[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]
I'm a little late with the column this week because I was at the Bundesliga over the weekend. My team, Munich 1836, came second in the second division South and will now have a playoff with the second team in the North division, Erkenschwick, for a spot in next year's top flight.
I was very sad to hear the news of Jan Timman's death, though I had been forewarned by the (then) editor of New in Chess Dirk Jan ten Gauzendam that Jan had terminal cancer. Over the years, Jan and I did battle many times, bashing each other to a pulp. He had a small plus score, something like 8-6 in decisive games, including the odd rapid and blitz. Interestingly, although he was a renowned theoretician, we both did much better with black. Of those fourteen decisive games, nine were black wins and in our Candidates' match in London 1989 it was three-nil to Black.
Away from the board, Jan was always excellent company and I always thought that he was one of the very nicest of the generation just a few years older than me. I thought that it would be nice if I showed some of our games here, the first of which has definitely never been published. Before I get into the analysis, which is quite minimal in places, here are a few diagrams with some context surrounding them.
This is from the decisive final game in our Candidates' match (game six in the pgn). Jan now played 23...Nxa2+, which was a good move and I think probably a shock to me at the time, though it doesn't really promise Black that much even though he did win later.
A year or two afterwards I visited Jan in his flat in Amsterdam, and he told me how his neighbour had had a label made for a bottle of wine with the position in the diagram on it. He may even have shown me the bottle - but we definitely didn't drink it!
This is from Linares (game eight in the pgn). A couple of moves earlier I'd missed a chance to force a draw, but now I had to suffer with the knight against two bishops. In those far-off days, easy access to tablebases was far in the future, but Jan got a printout of the main lines faxed from Holland and did manage to win it.
Jan Timman at the 1982 Hoogovens Tournament in Wijk aan Zee | Photo: Rob Croes / Anefo
In two of the games which I won with black, the decisive move was "PN4" on different sides of the board. Of course, I remembered the one above from the Candidates' match (game five in the database). But I had forgotten the next diagram from the Phillips and Drew tournament in London 1982 (game two).
Select an entry from the list to switch between games
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