Alexander Kotov) and in 1949 (with Vasily Smyslov).
At Satsjöbaden 1948, the first FIDE Interzonal, Bronstein qualified for and then tied for first place in the subsequent Candidates' Tournament in Budapest in 1950. There was a curious echo of the big match to come with Botvinnik when Boleslavsky, a point clear with two rounds left as Bronstein would be, failed to clinch the challenger’s place. In the play-off match in Moscow Boleslavsky was considered by many to have “allowed” his friend to win. Boleslavsky went back to Moscow for the Botvinnik match however as Bronstein’s second.

   «Wikipedia - Image Boleslavsky (1947)»
Boleslavsky in 1947

Isaac Boleslavsky, Ukrainian GM born in 1919 and died in 1977. In 1983 Bronstein married his daughter Tatiana Boleslavskaya, a Minsk university professor 22 years his junior. She was Bronstein’s third wife, often accompanied him abroad in the 1990s, and was present at his deathbed in December 2006.

THE BOTVINNIK MATCH - 1951
Start of the controversial 23rd game in
Moscow's Tchaikovsky Concert Hall
         World Chess Championship 1951 David Bronstein vs Michael Botvinnik

There has been much speculation as to whether the match was “arranged”. Bronstein wrote this in his Sorcerer’s Apprentice intro:
"I have been asked many, many times if I was obliged to lose the 23rd game and if there was a conspiracy against me to stop me from taking Botvinnik's title. A lot of nonsense has been written about this. The only thing that I am prepared to say about all this controversy is that I was subjected to strong psychological pressure from various origins and it was entirely up to me to yield to that pressure or not."
His co-author Tom Furstenberg wrote: "Of course David succumbed to that pressure, albeit not voluntarily. However nobody, not even David himself, knows what went on subconsciously in his mind."
Back to Bronstein who also had this to say: “I had reasons not to become the World Champion as in those times such a title meant that you were entering an official world of chess bureaucracy with many formal obligations. Such a position is not compatible with my character.”

THE BOTVINNIK MATCH - 1951
David Bronstein vs Michael Botvinnik
         World Chess Championship 1951 David Bronstein vs Michael Botvinnik

And then there is his explanation of his private-life situation at the time: "I was considering a divorce [from the Soviet woman international, Olga Ignatieva] and was in love with another girl. But suppose I would win the title, then I would be famous and when you were famous a divorce was out of the question. And I would be in the press and every time they would start about my father."
Malcolm Pein’s compliation of his excellent columns and notes covering the crucial games of the notorious match can be seen via the TWIC link    «David Bronstein (1924-2006)»

After the world championship match Bronstein represented the Soviet Union at the successive Olympiads of 1952, 1954, 1956 and 1958, winning gold board-medals in each appearance for the Soviet team.
He was also gold medallist 8 times in USSR Team Championships and was six times individual Moscow Champion. His assault on the World title continued and he played in the Candidates' Tournament in Zurich in 1953, finishing joint-second. There was again speculation of “fixing” - Bronstein claiming that officials had pressured him and certain other Soviet grandmasters in the closing rounds to draw quickly with Smyslov and play hard against the American representative Sammy Reshevsky, the man Moscow certainly did not want challenging their protégé Botvinnik. The title had to stay in Russian hands!
Soon after, having only tied for first place with Britain’s Hugh Alexander at the Hastings Congress, Bronstein came in for criticism in Moscow's Literary Gazette. An article accused him and other Soviet players of "complacency and self-conceit", thus robbing the nation of international tournament success.

