Understanding before Moving 149: Chess history in a nutshell (31)

We continue with Max Euwe, born in 1901 and died in 1981, the only Dutchman ever to be World Champion. Up to his death Euwe followed chess events and he certainly saw the new rising star, Garry Kasparov.

From 1970 to 1978 Euwe was president of Fide, the World Chess Federation, which he himself had co-founded. Euwe was of impeccable conduct, as was his successor, Fridrik Olafsson of Iceland. The same cannot be said of his successors since 1982, when the Filipino Florencio Campomanes, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov from the Republic of Kalmykia and the current president, Arkady Dvorkovich from Russia, took over.

Back to Kasparov. In 1985, when he was 22 years old, he defeated Anatoly Karpov in their second match for the title to become the youngest World Champion of all time. When Kasparov published his series "My Great Predecessors", I was struck by how complimentary he was about Dutch amateur chess.

In 1999, Kasparov played what is perhaps his greatest game, and he played it at a Dutch seaside resort, in Wijk aan Zee. He defeated the future World Champion, the Bulgarian Veselin Topalov, in a fantastic attacking game, which - by analogy with the "Pearl of Zandvoort" (another Dutch seaside resort on the North Sea, near The Hague), a game between Euwe and Alekhine, which was extensively covered in the previous video - was called the "Pearl of Wijk aan Zee".

Because of this incredible coincidence, I cannot help but review this game. A full review of Kasparov will come much later in this series.

In the diagram position below, White begins a fantastic combination which led to a long king hunt. What did he play?

Master Class Vol.7: Garry Kasparov

On this DVD a team of experts gets to the bottom of Kasparov's play. In over 8 hours of video running time the authors Rogozenko, Marin, Reeh and Müller cast light on four important aspects of Kasparov's play: opening, strategy, tactics and endgame.

This week’s show (for Premium Members only)