Easter Photo Quiz — Guess Who

by Eduard Frey
3/31/2024 – In this pictorial Quiz for Easter, you need to guess who is in the photograph. Ten chess players in rare and unusual photographs. Some are easy, others are less easy, some include a hint. Check it out! At the bottom you will find the solutions and photo credits. Happy Easter to everyone!

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The shilhouette in the cover photo features one of the most creative thinkers these days, known for his dynamic style, he is also an excellent speed chess player (Elo 2818 as peak rapid rating).

Some clues:

Individual gold medal at the World Team Chess Championship 2013, held in Antalya, Turkey, playing on board two, also contributing to the team bronze.

Individual gold medal at the Chess Olympiad 2018, held in Batumi, Georgia, as the best player on the reserve board. Also winning team silver at the Chess Olympiad in Baku 2016.

Team gold medal at the European Team Chess Championship 2021, held in Catez, Slovenia, playing on board one. Ukraine won its first-ever European Team Chess Championship (men), his team remained unbeaten throughout all nine rounds of the tournament, held in November 2021, just three months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. He won several strong Open tournaments, among others the prestigious Abu Dhabi Chess Festival 2010 outright, tied for first at the Aeroflot Open in Moscow 2012, and took the Sunway Sitges Festival (near Barcelona) 2019 in style as clear first.

Born 25 June 1985. IM 2001. GM 2003. He graduated from the University of Kharkiv.

He is a four-time National Ukrainian Champion, winning in 2002, 2012, 2018, and 2020.

Easter Quiz

A young FM at the Sunway Sitges Chess Festival (Open) in 2016, and one of the many Indian chess prodigies

He will celebrate his 20th birthday this summer. In the official FIDE ratings list from March 2024, he stands at 2698 Elo, his peak so far, just two points shy of the notorious 2700 mark.

Easter Quiz

The reigning Women’s World Champion from China in an earlier picture

She is invited this April / May to the traditional closed TePe Sigeman & Co tournament held in Malmö, where she is facing seven men.

Easter Quiz

Man with a hat — and World Champion during the late 1930s in a picture from 1948

He is logic personified, a genius of judgement and planning, always balanced. A mathematician, later interested in electronic automatic data processing, he was appointed as Professor of Cybernetics in the 1950s. FIDE president in the 1970s.

Easter Quiz

Man with a hat – and World Champion during the 1960s in a picture from 1980 in Velden, Austria, where he is facing a tough Candidate’s match.

One of his great characteristics is economy of force, subtle and tirelessly patient. It is sad and hard to believe that this iconic Armenian chess player died far too soon in 1984, only four years later after the photo above was taken.

Easter Quiz

The man who was always there, inimitable and indefatigable

The iron man of chess who played and beat grandmasters from Levenfish (born 1889) and Lilienthal to Carlsen (born 1990) and Caruana (born 1992), beating nine undisputed World Chess Champions, including all from Botvinnik to Kasparov. This photo is from the Chess Olympiad 1992 in Manila, where he arrived late due to an eye surgery.

Easter Quiz

Born a hundred and ten years ago.

Pictured during the Pan-American Championship from 1945, held in Hollywood, where he just arrived after a car accident. Reshevsky won the title ahead of Fine; he finished clear third above Horowitz, Kashdan, Rossetto, Herman Steiner, etc.

Some clues:

He was known for travelling extensively; romantic and optimistic, a very good conversationalist, he also liked to play Bridge and Poker. In chess, he possessed a vigorous attacking style, but was, at the same time, considered a player of the Classical School.

Somehow forgotten today, he should always be remembered as one of the greatest Argentinian chess maestros from the Golden Era.

Multiple National Champion, he participated for Argentina consecutively in all five Chess Olympiads during the 1950s, winning an individual gold board medal in 1950, team silver three times in a row, in 1950, 1952, and 1954, plus team bronze in 1958 (with him on board one, Najdorf absent).

