By and about Viktor Kortschnoi - A Review

Viktor Korchnoi's legacy with new shades could be addictive! Viktor Kortschnoi on the Monday after the first weekend in February 2007 in Rüdersdorf close to Berlin. The day before he had played for the small village close to Berlin within the Second Bundesliga on the primary board and had given GM Borki Predojevic a "lesson" within the French Defence. The Bosnian listened moderately reverently within the publish-mortem analysis that was customary in those days. The three youngsters had been extra relaxed the next day in an evaluation session with half a century of age difference between them, as a result of the chess legend wanted madness and any suggestion was welcome. He was also not afraid - as I reported for Chess Magazine sixty four at the time - to flaunt a defeat in the French and reward his opponent's ideas. Everything was put to the check, persistently and ruthlessly. It grew to become a time-consuming session and after two and Neuro Surge Brand a half hours his companion Petra Leeuwerik nearly had to drag him away so that the 76-12 months-previous could take a nap before a simultaneous within the night.

Another trait of the two-time World Championship runner-up came to the fore - winning was paramount, a draw with a star bonus as a gift was out of the question - and this was also recognised by the well-recognized movie producer Atze Brauner, who sat down at the board at the age of almost ninety and soon knocked over the king. Kortschnoi died 9 years later, and so we will now pay tribute to a career that spanned an unimaginable seven decades, from the struggle years in starving Leningrad to a comfortable retirement in the tranquil city of Wohlen. Only in recent times has his health stored him extra at home in Switzerland, in any other case it has been a restless activity for the royal game, which because the turn of the century has been more and more caught up within the frenzy of the internet age, the youth craze and the motoring world.

In this climate one hardly ever meets such a hero, an excessive amount of of as we speak's chess scene is streamlined to the dictates of AI knowledge and few threat stubbornness in chess. Viktor Kortschnoi in his aspect: Thought ping-pong in the post-mortem and the master hits back onerous. IM Steve Berger, ChessBase creator and well-recognized Twitch streamer, Neuro Surge Brand was an fascinated spectator in 2007 in Fredersdorf near Berlin on the sidelines of the Second Bundesliga matcch between Rüdersdorf and SK Zehlendorf. Much has already been published about his games and life story, and ChessBase has now brought out new insights and views with two releases that you should buy as conventional DVDs or obtain as a Masterclass. Is there the rest of added worth to contribute? The reply in each circumstances was "completely"; even when of course they're solely individual constructing blocks of a multi-faceted chess action - however these are fascinating because of their authenticity and, in the case of Kortschnoi in front of the digital camera, with an almost forgotten capacity to hurl chess thoughts unpolished onto the board with none engine support - or for him reasonably laboriously typing them into the database within the ChessBase studio.

Kortschnoi shows 17 games, all of which appeared in what is arguably his best collection of games (published in 2011 by Edition Olms in a volume for his 80th birthday, divided into White and Black games). The mix of book and video is a worthwhile addition: in the book the variations are more clearly structured and the commentary more polished, however in the shifting picture the turning factors come out more succinctly, with quite a lot of frowning from the master. It's the same with the evaluation afterwards. A Korchnoi subjected his own mind to fixed psychological torture and was reluctant to digest the machine's suggestions. While the calculator usually makes you too concrete (but additionally a slave to a depth of calculation that you simply usually can not grasp your self), the GM-human manages to reveal the "depth of strategic strains". It is a "faculty of unique chess considering", i.e. of unbiased exploration and imagination, as players with the will to enhance should excellent it time and again.