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Apr-29-11
 | | jessicafischerqueen: FIDE Candidate Master Tryfon Gavriel (<Kingscrusher>) annotates a series of brilliancies by the greatest chess player never to become a Grandmaster: Rashid Nezhmetdinov, Tatar assassin and vanquisher of Mikhail Tal. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=B...
The youtube playlist features analysis of 11 brilliancies by <Rashid Nezhmetdinov> |
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Apr-30-11
| | jessicafischerqueen: <muwatalli: can anyone tell me how to pronounce this guy's name?> Here is an audio recording of <Rashid Nezhmetdinov's> name produced by <Annie Kappel>, with aid from a native Russian speaker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih0F...
The <Tatar> pronunciation is a little different, particularly on his first name. In <Tatar>, it sounds less like "Ra SHEED" and more like "Ra sh(i)t" |
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| May-25-11 | | Resignation Trap: Bust of Nezhmetdinov in Kazan: http://www.russiachess.org/images/s... |
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| May-25-11 | | Resignation Trap: And on a building: http://www.russiachess.org/images/s... |
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Jun-11-11
| | jessicafischerqueen: <Resignation Trap> brilliant! Thank you so much.
I'd been looking for that memorial plaque posted in your second link. That's actually on <Nezh's> house: "A memorial plaque at house number 76 on the Baumann street, where he lived." Source: http://www.gambiter.ru/chess/item/2... |
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| Jun-11-11 | | parisattack: Fascinating and very *special* player. I want to compare him with Tal but he also has a Power Player approach similar to Stein...and beyond that something quite unique I am unable to specifically I.D. IMHO not just a GM but - at his best - an SGM level player. |
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| Aug-02-11 | | wordfunph: "In America, everybody knows about Mikhail Tal. But, if you ask them to name the ten greatest attacking chess players of all-time, I feel very sure that Nezhmetdinov would be left off many people's lists. As, he was, in my opinion, the greatest attacking chess player that nobody in America has heard of." - Joel Johnson (author of the best-selling chess book Formation Attacks) http://www.amazon.com/Formation-Att... |
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| Aug-03-11 | | Petrosianic: It makes little sense to complain that people haven't heard of the greatest attacking player that no one has heard of. If you moved him onto the have-heard-of list, he wouldn't score nearly as high. |
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Sep-26-11
| | jessicafischerqueen: <Petrosianic> yes, you are right, but only by the criterion of consistency of tournament results. While this is certainly a more than relevant criterion, there is such a thing as a great attacking player who nonetheless tallied many wins that became admired through the ages. <Nezh> is one of these players, and thus deserves more publicity than he's gotten. Finally, another reason he was not well known is the west is that he only got to play outside of the USSR on one occasion. |
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Oct-09-11
| | jessicafischerqueen: <Rashid Nezhmetdinov documentary> With live historical chess footage and voice-over narration http://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... "The Soviet Chessmaster Rashid Nezhmetdinov was one of the most feared attacking players in chess history. Although not well known in the west, he won many brilliancy prizes and defeated most of the best players of his era, including Mikhail Tal, Boris Spassky, David Bronstein, Efim Geller, Lev Polugaevsky, Isaak Boleslavsly, Salo Flohr, Andor Lilienthal, Gideon Stahlberg, and many other strong grandmasters." Written by Jessica Fischer
Narrated by Richard Dewoskin
Researched by Jessica Fischer, Annie Kappel, Larry Crawford, Chancho, and Thanh Phanh. |
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Oct-10-11
 | | LIFE Master AJ: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Io...
