Tuesday
Feb152011
Mark Taimanov at 85: Interview Bits
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 5:45PM
An update on the current adventures of one of the world's oldest grandmasters, just past his 85th birthday. (Interestingly, his birthday is on February 7, one day earlier than the birthday of the oldest GM, 89-year-old Yuri Averbakh.)
HT: Daniel Parmet
tagged Taimanov
Reader Comments (3)
Note that the 'young prodigy' Gligoric has the oldest GM title, since he got it before them, even thinking he is a year younger than Averbakh.
[DM: Hmm, I'm not sure who got the title first, but Averbakh is the oldest bird of the three. Averbakh was born in 1922, Gligoric in 1923, and Taimanov in 1926. Oddly, all three were born the first week in February!]
The year a title was given is included in Fide chess profile
Gligoric: 1951 http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=900400
Averbakh: 1952 http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=4101529
Taimanov: 1952 http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=4100760
Taimanov - one of the few players I think who annotates games well for amateur players! (others on my list are Korchnoi, Fischer, Nunn and of course Bronstein)
I have heard the story before about Che being a strong Chess player - I heard circa 2200 (maybe Taimanov's comments are the origin). I read through the index of a recent biography of Che but found no reference to Chess. If he really is 2200 wouldn't you expect some reference at least. Does any know if there are any records of tournaments in which he participated? Wiki says he did play in tournaments nothing more. I also remember hearing that Castro was a strong player - again no evidence - wasn't it Korchnoi who said he (Castro) knows nothing of the Catalan after beating him in a Simul?
[DM: You're right about Korchnoi vs. Castro. As for Che, I suppose it would depend on whether his biographer had any knowledge of and interest in chess.]