Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Averbakh: King Hunted
Yuri Lvovich Averbakh (1922-2022) is the only GM in history who has reached 100 years of age. He has been one of the few strong chess players who simultaneously obtained significant achievements in chess theory, literature, journalism, history, and chess politics.
Averbakh held numerous chess titles in his life, only World Champion was missing. As he always explained: “I don’t have a champion character, I’m a researcher, not a fighter or a ‘killer’ behind the chessboard. I am interested in analyzing.”
Averbakch was born in Kaluga (Russia), and tragedy marked his life.
The young Averbakh began playing chess when he was seven. At that age, he began attending school. Most Russian boys usually started school at eight. Averbakh always felt that this affected his destiny because in 1939, when the war started in Europe, all young men who had just finished school were sent into the army. Averbakh, who was too young to be a conscript could continue studying at the Bauman Institute. In 1941, when the Soviet Union entered the war, the Institute gave him a deferment from mobilization. As Averbakh often explained: “I was part of a tragic generation. Many friends died in the war, but I was lucky. Such a fate, I did not do anything for this—that’s how life was.” According to historical records, 93 percent of Russian males born in 1922 died at the front.
After graduation, Averbakh worked for five years at the Research Institute for Missile Aviation and prepared his thesis. However, at some point he decided to finally devote himself to chess. Averbakh liked to tell the story of the head of his department when once asked him how he was combining chess and science: “I said: ‘Frankly speaking, science hinders chess, and chess interferes with science.’ He thought and said: ‘I can let you go to play chess for two years. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll take you back.’ And when in 1954 I became the champion of the USSR and the contender for the world championship, the question was settled. In fact, he blessed me for a chess career.” But in those early years, life wasn’t easy; Averbakh only earned about half of what he was making at the institute.
In 1950 Averbakh obtained the IM title and two years later the GM title. In 1953 he took part in the Candidates Tournament in Zurich. It was one of the strongest tournaments in history. The event was a 15-player double round-robin and held from August 30 to October 23. The winner was Smyslov who would challenge Botvinnik the next year. In that tournament, Averbakh played one of his best known games, which he lost. That game features the most famous king-hunt in the history of chess and it’s today’s example. The game includes some comments from the English GM John Nunn who analyzed it in the book “The Mammoth Book of the World’s Greatest Chess Games”:
Luck, success, and tragedy mixed in Averbakh’s life.
In 1954, the USSR team played the U.S. in a match in New York. Averbakh missed his game against IM Donald Byrne because his clock was broken. As a result, GM Igor Bondarevsky (the Soviet team captain) removed Averbakh from the team for a year for unsportsmanlike conduct.
In 1955, Averbakh was the second of Spassky during the World Junior Chess Championship in Antwerp. Spassky’s regular trainer Tolush could attend because he had broken his leg. Spassky won, and Averbakh was back again on the national team.
Averbakh called himself a fatalist. The day he obtained a job in the chess federation, his mother had a stroke. And when he became Soviet Champion, his father died.
Source: chess.com: “Yuri Averbakh, 1922-2022“
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