A new video on this player, I watched all three segments tonight. |
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Oct-23-11
 | | ketchuplover: I'm watching part one on chesscafe.com video(youtube video) |
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Oct-23-11
 | | kamalakanta: Jessica, thank you for a sublime documentary. I enjoyed also the documentaries on Rossolimo, Morphy and Rubinstein. I did not know much about Rossolimo until I watched your videos about him. The documentaries about Charousek and Steinitz are eye-openers....I am starting to understand a little more the essentials of Steinitz's contributions. Now I want a collection of his games! Chigorin also intrigues me.... |
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Oct-23-11
| | kamalakanta: I PLAY THE FRED, I beg to disagree, he was at least as strong as Stein and Geller....unless by world-class you also mean consistent. His results were up and down...among modern players, Ivanchuk reminds me of him a little bit....both very artistic and having uneven results.... |
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| Oct-23-11 | | I play the Fred: <I PLAY THE FRED, I beg to disagree, he was at least as strong as Stein and Geller> I agree that he took a back seat to no one when on the attack. But of course, the attack isn't everything in chess. Chessmetrics had Nezh's peak rating at #21. That was in September 1954. The month before he was #23 in the world. This was in the midst of a long stretch (June 1954 - March 1957) spent mostly between #30 and #40. He had another such stretch, albeit much shorter, from December 1964 to March 1965. In another 20 months, Nezh was between #40 and #50. In the other twenty years of his career he was no better than #50 in the world. Geller was nearly a contemporary of Nezhmetdinov, thirteen years younger. No slouch at attack himself. Geller spent the vast majority of the years 1949 to 1978 in the top ten, never lower than #21. In other words, <for thirty years> Geller was ranked higher than Nezhmetdinov's one-month best rating. And Stein? Stein was born in 1934, more than twenty years after Nezhmetdinov but they died almost exactly one year apart. He peaked at #3 in the world; after entering the world's top ten in March of 1962, stayed in it until his death (minus two months). I don't know that the difference in strength between Nezh on the one hand and Geller/Stein on the other is <quite> as drastic as the record suggests; I also don't know if Nezh was denied playing opportunities that other players enjoyed or what, but it is clear to me that Nezhmedtinov was in a class below players like Geller and Stein, even if Nezh could raise his game enough to outplay them on occasion. |
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| Oct-23-11 | | DrMAL: <kamalakanta: Jessica, thank you for a sublime documentary.> Yes thank you from me too, always nice to learn more about life of this fascinating player. His thinking on value of initiative vs. material and his ability to find sacs with counter-intuitive correct response usually missed by opponent (learned by Tal) were both quite singular for his day, cheers. |
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| Oct-23-11 | | bronkenstein: Ty again Jess , just had wonderful time watching the vid . |
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| Nov-08-11 | | BUNA: <jessicafischerqueen>
<Finally, another reason he was not well known is the west is that he only got to play outside of the USSR on one occasion.> That seems to be wrong. Nezhmetdinov played in Bucarest 1954 (second place), Ulan Bator 1965 (5-6), Varna 1967 (5-8).
Source: "Rashid Nezhmetdinov" by Damskiy, Moscow 1987 (a book of the "small black series") Another small correction. Nezhmetdinov was never Tals trainer, as someone claimed. Tal rather asked for his help on one occasion. Before the WC match 1960. |
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| Nov-08-11 | | brankat: All of the three events took place within what was the Eastern block (Romania, Mongolia, Bulgaria). He never played in the west. |
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| Nov-08-11 | | BUNA: And another small comment regarding the classification of Nezhmetdinov I would like to add.
I.e. was he an IM or GM, considering he played such brilliant and beautiful games. Even against top GMs and WCs. Well, you have to separate the different aspects of chess. If chess to you is a sport, then Nezh wasn't even second tier.
But as a chess ARTIST he was one of the MANY greats.
That is why I don't understand all these tedious discussions about competitive achievements on this server, which even involve dead champions and how to rate them against one another.