      David Bronstein thinking in front the chessboard     - 1956 (ANP photo)  

1955’s highlight was his great 15/20 victory at the Göteborg Interzonal - a point and a half clear of Keres – but in the 1956 Candidates he was joint third behind Smyslov and Keres. In the next Interzonal at Portoroz 1958 a surprising last-round defeat by outsider Cardoso lost him the coveted qualifying place. In the Amsterdam Interzonal of 1964 it was a loss to the Dane Bent Larsen and then a nervy draw with an unknown Peruvian Quinones that ruined his last real chance of challenging again for the World Championship crown.
Bronstein, however, continued to be an elite player for many years, tying for second in the Soviet championships in 1957 and 1964-65, Moscow Champion again in 1957, and winning several big international tournaments.
The Bond movie “From Russia with Love” has a game played between a certain Kronsteen(!) and a certain McAdams. It is based on the King’s Gambit brilliant miniature won by Boris Spassky (White) v Bronstein at the 1960 USSR Championship in Leningrad.
A decade later when Viktor Korchnoi defected in 1976 Bronstein was one of the few top Soviet grandmasters who refused to sign an official letter condemning him. He was banned from travelling to tournaments in the West and did not compete there again until the ban was lifted as perestroika came in the mid-eighties. He was also barred from the best elite tournaments within the Soviet Union and also from competing anywhere outside the country more than once-a-year. His “pension” book always carried an endorsement meaning a 10% penalty deduction in his allowance.

DAVID IONOVICH BRONSTEIN
The writer’s 1970 Soviet edition of “200 Open Games”
- signed during a coffee break in Bronstein’s game v Kavalek,
Teesside 1975. [Compared with other examples of his signature
this one seems to lack a Cyrillic letter. JEH]
    David Ionovich Bronstein

For an immense number of chess fans David Bronstein was and remains an inspirational hero, perhaps the one real chess artist and quite simply the most creative player of all time. He played hundreds of original and attractive games demonstrating a high degree of imagination and tactical verve and introduced many new ideas into the King's Indian Defence and King's Gambit especially. He was also one of the proponents of more Rapid Chess (30 minute and less) tournaments, and also developed a variety of random chess and the digital “add-on” chess-clock concept well before Bobby Fischer.
Bronstein was also an exceptional writer, having a chess column in Izvestia for many years. His book on the Zurich 1953 tournament (published in 1956 and translated into English as “The Chess Struggle in Practice, 1978”) is considered by many as simply the finest tournament book ever written, if admitting that a significant amount of it had been ghosted by a lesser master. It concentrated on the ideas behind the players' moves and was a unique insight into how grandmasters really think.

DAVID IONOVICH WITH LIUDMILA BELAVENTS
David Bronstein with Liudmila Belavents
in 2004 - ChessBase photo -
    David Ionovich Bronstein with Liudmila Belavents in 2004

There is a great ChessBase TV interview about Bronstein by Yasser Sierawan that you can download:

   «Seirawan - On Bronstein»

After looking at the video, I’m sure you will want to play through and savour the game in question, so here it is:

Reykjavik (Iceland) 1990, Round 10
White: Bronstein, David (RUS)
Black : Browne, Walter (USA)
Opening : B99 Sicilian – Najdorf


1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4


DIAG 1 :


7...Be7 8.Qf3 Qc7 9.O-O-O Nbd7 10.g4 b5 11.Bxf6 Nxf6 12.g5 Nd7


DIAG 2 :


13.f5 (the amazing pawn sacrifice described vividly by Sierawan in the above video).

13...Bxg5+ 14.Kb1 Ne5 15.Qh5 Qd8 16.Rg1 h6 17.fxe6 g6 18.exf7+ Kxf7 19.Qe2


DIAG 3 :


19...Kg7 20.h4 Bxh4 21.Nf5+ Kh7 22.Rxd6 Qf8 23.Qh2 Bxf5 24.Qxe5 Qe7 25.Qxe7+


DIAG 4 :


25...Bxe7 26.Rc6 Rhc8 27.Rb6 Rxc3 28.exf5 Re3 29.Bd3 Bc5


DIAG 5 :


30.Rbxg6 Rae8 31.a4 bxa4 32.f6 Rxd3 33.Rg7+ Kh8 34.Rh1 1-0


DIAG 6 :


Now for some Bronstein quotes:

  • "I have been rejected on a roadside of chess life, but the book "The International tournament of Grandmasters (Zurich)" is republished, with issues in other languages. And I think will survive me for a long time..."


