Chess stories upside down

Lecture by Lubomir Kavalek, Saturday 24. 4., 4 p.m. – Michna Palace
(entrance from Vsehrdova street, through hotel BW Kampa)

Some chess stories are told over and over, generation after generation. Some we believe right away, others we would like to believe, but somehow we know they are just too unbelievable.

Could a certain Ukrainian amateur have read 3000 chess books, memorized their contents and beat a strong chess computer? Could another Ukrainian move the clouds in the atmosphere and make the Czech hockey star Jaromir Jagr score a goal? Was Anatoly Karpov receiving help during his game with Viktor Korchnoi in Bagio in 1978 via a yogurt cup?

A story can be true, but it tends to change slightly with each and every retelling. It tends to rotate away from the truth, bit by bit, until it suddenly seems to be standing on its head.

Standing on his head was a specialty of the great theoretician Aron Nimzovich, who did just that in the corners of tournament halls during the games. But who would believe that he was saved from being drafted into the army by a fly? Did Bobby Fischer refuse to take part in a commercial selling a chess set, a deal that could have earned him a million dollars? Or was it, as Yasser Seirawan claims, a commercial for men’s perfume? Who prevented Boris Spassky from moving his knight to b5 in his match with Korchnoi in Beograd 1977? Who was really a communist: Karpov or Garry Kasparov? And which Czech chess players fought against the Soviet empire? Did Gosta Stolz drink a whole bottle of cognac and beat Miguel Najdorf – who actually ordered the bottle for him?

Sometimes the storytellers mix up the wives, or miss an important date by half a century. Chess historians may despair, but they themselves cannot agree on the actual date of birth of the first official world champion William Steinitz : was it three days earlier or three days later?

And, so, we will take a stroll through the land of chess stories. The best ones are often told in a barber’s chair. And sometimes, in order to hear good stories, one has to become the barber*.

*The story “ Barber to a renowned master” was written by Lubomir Kavalek for a book on Karel Opocensky.