A few weeks ago, we marked in this space the 100th anniversary of the storied New York tournament of 1924, one of the greatest events ever staged in this country. But there was another, less-heralded event on Feb. 19 that same year in the small central Ukrainian town of Bila Tserkva that would forever enrich the game in ways great and small.
That was the day David Ionovich Bronstein came into the world. The great Soviet grandmaster was among the world’s very best players from the 1940s to the 1970s and just missed in his bid to become world champion, playing an epic drawn match with titleholder Mikhail Botvinnik in 1951 when Bronstein was up a full point with just two games to go. Bronstein, who died in 2006, contributed deeply to modern opening theory — particularly in his beloved King’s Indian Defense — and wrote several classics of literature, including “200 Open Games” and the indispensable “Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953.
” It’s a melancholy thought to consider Bronstein’s unquenchable search for beauty and originality at the board might not hold up so well in this age of remorseless, hyper-accurate computer analysis (though Bronstein himself wrote perceptively of the coming revolution in the game that the silicon monsters would fashion). Fellow grandmasters would marvel in post-game analysis sessions that Bronstein had spent so much time during the game on fantastical ideas and crazy sidelines that his opponent never even suspected were th.
