A Mental Martial Art

Hi All,
        Answers and Scores are given below.

Answers
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1.  Mir Sultan Khan (He (1905 - 1966) was generally

considered to have been the strongest chess master of
his time from Asia. He was also the first Asian chess
master since As-Suli to have been recognized in
Europe. His was another bittersweet story in chess).

2.Mikhail Nekhemievich Tal (Although Tal's playing

style was scorned by ex-World Champion Vasily Smyslov
as nothing more than "tricks," he convincingly beat
every notable grandmaster with his trademark
aggression (Viktor Korchnoi and Paul Keres are two of
the few with a significant plus record against him).
His intuitive sacrifices created vast complications,
and many masters found it impossible to solve all the
problems he created over the board, though deeper
post-game analysis found flaws in some of his
conceptions. Of the current top-level players, the
Latvian-born Spaniard Alexei Shirov has probably been
most influenced or inspired by Tal's sacrificial
style. In fact he studied with Tal as a youth…)

3.The World Chess Championship match between

challenger Bobby Fischer and defending champion Boris
Spassky in Reykjavík, 1972, has been dubbed the Match
of the Century. It is probably the most well-known
world chess championship match, and also the most
dramatic.

(The match was played at the height of the Cold War.

For a long time, the Soviet chess system had had a
monopoly on the game at the highest level. Fischer,
the highly eccentric young American (29 years old at
the time of the match), on the other hand, had been
outspoken in his criticism of the system. For
instance, he believed that USSR players gained an
unfair advantage by agreeing to short draws among
themselves in tournaments. Endowed with a fierce
fighting spirit and a hater of agreed draws, Fischer
had campaigned against this practice. He viewed the
Soviets as hypocrites. The expectations on Spassky
were enormous because for the Soviets, chess was part
of the political system, part of life. While Fischer
was often famously critical of his home country
("Americans want to plunk in front of a TV and don't
want to open a book..."), he too carried the burden of
expectation because of the political significance of
the match.
Fischer failed to arrive in Iceland for the opening
ceremony. Then, for several days, it looked doubtful
that the match would be played at all, for it was
proving impossible for FIDE to accommodate Fischer's
myriad of demands, such as banning television cameras
and a 30% share of the revenue from spectators.
Fischer's behavior was full of self-contradictions, as
it had been throughout his chess career. He badly
wanted to play the match, but would become extremely
stubborn over apparently trivial issues. Finally,
after a surprise doubling of the prize fund and much
persuasion, including a phone call from Henry
Kissinger, Fischer did fly to Iceland. Many
commentators, particularly from the USSR, have
suggested that all this (and his continuing demands
and unreasonableness) was part of Fischer's plan to
"psyche out" Spassky. Fischer's supporters say that
winning the World Championship was the mission of his
life, that he simply wanted the setting to be perfect
for it when he took the stage, and that his behavior
was not different than it had been in the past ten or
fifteen years.)

4.Donald Byrne (June 12, 1930–May 6, 1976) was one of

the USA's strongest chess players during the 1950s and
1960s. He won the U.S. Open in 1953, was awarded the
International Master title from FIDE (English: World
Chess Federation) in 1962, and played for or captained
five U.S. Chess Olympiad teams between 1962 and 1972.
His brother, International Grandmaster Robert Byrne,
was also a leading player of that time.

5.Stalemate is a situation in chess where the player

whose turn it is to move has no legal moves but is not
in check. Stalemate ends the game, with the result a
draw. However, in certain chess variants, such as
suicide chess, stalemate is not necessarily a draw,
and is deemed a win for either (a) the player with
fewer pieces (a draw results if the players have the
same number of pieces) or (b) the stalemated player.

Scores
******
Prateek Vijayavargia   3.75
Sushil Vashishta       3.25
Rajesh Mohan           2.75
Manjith K              2.5
Kishore Chandran       2
Atul V Nath            2
Husain Poonawala       1.25
Amandeep Singh         1
       

Questions for Reference

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Hi All,
       A quiz from one of my favourite sport, “Chess”
– A game based solely on tactics and strategy...Hope
every one will like this….

1.  He was generally considered to have been the

strongest chess master of his time from Asia. He was
actually a slave and brought to England by his master
in the late 1920’s…There he won the British Chess
Championship 3 times and played for England in 2 Chess
Olympiads... In less than four years, he rose to the
top of the chess world, playing with the world's great
masters, such as Alexander Alekhine, José Raúl
Capablanca, Max Euwe, Aaron Nimzowitsch, and Akiba
Rubinstein...His most notable victory was the
game(Guys, if you can analyze this game on a chess
board, then I think you will really enjoy it, if you
like Chess..) he won against former world champion
Capablanca in the Hastings tournament...In that game,
with white pieces, this guy unleashed his talent by
beating Capablanca with 2 Rooks against the Queen in
65 moves(It was believed that 2 Rooks Vs Queen is
always a difficult situation to win especially for the
player who is having 2 Rooks, not the Queen…I don’t
know up to what extent this belief is correct….). His
best years were the last two years, when he was
probably ranked in the top ten in the world. In 1933,
just when he was beginning to improve his performance,
he was taken back to India by his master, and was
never heard of by the chess world again.About whom am
I talking about?

2. He was Known as "The Magician from Riga", He can be

considered as the archetype of the attacking player,
developing an extremely powerful and imaginative play.
  His approach over the board was very pragmatic - in
that respect, he is one of the heirs of the ex-World
Champion Emanuel Lasker. He often sacrificed material
in search for the initiative in chess, which is
defined by the ability to make threats to which the
opponent must respond.He loved the game in itself and
considered that "Chess, first of all, is Art." He was
capable of playing numerous blitz games against
unknown or relatively weak players purely for the joy
of playing. Identify this former former World
Champion?

3. A simple one…Which game is known as the “Match of

the Century” in Chess history? (0.5 marks for
Identifying the players and 0.5 for year and
tournament…)

4. Who lost to Bobby Fischer(when Fischer was only 13)

in the Rosenwald Memorial Tournament in New York City
in 1956?? In this game(It was nicknamed "The Game of
the Century" by Hans Kmoch in "Chess Review"), Fischer
(playing with black pieces) demonstrates brilliance,
innovation, improvisation and poetry…Chess book author
Graham Burgess suggests three lessons to be learned
from this game, which can be summarized as follows:  
 

a) In general, don't waste time by moving the same

piece twice in an opening; get your other pieces
developed first.

b) Material sacrifices are likely to be effective if

your opponent's king is still in the middle and a
central file is open.

c) Even at 13, Fischer was a player to be reckoned

with.

( Hint:- He was a professor of English. He taught at

Penn State University from 1961 until his death…)

5. Another sitter…What is “Stalemate” in Chess??