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Take a look at this picture. It is not a Hollywood star, but a chess celebrity. Can you recognize him? Capablanca, Nezhmetdinov, Frank Marshall? No, not any of them! The answer is Andor Lilienthal, an extraordinary chess grandmaster, born in Moscow, but moved to Hungary. In his career, he played against ten world champions, and defeated six of them. Retrospect by Himank Ghosh. | Photo: Edward Winter's Chess Notes archives.
Usually, when discussing former chess prodigies, the talks will gravitate around the accomplishments while young, and then shift towards their accomplishments as a mature player. Among the most unusual stories of such in chess is that of a little girl whose feats were worthy of the fictitious Beth Harmon, yet never bloomed into the tale of an adult champion.
€19.95 Reclaiming the title Respectfully known as the Patriarch of Soviet chess, Mikhail Botvinnik became world champion for the first time in 1948, when he won a 5-player quintuple round robin finishing a whole three points ahead of second-placed Vasily Smyslov. Subsequently, he defended the title twice, first against David Bronstein (1951) and then against Smyslov (1954). In 1957, however, he was defeated by a 33-year-old Smyslov, who obtained a clear 12½:9½ victory in Moscow. As the FIDE rules allowed at the time, the player who lost the title had a chance to play a ...