Jan Hein Donner

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Jan Hein Donner bigraphy, stories - Dutch chess grandmaster

Jan Hein Donner : biography

6 July 1927 – 27 November 1988

Johannes Hendrikus (Hein) Donner (July 6, 1927 – November 27, 1988) was a Dutch chess grandmaster (GM) and writer. Donner was born in The Hague and won the Dutch Championship in 1954, 1957, and 1958. FIDE, the World Chess Federation, awarded him the GM title in 1959. He played for the Netherlands in the Chess Olympiads 11 times (1950–1954, 1958–1962, 1968, 1972–1978). He was the uncle of the former Dutch Minister of Social Affairs and Employment, Piet Hein Donner.

On August 24, 1983 Donner suffered a stroke, which he wrote happened "just in time, because when you are 56 you do not play chess as well as you did when you were 26".Donner 2006, p. 5. After surviving the stroke, he went to live in Vreugdehof, which he described as "a kind of nursing-home". He was unable to walk, but had learned to type with one finger, and wrote for NRC Handelsblad and Schaaknieuws.Donner 2006, p. 381 (originally published in Schaaknieuws, 20 September 1986).

Notes

Quotes from Donner

  • "I love all positions. Give me a difficult positional game, I’ll play it. Give me a bad position, I’ll defend it. Openings, endgames, complicated positions, and dull, drawn positions, I love them all and will give my best efforts. But totally winning positions I cannot stand."Donner 2006, p. 19 (originally published in Club Magazine DD, July/September 1950). ISBN 90-5691-171-6.
  • Writing of Lodewijk Prins, after Prins had won the Dutch Championship: "He hasn’t got a clue. He is the worst player in the whole wide world. … Dear Lodewijk. … You’ve won the title and I want to congratulate you. But I think you cannot tell a knight from a bishop and I’m prepared to prove it, too. … We’ll play a match."Donner 2006, p. 81 (originally published in De Tijd, 15 December 1965). Prins declined Donner’s match offer.Donner 2006, pp. 83-84 (originally published in De Tijd, 11 January 1966).
  • "After I resigned this game with perfect self-control and solemnly shook hands with my opponent in the best of Anglo-Saxon traditions, I rushed home, where I threw myself onto my bed, howling and screaming, and pulled the blankets over my face."Donner 2006, p. 126 (originally published as Donner-Ree, Polemiek en Tweekamp [Polemic and Match], 1972).
  • Donner’s remark about winning from a dead-lost position: "I couldn’t resist saying something that I had never said before after winning a game of chess. I may have thought it, but I had never said it. I said, ‘Sorry.Donner 2006, p. 133 (originally published in Schaakbulletin 52/53, April 1972).
  • "Chess is and will always be a game of chance."Donner 2006, p. 86 (originally published in Elseviers Weekblad, 20 November 1967).
  • "It is mainly the irreparability of a mistake that distinguishes chess from other sports. A whole game long and there is only one point to score. Just one mistake and the battle is lost, even though the fight may go on for hours. … That’s why a mistake hits so hard in chess."Donner 2006, p. 144 (originally published in De Tijd, 31 July 1972).
  • On playing the black pieces against the move 1.e4: "I don’t like this move. And they know it." Donner, The Master Game, BBC2
  • "How different is chess in the United States. The game of chess has never been held in great esteem by the North Americans. Their culture is steeped in deeply anti-intellectual tendencies. They pride themselves in having created the game of poker. It is their national game, springing from a tradition of westward expansion, of gun-slinging skirt chasers who slept with cows and horses. They distrust chess as a game of Central European immigrants with a homesick longing for clandestine conspiracies in quiet coffee houses. Their deepest conviction is that bluff and escalation will achieve more than scheming and patience (witness their foreign policy)."Donner 2006, p. 139 (originally published in De Tijd, 28 June 1972).
  • "… it doesn’t take much insight into human nature to predict that Fischer will not be world champion for long. His quirks, moods and whims will turn against him at the moment when he has reached the top. He’ll hit out hard, but at nothing but thin air."Donner 2006, p. 147 (originally published in De Tijd, 31 July 1972).
  • "The difference between the sexes is remarkable in chess, but not any more so, to my mind, than in any other field of cultural activity. Women cannot play chess, but they cannot paint either, or write, or philosophize. In fact, women have never thought or made anything worth considering."Donner 2006, p. 151 (originally published in Het Parool, 31 August 1972).
  • According to Jonathan Speelman:Jon Speelman, Best Chess Games 1970-80, Unwin Paperbacks, 1983, p. 261. ISBN 0-04-794016-6.