Nicolas Rossolimo
Nicolas Rossolimo ( born February 28, 1910 in Kiev as Nikolai Spirodonowitsch Rossolimo; † July 24, 1975 in New York City ) was a French- American chess player.
Life
The father Spiridon Rossolimo was Greek, the mother Xenia Nikolaevna Russian. His childhood was spent Nicolas in Moscow, where he learned to play chess. In the turmoil of the 1917 revolution, his parents were separated, his father emigrated to the United States. Together with his mother, who had been suspected because of their mastery of four languages of cosmopolitanism and therefore jailed for a year by the Communists, and a brother he arrived in 1929, thanks to a Greek passport, which she had obtained by the citizenship Spiridon, first in the Czechoslovakia and then to Paris. How many Russian emigres Nicolas Rossolimo worked there as a taxi driver.
He had his first major chess successes in Moscow. He was a player of the first performance class and won claims to the Moscow Junior Championship. In tournaments in Paris, he gained international success and won three times the internationally highly occupied Paris Championship: In 1938 he was second behind former World Champion José Raúl Capablanca, 1939 he won before Savielly Tartakower. Rossolimos chess career was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War.
In 1947 he received French citizenship and became a professional chess player, for which he was trained by Camil Seneca. Through the training is increased Rossolimos playing strength, letting it in 1948 won the national championship of France and the traditional tournament in Hastings. In the following years he continued his winning streak by first places in Southsea in 1949, before Luděk Pachman, and Gijón in 1950 continued. At the Chess Olympiad 1950 he played for France on the second board behind Tartakower, against whom he had previously achieved in each case a draw in two competitions: 1948 with 1:1 at 8 draws, 1949, 5:5.
1950 Rossolimo received the title of International Master in 1953 he became Grand Master. He and his wife Vera Anatoljewna Budakowitsch and his son Alexander Rossolimo moved in the same year near his parents to the United States, where he earned his livelihood, he unlike in France in the United States could not deny as a professional chess player, among other things, as a bellhop earned at the Waldorf -Astoria as well as a taxi driver and chess coach. His Chess Studio in Greenwich Village was a popular meeting intellectuals, including wrong there Marcel Duchamp. In addition Rossolimo sold a self-produced record with Russian folklore. Plans to return to France, Rossolimo sat not at first, because his son Alexander as conscripts of the French army in the Algerian War (1954-1962) should have drawn otherwise.
In 1955 he won the Long Beach Open Chess Championship for the United States before Samuel Reshevsky and received as a prize a car. The United States, he represented at the Chess Olympiads in 1958, 1960 and 1966. However times he lived in France again, for in Skopje in 1972, he played his last Chess Olympiad. The opening of another Chess Studio in Spain was a failure. After a staircase fall Rossolimo was found unconscious on July 21, 1975 in New York and admitted to the hospital, where he died three days later at the head injuries.
Rossolimo won many beauty awards for his chess games. In the obituary published in Chess Life and Review in October 1975 Pal Benko wrote that Rossolimo chess primarily understood as an art and had made the proposal to award points according to the artistic content of a game instead of the result.
Besides chess Rossolimo also ran Jūdō and brought it there until the brown belt.
According to him, a variation of the Sicilian Defence is named, which arises after 1 e2 -e4 c7 - c5 2 Sg1 -f3 Sb8 - c6 3 Lf1 - b5 and is still often used in the master practice.
His best historical Elo rating was 2663rd This he achieved in December 1951.
Study Composer
Solution: 1 TG-7 g8 KC8 - b7 The black king must not lose contact with the Springer. Now suggests white farmers, his jumper is lost. This settlement of black in a quality final that White can not win, determines the course of the game. 2 Sa6 c5 KB7 - b6! On KB7 - c6 White covers his knight with chess by Rg8 - c8 , then wins the farmers h2 and the game. This motif is continued throughout the following features. 3 Sc5 -a4 b5 KB6 4 Sa4 c3 KB5 - b4 5 Sc3 a2 kb4 -b3 6 Sa2 -c1 -b2 Kb3 7 Kg3xh2! Kb2xc1 8 Rg8 g1 and by the chains of runners and thus the game is won.
Already in his youth Rossolimo had shown interest in chess studies that were published from 1926 to 1929 mostly in Soviet and 1929-1930 Czechoslovak magazines. A study that is considered by Alain pallier despite an impropriety best as Rossolimos, he composed together with Sergei Kaminer. His last study Rossolimo composed in 1934 and published it in 1947 in his book Les Echecs au coin du feu.
Game
In a tournament in Heidelberg in 1949, where he finished second behind Wolfgang Unzicker, he won against the German Lothar Schmid with a spectacular double rook sacrifice.
White gave up.
After 29.Le3xf2 the deduction chess follows 29 ... e4 -e3 with 30.Kg2 h2 Dh4xf2 matt. Also, the in-between pulling the tower by means of 30.Tc5 -d5 is useless because 30 ... Dh4xf2 31.Kg2 -h1 Df2xe1 32.Kh1 - h2 De1 - f2 33.Kh2 -h1 e3 e2 together with Matt. The best is yet 30.Db3 -d5, but then loses White House and yard after 30 ... Lb7xd5 31.Tc5xd5 Dh4xf2 32.Kg2 -h1 Df2xe1 33.Kh1 g2 De1 - f2 34.Kg2 -h1 Df2 -f3 35.Kh1 g1 Df3xd5 with a slight profit.
Works
- Les Echecs au coin du feu. Paris 1947