Talk:David Bronstein
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This article is a wee bit POV but heartwarming nonetheless! Weasel
Although it should be better written, some mention of the theories and accusations of thrown games.
- Like many other instances, there is credible theory that Bronstein was forced to throw the match by the Soviet oligarchy, to allow the Russian Botvinnik to win. Similarly, in the 1953 candidates tournament in Zurich, there is further speculation that there were pressure for the non-Russian Soviets, Keres and Bronstein to allow Smyslov to win.
- On 1953 Zurich: www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles171.pdf
- On 1951 WC match, David Bronstein's memoirs neither confirms nor denies having to throw games. From "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (Cadogan, 1995), "A lot of nonsense has been written about this," he says, but adds "I was subjected to strong psychological pressure from various sources and it was entirely up to me to yield to that pressure or not" (p. 16).
Other GMs, notably GM Larry Evans, have supported these claims.
R.I.P. David Bronstein. I have added an interesting piece of trivia to the article, and made another very minor edit, improving the position of a set of parentheses within a sentence. Vonhangman 07:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)Vonhangman 7th December 2006Vonhangman 07:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I only heard the news today. One of the great players of the 20th century. RIP David Bronstein. Carcharoth 15:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
- In April 2005, I was chatting with Tom Furstenburg (who co-authored Sorceror's Apprentice) on the ICC, and asked him about Bronstein, since he was my favorite player He said "Bronstein has no email and his health is not good; very high blood pressure. Besides he's becoming a bit more weird than usual - I wanted to be with him to celebrate his 80th birthday (2004), but declined and said that he would go into hiding that day - unreachable for the world!" So I will add a small snippet that his health had been in decline. Barney Gumble 02:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I wrote much of the article, using as a major source Bronstein's book "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".
I admit that I am a Bronstein fan. Bronstein was a very highly regarded writer, so the book has a high degree of credibility, in the eyes of most knowledgeable chess people. It won an award in 1995.
Even in his book on the 1953 Candidates' Tournament in Zurich, Bronstein strongly implied that it was set up for Smyslov to win by the Soviet chess authorities! And this was published in the 1950s, only a few years after the death of Stalin!! This book is also one of the all-time classics of chess literature, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in the USSR, and also did very well in the West following its translation in 1979 by Jim Marfia.
Bronstein did at certain times pay a personal price for his independent views, as is outlined in the article.
I left out certain other controversial stories from the "Sorcerer" book, since I didn't think they were central to the theme.
I admit that I was original, and certainly cutting-edge, in my comparison of Bronstein with Botvinnik from their 1951 match; yet this information is readily available, and I merely compared their respective lots from wartime, using it.
During WWII, Bronstein did not play a serious tournament for nearly three years, while Botvinnik got in plenty of practice in closed training matches, as well as periodic strong events, such as Sverdlovsk 1943. Botvinnik's personality was certainly cold and aloof; he treated chess as mainly an academic pursuit, and made major contributions to training methods and pedagogy, for which he was deservedly lauded, as he helped to build Soviet and Russian dominance, which has lasted ever since. Botvinnik was the darling of the Soviet chess authorities; see the Botvinnik article for more on this (I also wrote much of that). Bronstein was more the romantic, preferring to trust his intuition, rather than do vast amounts of preparation for specific opponents, as Botvinnik did.
Botvinnik had trouble dealing with Bronstein's style right from the start; he lost their first encounter in 1944, and drew their second game in 1945. This was at a time when he was Soviet champion and arguably the world's strongest player, based on chessmetrics.com ratings. At that time, Bronstein was virtually a complete unknown in the USSR, where there were hundreds of Master-strength players.
The two did not meet again until the 1951 match. Then Botvinnik lost game 5 of the 1951 match, after the first four games were drawn, and only scored his first wins after he had faced Bronstein at least seven times. Bronstein was put down by Botvinnik after the match, as Botvinnik explained his drawn match result (beforehand, he had been expected to win easily by virtually everyone) by not having played competitive chess for three years. But it was Botvinnik's established method to NOT play that much (at least not in public), and he could analyse all the master games played by others without having to risk anything himself, because of his privileged position, and could thus keep his plans secret.
But in his own book, in the introduction, Botvinnik pointed out, based on the match, that Bronstein played poorly in simple positions, and had a tendency to underestimate endgame technique. This seems unfair; my conclusion is that Botvinnik's vastly greater experience, especially with adjourned positions, was decisive in allowing him to obtain a drawn match result. Bronstein asserts this in his own book, where he wrote that he lost four completely even endgames in the match, after the adjournments, because of "bad homework". Bronstein also pointed out that Botvinnik was not able to defeat him even once in the match in a game which finished before move 40, whereas Bronstein won several games this way. Certainly, Botvinnik's criticism of Bronstein's specific faults is not clearly backed up by Bronstein's play from either before or after the match; in fact, his creativity is universally admired. Compare their respective chess careers after 1951, and Bronstein certainly doesn't come out worse; granted, he never became World Champion, but Botvinnik had such privilege as World Champion that he rarely even contested tournaments, and when he did, he didn't dominate the other top players, several times finishing out of the top spots (see 1951 Soviet Championship, 1952 Budapest, 1955 Soviet Championship). Botvinnik did not even play in the Soviet Championship after 1955; he likely decided it was too risky to face the rising new generation and have them pick apart his chess, with the exposed faults then being utilized later by challengers in title matches.
Looked at from this perspective, Bronstein's feat of reaching the 1951 world title match, and drawing the match, really stands out, especially with his father having been imprisoned years earlier (and being classed as an 'enemy of the state', for what was later admitted to be nothing, again according to the Sorcerer book, where Bronstein presents certain documents showing this. Trotsky's real name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein, and Bronstein's father's name was Iohanon Bronstein; it may be that his father was imprisoned merely because of his name, since at that time in the 1930s, Stalin had a virulent fetish towards removing anything connected with Trotsky, which ran to paranoia. Even a possible distant relative was seen as a threat!
I believe that state interference with high-level chess in the Soviet era is a central component to understanding many otherwise unexplainable events, and that chess from this era CANNOT be properly understood without at least some acknowledement of this phenomena. It's somewhat problematic, since chess rivalry near the very top is largely a matter of styles clashing, and psychological factors, and champion chess players prove their superiority by understanding and exploiting their opponent's weaknesses. This can often take drastic measures, and stories of cheating, thrown games, players helping their friends to analyze and win, coaches who change sides for key matches, and pressure put on by authorities to lose, are commonplace. Certainly, the era of Anatoly Karpov is filled with this type of material; Boris Spassky, himself a former World Champion, apparently got into some trouble for winning and finishing ahead of Karpov in a 1983 tournament where they both played. It is likely that at least some of these stories are exaggerated or fabricated, but when a central figure such as Bronstein, who has absolutely nothing to prove based on his achievements, delves into this area, it must be taken very seriously by researchers. My take on it is that it's impossible for all of these stories to be false. Look at the conclusion of the 1984-85 World Championship match!! That right there is confirmation that unusual factors are at work!! FrankEldonDixon|Frank Dixon 12:42 GMT+5, July 30, 2007 (UTC)