They tend to shrink chess down to the size of ...? Long jump maybe. |
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| Nov-08-11 | | I play the Fred: <Well, you have to separate the different aspects of chess. If chess to you is a sport, then Nezh wasn't even second tier. But as a chess ARTIST he was one of the MANY greats.> Why is this a <one or the other> proposition? The sporting aspect of chess is intertwined with the artistic. We're not discussing problems or studies, where the brilliance of the idea is the more or less main aspect involved. Is it not enough that Nezhmetdinov is remembered at all? There is a player who faced the same World Champions that Nezhmetdinov did (Botvinnik through Spassky) and compiled basically the same record against them that Nezh did (Nezh scored 38.9, this guy scored 35.7), and I suspect Nezh's record would have suffered had he played more than one game (a draw) against Botvinnik. (Our mystery player faced Botvinnik 17 times, with unfortunate results - +1-8=8) According to Chessmetrics, this player was ranked in the top 20 for three straight years, ranking as high as number 11 in four different months. Even in his early 50's this player returned to the top twenty for a time. One GM said that he honed the right to move first "into a weapon of astounding force". Another said that if he had played as well with black as he did with white that he would have been a WC contender. So no, we don't spend all that much time considering the sporting aspects of chess. If we did, <Semyon Furman> would be as well remembered as Nezhmetdinov. |
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| Nov-08-11 | | King Death: Chess combines the elements of sport, science and art. It's wrong to include one facet while excluding those others. Nezhmetdinov was a great attacking player, but never quite as good in other aspects of the game. He provided some beautiful games though. |
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| Nov-10-11 | | DrMAL: Have to agree with <I play the Fred> too, and not because he looks pretty hostile in photo. Chessmetrics "ratings" are ludicrous but site's rankings are accurate. But even if not, Nezmetdinov was clearly part of top Soviet GM crowd his games (including brillance shown by his style or "artistry" of play) and achievments were great enough for Tal to use him as mentor at highest level. He did indeed greatly influence other great "magicians" such as Stein and Geller, he was cornerstone figure in Soviet chess. |
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| Nov-11-11 | | qqdos: <DrMAL> and fellow admirers of our hero, may I refer you to Nezhmetdinov vs Krogius, 1959. Did Nezh upstage Velimirovic and anticipate his "Attack" by a number of years? Adding yet another string to his bow. I wondered if Velimirovic and his Mum had secretly found this game in the literature and were keeping it up their sleeves. However, it seems more likely that R Bogdanovic vs J Rejfir, 1962 was the inspiration for the (B89) system, as we now know and love it. |
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Nov-19-11
| | jessicafischerqueen: <BUNA> Thanks very much for posting those corrections to <Nezh's> CG.com biography. We will edit the changes as soon as I can get hold of the editor: 1. <In 1954, accompanied by Soviet Masters by Korchnoi, Semyon Abramovich Furman and Ratmir Kholmov, Nezhmetdinov participated in the Bucharest International tournament, the only time he played outside the USSR> This should read "one of only three times he competed outside the USSR." 2. <He was one of Tal's trainers during both of the latter's World Championship matches against Mikhail Botvinnik.> This should read "He assisted Tal in preparation for the latter's 1960 World Championship match against Mikhail Botvinnik." _____
Two further points here-
First, as you said, it's not accurate to refer to <Nezh> as a "trainer" in relation to <Tal>, although he did in fact help him "train" for the 1960 match with <Botvinnik>. When we use the word "trainer" in a chess context we usually mean a formal relationship of mentor-mentee such as <Furman-Karpov>, this was certainly not the case between <Nezh-Tal>. <Tal's> main trainer throughout his life was friend and fellow Latvian Grandmaster <Alexander Koblenz>. Second, as you said, in 1960 <Tal> asked <Nezh> to join his team to help him prepare for the first <Botvinnik> match. Nezh functioned to introduce novel ideas in some opening variations, and as a sparring partner. I have two Russian websites that claim <Nezh> also helped <Tal> prepare for the 1961 rematch, but I don't trust either of them enough to let the claim stand here in the CG biography (or in my film for that matter, where I don't include that claim). I suspect <Tal> likely did ask <Nezh> for help in 1961 as well, but there's not enough hard evidence to make that claim at this point. We know from Tal's own mouth that he asked <Nezh> to help him prepare for the 1960 match, from the introduction Tal wrote for the Russian edition of <Pishkin's> biography of <Nezhmetdinov>. |
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