Miguel Najdorf

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Miguel Najdorf bigraphy, stories - Argentine chess player

Miguel Najdorf : biography

April 15, 1910 – July 4, 1997

Miguel Najdorf (born Mendel (Mieczysław) Najdorf in Grodzisk Mazowiecki near Warsaw, Poland, April 15, 1910 – died in Málaga, Spain, July 4, 1997) was a Polish-born Argentine chess grandmaster, famous for his Najdorf Variation.

Later career

Najdorf won important tournaments such as Mar del Plata (1961) and Havana (1962 and 1964). He also played in both Piatigorsky Cup tournaments, held in 1963 and 1966. Just before his 60th birthday, he participated in the 1970 USSR vs. Rest of the World match, achieving an even score against the former world champion Mikhail Tal.

Najdorf’s lively personality made him a great favorite among chess fans, as he displayed an aptitude for witty sayings, in the manner of his mentor Tartakower. An example: commenting on his opponent at the 1970 USSR-vs-World match, he remarked, "When [then-world-champion Boris] Spassky offers you a piece, you might as well resign then and there. But when Tal offers you a piece, you would do well to keep playing, because then he might offer you another, and then another, and then … who knows?"

Najdorf remained active in chess to the end of his life. At age 69, he tied for second place in a very strong field at Buenos Aires 1979, with 8/13, behind winner Bent Larsen (11/13), though ahead of former world champions Tigran Petrosian and Boris Spassky. At Buenos Aires 1988, he made a score of 8½/15 for fourth place at age 78. The next year in the 1989 Argentine Championship, with several other GMs in the field, he tied for 4th–6th places, with 10/17. His last national championship was in 1991 at age 81, where he finished with a minus score. Najdorf was an exceptional blitz (five-minute) player, remaining a strong player into his eighties.

World Championship contender

Najdorf’s string of successes from 1939 to 1947 had raised him into the ranks of the world’s top players. According to Chessmetrics, he was ranked second in the world from mid 1947 to mid 1949., Chessmetrics Despite his strong results, Najdorf was not invited to the 1948 World Championship tournament as a replacement for Reuben Fine.. Previews.chessdom.com (2010-07-02). Retrieved on 2012-11-08.

Although not a full-time chess professional (for many years he worked in the insurance business), he was one of the world’s leading chess players in the 1950s and 1960s and he excelled in playing blindfold chess: he broke the world record twice, by playing blindfold 40 games in Rosario, 1943, and 45 in São Paulo, 1947, becoming the world blindfold chess champion. In 1950, FIDE made him one of the inaugural International Grandmasters. In the same year he played at Budapest in the Candidates Tournament to select a challenger for the world chess championship, and finished fifth. Three years later, in the Zürich Candidates Tournament in 1953, he finished sixth, and never succeeded in qualifying for the Candidates again. The closest he would come in the remainder of his career was in the following cycle, when he narrowly failed to qualify from the 1955 Interzonal, held at Gothenburg, Sweden., Mark Weeks’ Chess Pages

Notable games

  • "The Polish Immortal" or "Najdorf’s Immortal" – one of the most brilliant games of the twentieth century.
  • These two players were destined to settle in Argentina in 1939, where they had great battles in many events.
  • Keres opens the centre prematurely, and Najdorf forms a pawn roller and arranges a quick victory.
  • Najdorf shows how to play this line from the Black side, by comparison with the Keres game given above.
  • In their first meeting, Najdorf catches the future World Champion in a maze of tactics.
  • Najdorf avoids a tactical battle with an early exchange of queens in Boleslavsky’s pet variation, then grinds him down.
  • Eliskases was another European GM who stayed in South America during World War II, and he also had a great rivalry with Najdorf.
  • Fine was getting ready to retire from chess, with this being his last serious event at age 37.
  • A brilliancy-prize game from the 1953 Candidates event versus the Soviet grandmaster Mark Taimanov. Najdorf’s enthusiasm for, and virtuosity in conducting, the attack against the enemy king is well shown here, in a game praised by David Bronstein in his famous book on the tournament. It is also a good example of learning from one’s defeats. Earlier that year, Gligorić had beaten Najdorf with the same system. (). After the game, Don Miguel delivered his famous line: "Taimanov had better go and play his piano"!
  • Miguel Najdorf once played a with communist revolutionary Che Guevara; they drew.