Poison from Dagomys

BY: BOBBY ANG

(As published in Chess Piece, BusinessWorld, 30 April 2010)

The World Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov started last April 24. We will begin our coverage this coming Monday. Let us finish first my report on the Russian Team Championship by reliving a decisive top board encounter between two of the top players in the world in a very topical opening line -- the Najdorf Poisoned Pawn.

IM Andrija Fuderer was one of the top players of Yugoslavia in the early ’50s -- he won the national championship in 1953 and represented his country in three Olympiads. A turning point in his career was the 1955 Gothenburg Interzonal. Fuderer had strong hopes of finishing in the top 9 (out of 21) to qualify for the Candidates’ tournament, but was extremely disappointed to be relegated to the bottom half of the standings. He then quit chess and went back to the University to get a degree in Chemistry, earning a Ph.D. from the University of Zagreb and went on to become a famous inventor (for example, a new compression process for refrigeration).
He was to play for Yugoslavia in a few more team events after his retirement as a chess professional, but in Gothenburg, his last official tournament, Fuderer was to achieve his main claim to fame -- it was he who introduced the Poisoned Pawn Variation to the world.

Keres, Paul -- Fuderer, Andrija [B97]
Gothenburg Interzonal (16), 10.09.1955
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Well, that was quite a rout administered by the great Estonian Paul Keres. The pawn sacrifice 8.Qd2 coupled with 10.e5 became a big favorite for White due to this game and some more Mihail Tal brilliancies. However, in the ’60s, an American by the name of Bobby Fischer dared to grab the b2-pawn almost every time he faced the 6.Bg5 variation and won several outstanding games. After that, the pawn sacrifice lost its popularity and became a rare guest in top tournaments.

During the 2004 Calvia Olympiad interest in the Poisoned Pawn Variation was reawakened after two crushing wins by Teimour Radjabov using the 10.f5 (instead of 10.e5) line. Many more players started taking it up again, and with the participation of such names as Shirov and Anand each game tried to refute the findings from previous ones. Here is my humble attempt to update our BW readers.

Ivanchuk, Vassily (2748) -- Grischuk, Alexander (2756) [B97]
17th TCh-RUS Premier Dagomys RUS (7), 08.04.2010
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Conclusions? From the theoretical aspect Black is still OK, but the defensive task is not that easy so you can still expect many more Poisoned Pawn games to come.
Reader comments/suggestions are solicited. E-mail address is bangcpa@gmail.com