Chess the Hard Way rev. ed. (2000)

**Wayne Komer** · Friday, 15th March, 2013, 01:09 AM

Re: Chess the Hard Way rev. ed. (2000)

Three extracts from the revised edition of Chess the Hard Way:

Preface
(snip)

On March 13th, 1996, the President of the Chess Federation of Canada, Mr. Yves Farges, suggested that the Chess Federation of Canada reissue a publication of the original “Chess the Hard Way” but changing the notation from English notation to the Algebraic, and asked me if I would be interested in having this done.

This gave me an opportunity to consider writing the second part of my book, and I willingly agreed to have the original book published as Part I, and the period thereafter to be published as Part II.

I would like to express my appreciation to Yves Farges, Francisco Cabañas, Peter Stockhausen, and Jonathan Berry of Vancouver, Tony Ficzere of Brantford, Ontario, John Burstow, Jack Yoos, Professor Jack Woodbury, Cecil Rosner, Fletcher Baragar and Irwin Lipnowski, all of Winnipeg, Herb Langer of Arnprior, Ontario and Brad Thompson, Gordon Taylor and Halldor Palsson of Ottawa, who willingly devoted the time and effort to assist in the redoing of the entire work, checking and proof reading the manuscript prior to publication.

It is a tribute to the Chess community in Canada to have so many volunteers who are willingly to freely donate their time and effort to further the cause of Chess.

D. A. Yanofsky

The En Passant Interview

Phil Haley told me that you once played a Rook sacrifice which impressed Alekhine. Tell me about that story.

Yes, by 1939, largely through the efforts of my good friend Bernard Freedman, who at the time was the President of the Chess Federation, I was put on the Canadian Olympic Team in Buenos Aires. I had tied for fourth in the previous Canadian Chess Championship. A number of the players couldn’t go, and I ended up playing on the team and I played on the second board. Our team captain was Morrison. On the day we played Peru he was tired and so I played first board for Canada, and I played Dulanto (see Game 17), who at that time was champion of Peru. He played a French Defence and allowed me to make a Rook sacrifice, which the Argentine papers described as the most sensational move of the tournament. And Alekhine and Capablanca were both at the tournament – I actually met both of them. Capablanca was a very withdrawn person, or aloof, whereas Alekhine, despite what the press said about him later, appeared to be a very friendly man as far as I was concerned. He came up to me after the game, and I was thrilled – the World Champion coming up to me, and he actually analyzed this with me. And he invited me a few days later to have tea with him and his wife, and he continued to come and watch my games. And so I suppose that was one of the greatest thrills that I have had in my chess career.

You played Bobby Fischer twice. What can you tell us about this?

The first time I played Bobby was in 1962, in the Interzonal. That was when he went on to qualify for the Candidates. The one distinguishing mark for me was Bobby’s persistence. The game lasted 113 moves and it took seventeen hours with adjournments. Of course, I wasn’t old at the time but he was substantially younger and I had the better of it in the earlier part of the game, and then towards the middle and early endgame it was clearly drawn. But I have to give him credit, he was a fighter, he wasn’t going to settle for a draw. There were some tricks in the game and eventually he wore me down and he won. In 1970, it was not long before he won the World Championship, I played against him in a tournament in Tel Aviv. And in that one I think I outplayed him. I had the better of the game and I think he was lucky to draw me (see Game 107). He is a very fine player and he and I got along very well. They say this is a product of genius – that sometimes you are very eccentric – and he was in many ways. I don’t pretend to understand him, although in those years we were on very friendly terms. Even if we didn’t play against each other when we were in events like the Olympics and other things, we saw each other but he was very difficult to understand. That’s maybe one of the odd things about geniuses – they are hard to understand.

Chess the Hard Way rev. ed. (2000)

Chess the Hard Way rev. ed. (2000)

Comment