Miguel Najdorf, 87, Famed For Sparkling Chess, Dies
By Eric Pace
iguel Najdorf, a flamboyant poet of the chess pieces who was one of the most celebrated grandmasters never to play for the world championship, died on July 4 in Malaga University Hospital in Malaga, Spain. He was 87 and a beloved figure in Buenos Aires.
The cause was complications from surgery, The Associated Press reported. He had been staying at a hotel in the Spanish resort Marbella and underwent the surgery on July 4, said Elena Gonzalez, a hospital spokeswoman, without elaborating.
Mr. Najdorf is perhaps best known for the opening variation that carries his name, the popular Najdorf variation of the Sicilian Defense. The formation, championed by Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov among others, arises after 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cd 4 Nd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6.
'It is one of the most hotly contested methods of starting games today,' said Robert Byrne, the chess columnist for The New York Times. 'It is aggressive, adventurous and capable of turning the tables with little warning.'
Mr. Najdorf (pronounced NIGH-dorf), who was born in Warsaw and began playing chess at age 12, traveled to Buenos Aires in 1939 with the Polish national team for a tournament. Two weeks after he arrived, Germany invaded Poland.
Unable to return safely to his family in Poland, Mr. Najdorf, who was Jewish, stayed on in Argentina. He thereby escaped the Holocaust, but he lost his wife, child, father, mother and four brothers in concentration camps.
In the 1940's, Mr. Najdorf gave an exhibition of blindfold play, or play without sight of the board. He took on 45 players at one time, carrying all the games simultaneously in his head. He won 39, drew 4 and lost 2. In 1972, he recalled in an interview: 'I did this not as a stunt. I hoped that this exhibition would be reported throughout Germany, Poland and Russia and that some of my family might read about it and get in touch with me.' But none did so.
He is survived by his second wife, Rita, and a daughter, Mirta Najdorf.
Mr. Najdorf became an Argentine citizen in 1944 and went on to be a leading tournament contender after the end of the war, a status he held for more than 20 years.
Though he never managed to qualify for a championship match, he compiled an impressive record. He won 52 international tournaments; he won the Argentine chess championship eight times; he repeatedly headed the Argentine national chess team, and in 1948 he was considered one of the world's 10 best players. He was also a longtime chess writer.
Mr. Najdorf, a short dapper man with a big voice, was a delight to spectators because of his imaginative attacking games. He was also a high-strung competitor with the odd habit of buttonholing other players in the tournament room, while his opponent was thinking, and asking them, 'How do I stand?'
Of course, it is against the rules to solicit others' opinions during a game, but Mr. Najdorf was never challenged. On one occasion, however, the player he questioned simply stood there, shy and speechless: Mr. Najdorf had absentmindedly addressed his opponent in that day's game, the noted Soviet chess theoretician Isaac Boleslavsky.
Although Mr. Najdorf is credited with inventing the Najdorf defense, others may have got there first. 'He did most of the creative development of it,' Mr. Byrne said, 'but he was anticipated by various Czechoslovak masters, particularly Karel Opocensky. That is not unusual in chess, where the flowering of an idea often outweighs its origin.'
Mr. Najdorf is said to have been one of the world's richest chess players, not from chess but from business, as a representative of insurance and finance companies.
He loved to play friendly games with people far more famous than he, including Fidel Castro, Winston Churchill, Che Guevara, Nikita Khrushchev, the Shah of Iran and Juan Peron.
Mr. Najdorf also exchanged letters with a passionate chess player in Rome. As a result, Argentine fans who followed the Najdorf column in the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarin were able to ponder a chess problem contributed by the enthusiast in Rome, Pope John Paul II.
White Black
Larsen Najdorf
1 b3 c5
2 Bb2 e6
3 f4 d5
4 e3 Nf6
5 Nf3 Be7
6 Bb5 Bd7
7 a4 O-O
8 O-O Nc6
9 Qe2 a6
10 Bc6 Bc6
11 Ne5 Rc8
12 a5 Nd7
13 Nc6 Rc6
14 d3 c4
15 bc dc
16 d4 Nf6
17 c3 b5
18 ab Qb6
19 Ba3 Ba3
20 Ra3 Nd5
21 Re1 Qb7
22 Qc2 Rb6
23 Nd2 Rb2
24 Qc1 Rb8
25 Ra5 f5
26 h3 h6
27 Kh1 Nf6
28 Re5 Ra2
29 Rg1 Qf7
30 e4 Rbb2
31 Nc4 Rc2
32 Qe3 Ne4
33 d5 ed
34 Nb6 Rc3
35 Qd4 Qh5
36 Qd5 Kh7
37 Qa2 Rh3
38 gh Qh3
39 Qh2 Nf2 Mate
Caption: Miguel Najdorf (Kristinn Benediktsson, 1972)
'A Tactical Jewel From a '68 Event'
Miguel Najdorf was a favorite of spectators because of his imaginative, effervescent play. Here is a game from the 1968 World Team Championship in Lugano Switzerland, in which he defeated Bent Larsen of Denmark, one of the world's strongest players of the time.
WORLD TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP: Lugano, Switzerland, 1968
LARSEN OPENING
