Lubomir Kavalek, 1943-2021
The Czech-American grandmaster, former number-10 in the world, coach, organizer, trainer, commentator, author, columnist, and member of the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame Lubomir (Lubosh) Kavalek died at the age of 77 after a brief but severe illness. The news was confirmed by his wife Irina.
Kavalek was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic), on August 9, 1943, exactly five months after GM Bobby Fischer. He won his first national championship in 1962 at the age of 19. In the same year, he played one of his most famous games, as Black against Eduard Gufeld, at the World Student Team Championships:
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Nezhmetdinov and Rinck
[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]
I couldn’t easily decide on what to do for the last column of this very difficult year and eventually fell back on some cheerful ultra-violence. It’s the sort of chess which is wonderful to watch from a distance and would be delightful to dish out but deeply unpleasant to be on the end of. And who better to follow than the wonderful Rashid Nezhmetdinov with his two most famous games?
I’ve recently played through a few studies by Henri Rinck