His game victories over elite players such as Euwe, Smyslov, Petrosian, Bronstein, Stein, Szabo, Portisch, Vidmar, Kostic, Ivkov, Matanovic, Pirc, Pachman, Stahlberg, F. Olafsson, Uhlmann, Unzicker, Donner, Kashdan, plus of course Najdorf, Panno, Eliskases, Guimard, among many others, demonstrate his skill and talent.

In 1952, he won the first big international chess tournament held in Belgrade in a strong field of twenty players, and got the grandmaster title by FIDE for this win.

In the Interzonal Tournament at Gothenburg 1955, he shared the seventh place with Filip and young Spassky (born 1937), just enough to advance. Bronstein won ahead of Keres as second, 3. young Panno (born 1935), 4. Petrosian, 5.-6. Geller, Szabo. In the Candidates Tournament at Amsterdam 1956 that followed, he fared rather badly, in tenth and last place. Smyslov won, Keres second.

His best historical world rank according to Chessmetrics is clear no. 12.

Born in Stuttgart in 1914, around 1930 his family settled in Argentina. For about ten years, he also lived in Chile, returned to Argentina, and in his late years, eventually settled in Venezuela, where he passed away in Caracas, 1981. Panno once described him as a Bohemian.

Easter Quiz

The American dream — and Coca-Cola speaks for itself

Easter Quiz

Let’s groove, an A-player in Wijk aan Zee during the Tata Steel tournament from 2021

Some clues:

Do you remember, who was the player to end Carlsen’s impressive record-breaking run of 125 unbeaten games in classical chess on the top-level at Norway Chess in 2020? Yes, it was him!

His biggest success so far is winning the FIDE Chess World Cup knock-out in 2021 (also eliminating World Chess Champion Carlsen in the semi-finals). Subsequently, he became a Candidate in 2022, then finishing shared 7th/8th together with Rapport at the Candidates tournament in Madrid.

He has been extremely close to entering the Elo Top Ten, with a peak ranking as sole no. 12, but had to withdraw for personal and health issues from two top tournaments in the last year, namely Wijk aan Zee in January 2023, and Sinquefield Cup in November / December 2023. Let’s hope to see him again in super-tournaments soon! He is currently ranked around number 20 in the world.

Easter Quiz

German’s number one player during an excursion day at the evergreen Chess Festival in Biel. He will play again there in the Masters group this summer

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Solutions:

  • Title Photo: Silhouette of Anton Korobov (Sunway Sitges Festival 2019, organiser)
  • Photo 2: Nihal Sarin (Sunway Sitges Festival 2016, Sharath Elumalai via ChessBase India)
  • Photo 3: Ju Wenjun (Women’s Chess Championship in November 2018 via ECU)
  • Photo 4: Max Euwe (Daan Noske, Anefo, 10 February 1948)
  • Photo 5: Tigran Petrosian (P. Jarnoux, Paris Match 1980)
  • Photo 6: Viktor Korchnoi (tenth Official Bulletin at the Chess Olympiad in Manila 1992) Photo 7: Herman Pilnik (Perlen vom Bodensee, read more: Herman Pilnik: WM-Kandidat, Weltenbummler, Lebemann | Perlen vom Bodensee, and: Der Stuttgarter WM-Kandidat | Perlen vom Bodensee, in German)
  • Photo 8: Hans Niemann (Lennart Ootes, Sunway Sitges Festival 2020, organiser)
  • Photo 9: Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Tata Steel tournament 2021, user Vysotsk via Wikipedia)
  • Photo 10: Vincent Keymer (Biel Chess Festival 2023, official website)

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Eduard Frey was born in spring 1967, is an economist (lic. et mag. rer, pol.) and works as a coach in human resources. He learned the game as a child from his father. Chess is a hobby without rating. He has been a frequent visitor to the Biel Chess Festival since 1976, as well as to Lucerne (1982 Olympiad, and the 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997 World Team Championships), and to the international tournaments in Zurich or the Lugano Open series. Frey spoke with many top players; he knew Viktor Korchnoi, Wolfgang Uhlmann and Mark Taimanov more closely.