  • Asked why he went for long periods in the 1970s and 1980s without participating in chess events: “Because they did not invite me. And it is a very painful situation for a professional, believe me.”


  • “You have the impression that I am modest. I am not. I know that I am good, and even very good. Do you know why I like Leonardo da Vinci? Because he believed that for him nothing was impossible. I too believe that for me nothing is impossible in chess, so you can see that I am not as modest as you think.” [From an interview with Antonio Gude in Revista Internacional de Ajedrez p 38-42, March 1993]


  • When asked his favourite player from the past?’: “Tartakower - but above all Labourdonnais.”!
  • “I always try to vary my openings as much as possible, to invent new plans in attack and defence, to make experimental moves which are dangerous and exciting for both players and also for the audience.”


  • “You do not analyse during a game; you analyse before a game and after a game. During the game, you just play!”


  • “Chess miracles, as against other miracles, sometimes nevertheless occur, due to the imagination of a chess player and the inexhaustible opportunities of chess.”


  • "I still wonder why people have respect only for world champions and not for all chess players. Is it not clear that we all play the same game of chess?"


  • "I'm more than just a few numbers. I'm not Zurich 1953 and 12-12."


  • "No one looks at chess like I did"

    • And the ultimate quote must be:

  • "Beauty is the most important aspect of chess ...We are passing our knowledge and our understanding of beauty to the next generations, and thus life goes on forever."


    •                                              
    By: John E Hawkes
    January 2007


    ************

    If you like music, you may choose now a fine background Music:

        Choose now a fine background Music!...



  • For each music a pop-up opens behind your page.
  • Each pop-up owns a fine image related to the artist!
  • You may come back to your previous page or access all other page on the Site (the pop-up will stay open).
  • This music may accompany you, if you wish, through all the Site.
  • You may change, when you want, a music for another.


    • ************

       «© David Bronstein -
    supreme chess artist»


    ***


    FOR PLEASANT SURFING AROUND THIS SITE:

  • We suggest these best paths:

    •   «LASTEST UPDATES»
      «GENERAL SITE PLAN»
      «GENERAL SITE MENU»
      «LINK COLLECTION HOME PAGE»
      «ECO CODES BASE»
      «CHESS THEORY FORUMS»
      «SEARCH ENGINE»


    ***


    FOR DISCOVERING WHO WE ARE:

  • ... and also expressing freely your opinion:

    •   «CHESS-THEORY: GUEST BOOK»
      «CHESS-THEORY: ABOUT US»    
      «CHESS-THEORY: COPYRIGHT»





               * DON'T NEGLECT TO CONTACT US HERE! *           
    This page, created by Michel Bruneau, is
    Copyright: © Michel Bruneau «Chess-Theory»
    Webmaster - All rights reserved 2004-2010

    Thank to  you  visitors  and friends!...
    Please notice  that  you  help us a  lot
    by giving your opinion and comments
    about  this  page as well as all  other
    pages that you have recently visited
    in  the   «Chess-Theory»   Website:

      Express yourself on our Guest Book  

    My Dear  Friends!...  Without  at   least
    your  moral  support, formulated  here
    or   on  our  forums, this  site can close
    definitively without advance warning!
    ... Humour? Maybe, but it is also true
    that   a   Webmaster,  most of  the time
    alone facing his computers, experien-
    ces  sometimes,   in  his  projects  and
    realizations, discouragement and doubt


    The «Chess-Theory» Website receives
    more than     240, 000 different visitors
    per month, coming  from  about     150
    different   countries   in   the   world
    (daily statistics generated by awstats)



    «Michel  Bruneau  the  "Chess-Theory" Webmaster
    ...  presumably   when  he  was  a   little  younger
    and    still    full    of    Illusions   and     Dreams! »
    Nevertheless this image is available for Link Exchange!

         Michel Bruneau the 'Chess-Theory' Webmaster ...presumably when he was a little younger           and still full of Illusions and Dreams!

    ******** ©-«Chess-Theory.com»-2004-2009 ********