Mario Matous: 1947–2013

Mario Matouš: 1947–2013

By Emil Vlasák

Mario Matouš was born in Mladá Boleslav (55 km north-east of Prague) on June 16th 1947 into an intellectual family – both his parents were language teachers. The three-year-old boy’s first memories are connected with the arrest of his mother, who was imprisoned by the Communist regime for about two years for purely political reasons. As was the practice at that time, the whole family was persecuted. The father was obliged to take a third-rate manual job and the children spent some time in nurseries. Mario declined to participate in “Pioneer” (the mass communist youth organization) and instead worked actively in the Roman Catholic Church. The communists did not forgive such things, and a well-read boy with an excellent academic record obtained permission only to be trained as a fitter. However, Mario, like most chess players, was not manually skilled and thus had a lifetime problem in finding suitable employment.

Fortunately, Mario had learned chess at the age of nine, and this opened up better prospects. After national service in 1968 he gradually became a master class player. Thanks to his chess contacts he also got a good job. In 1971 Mario won the Central Bohemian championship and as a result played in the Czechoslovak semi-final. Despite the problems with the regime, these were the best years of Mario’s life. He liked chess friends around, jokes and a lot of beer.

Matouš published his first endgame study in 1968, and quickly gained an international reputation. He always needed a lot of beer to get an inspiration. But after getting it, he suddenly changed into an austere and hard-working man. He didn’t sleep, drink or eat, and spent many days and nights feverishly working out the idea. Where a normal composer would test one or two versions, Matouš sifted dozens. There were attempts to improve his studies, but usually Mario just laughed. He had almost everything on his “playground” and knew exactly why he went his way.

The results were excellent – precise constructions in a classical and economical style. He published almost 300 studies and won more then 160 honours (20 commendations, 50 honorable mentions and 80 prizes, 20 being first prizes). He was many times Czechoslovak and Czech champion, and he was a Czech Master of Sport and a FIDE Master.

Matouš spent most of his life in Prague with his girlfriend Hana. He hated the communist regime, but ironically he started to get worse after its fall. He again had problems in finding a job and after several attempts found a haven as a night security guard. Even his tournament results in endgame studies dropped off a little. Matouš became a little hackneyed, and he received more honourable mentions than prizes. However his highest compositional level was maintained until about 2009. Then he became completely overwhelmed by creative depression and Mario stopped publishing altogether.

Emil Vlasák, Jaroslav Polášek, Mario Matouš at the EG study composers meeting in 2002

In February 2008 I met Mario in Prague pub “Na Tremošné” to talk about our forthcoming book. Although I entered the pub before eleven in the morning, it was already too late to catch the Master sober and again we did not make progress. As usual, the talk turned to Mario's monologue about his inward problems. His idol Bobby Fischer had died a month before. “To die at the age of 64 is an ideal chess player’s end,” said Mario. “But Fischer got there first, and if I did so as well it would not be original.” Such a pessimistic mood had unfortunately materialized in Matouš’s lifestyle; consumption accompanied by chain smoking. The final blow was Hana’s death. Mario died on July 4th 2013 at the age of 66 years in a medical institution, almost alone and destitute.

Source: JSB The John and Sue Beasley WebSite, which sneak previewed the full obituary to be published in EG194, the Oktober 2013 edition by ARVES.

The author of the obituary, Emil Vlasák, 57, married with two children (Tom, Susan), graduated from the CVUT, the leading Czech Technical University in Prague, in the department of electronics and cybernetics. He has played chess for over 20 years in the Czech OTB league, and also won the Czechoslovakian Team Correspondence Championship in 1991. Since 1971 Emil has composed over 90 endgame studies, with 40 awards and ten prizes. He wrote the weekly chess problem column Pruboj from 1983 to 1996 – about 700 columns – and published around 30 study articles in Ceskoslovenský šach and Šachová skladba, as well as 50 computer columns in Ceskoslovenský šach. Emil has written chess software: CBTree, CBStar, FGCRW, Diagra, CCMeet, CQLViewer. He has been running his own web site on computer chess and studies since 1999.

A selection of studies

A rival of Matouš was the hard-working composer in the former Czechoslovakia Michal Hlinka. Mario said about it: “The difference between Hlinka and Matouš? Hlinka produced a hundred studies from one idea, while Matouš from a hundred ideas produced one study.” Somewhat exaggerated, but pretty accurate. Here's a truly remarkable early Matouš, selected by Brian Stephenson for the magazine CHESS (October 2013, p.14). It contains three necessary underpromotions for White to win.

Here's a late study, composed almost 40 years after the previous one. It was selected Study of the Year 2007 at the Yurmala (Latvia) annual congress for chess composition, and contains four double exclam moves!!

Here is one which is fun to check out with a chess engine, which will take some time to figure out the only winning strategy. Humans, of course, will take longer and most of us will have no way to find the incredible forcing second move that provokes the long-term zugzwang that is Black's downfall.

One of the great features of Mario’s work was a continued link with practical chess. Whenever Mario arrived on the scene, he forced players to solve his new studies. Therefore several players sought him out, while others for the same reason avoided him. Here is a beautiful composition, selected by the Prague Chess Society, which is preparing to release a book of Matouš studies.

Mario Matouš, Thèmes 64#3657, 1980

White to play and draw

Try to work out this study all by yourself. The solution will be added to this page in about a week.