By Nick Noden
The scene: the annual Aberdeen junior congress, many years ago. A member of the Noden family, who will remain nameless, is playing Black against a girl whose name is sadly not recorded in the annals of Aberdonian chess history. At this level, the standard winning plan is one which Nimzovitsch surprisingly omitted to mention in My System, i.e. 1) take all your opponent’s pieces and 2) give mate.
Our nameless hero has completed stage one, and, not taking stage two particularly seriously, makes a careless move. His opponent looks confused and thinks for some time, before saying, "I can’t move!"
Now only managing to draw when you are a queen, a rook, two bishops and six pawns up is somewhat embarrassing, but fortunately our hero has an ingenious solution. While his opponent’s attention is elsewhere, he slips a White pawn onto the board. "You can move your pawn", he says.
"Oh yes", says his opponent, who did not subsequently go on to take the chess world by storm. "I hadn’t spotted that". She moves the pawn, and is mated next move.
Thanks to Peter Szabo for this story
Hungarian grandmaster Laszlo Szabo, sadly no longer with us, was well known to the older generations of British chess enthusiasts, primarily through his association with the Hastings chess tournament. (As his namesake I bring dishonour to the his illustrious appellation every time I touch a chess piece ? but that is another story.) He was outright winner twice (in 1938/39 and '49/'50) as well as sharing first place in '73/'74; He also participated less successfully in '54/'55/, '56/'57 and '60/'61.
Less well-known here was the fact that, as rumoured in his native country, Szabos's assessment of the position during play could be ascertained with a fair degree of accuracy by the colour of his earlobes. Red meant he thought he was winning, white the opposite (And no, there was no intermediate colour for the draw.) This physiological quirk could occasionally produce a dramatic colour change, since our hero was apt at times to get carried away in winning positions and make an impetuous move to throw away his advantage.
The following example is allegedly an eyewitness account:
Macroczy Memorial Tournament, Rd 4 (8 Mar 1952), Troianescu of Romania v Szabo. Mr EyeWitness is walking towards the board from behind. The grandmasters earlobes are a blazing crimson, clearly he must have an overwhelming advantage. His opponent slumped disconsolately in his chair has just made a move. Szabo's arm shoots forward to play an instant reply: But lo, heavens above, hardly has he pressed his clock when all the blood is seen to by the eye-witness to drain within seconds from the grandmaster's lobes which now glisten in deathly white.....
You barely need me to tell you after all this that Szabo did have to resign eventually.
And here is the game in question, with translated (by me) comments by another participant, Dr Jozsef Szily, from his excellent book of the tournament. Since the fatal move at which the lobe colour-change occurred has not been specified, you might like to hazard your own guess.
Thanks to Norbert Fogarasi for these stories from Hungary and Canada. For more click here
My first story comes from about 9 years ago from Hungary. I was a lowly 1600 patzer with a strange opening repertoire playing in a usual Team League round on a Sunday morning against a stronger team's 1900 competitor. At the time I was new to the intricacies of the Balog Defence (1.e4 d6 2.d4 f5?!), but played it enthusiastically with horrible results. This game was no different, and by move 10 I found myself in deep trouble, having to move my king to f8 and facing a mating attack with my king stuck in the middle of the board. The only compensation I had was that my pieces were slightly better developed. Now, a very important factor to know with Hungarian League games is that in case of a draw offer, the party may discuss with his team captain whether to accept it or not - similarly to the PanAm system. On move 15 I offered the draw in a significantly worse position which I thought was going to be rejected without thought. Surprisingly, my opponent actually elected to discuss the decision with the team captain who was a strong master. The master stepped up to the board and after very long thought, advised my opponent to take the draw!! I was completely shocked, and did not believe what was going on even after the offer was accepted somewhat reluctantly by my opponent. It turns out that I made my offer at precisely the correct time, since my king happeneded to wonder back to e8 on just the last move. The master, not looking at the moves had assumed that I was still able to castle, in which case my position was actually quite strong! As they were not allowed to discuss the position, the 1900 player assumed he must have missed something, and accepted my offer.
Let's go back to Hungary to the good old 1600 days, and my opponent again outranked me by about 200 points. This was also the early part of my earplugs era, when I wore tightly secured earplugs so as to lock out any noise and concentrate fully on my game. I only realized after this game that the earplug strategy can have its great disadvantages. In a promising and creatively conducted game nearing the time control I lost the thread of the game, and my attack fizzling out I lost shortly after I made time control. During the post-mortem in the critical position my opponent says "I was actually quite surprised that you refused my draw offer at this point, since ... ". Draw offer?!?! What Draw offer?! I would have gladly taken it, according to the instructions by my team captain well before the game! Also in the position where the offer was made, I was not feeling good about my position at all, but I didn't even hear the offer because of the earplugs...
Yes, I even know of a story where the draw offer was winning not in a strategic sense, but winning outright!! It took place in a junior team tournament in Hungary where a good friend of mine, a strong candidate master at the time, was playing against a young master on the top board of his team. The time control was 40/2 SD/1, and a very exciting positional game where my friend held the advantage most of the time came down to a huge mutual sudden death time scramble. They both had seconds left on the clock, the position still quite messy, but my friend having a sizeable advantage, when the master offered a draw. My friend got quite confused of the offer, and halted for only a couple of seconds to consider it. As soon as he was about to accept it, his opponent called his flag, and stopped both clocks, winning the game on time. The draw offer won the game for him!