Yakov Vilner. First Ukrainian Chess Champion and First USSR Chess Composition Champion.

 

Book Review by Carl Portman

YAKOV VILNER

FIRST UKRAINIAN CHESS CHAMPION AND FIRST USSR CHESS COMPOSITION CHAMPION

by SERGEI TKACHENKO

 

Sergei Tkachenko

Pages: 386

Published by: Elk and Ruby Publishing House   

2021 Softcover

 

From the Publisher

Yakov Vilner (1899-1931) was one of the leading Soviet chess masters in the 1920s. He won the Ukrainian championship three times (1924, 1925 and 1928), the Odessa championship five times (1918, 1923, 1925, 1926 and 1928) and competed in five USSR championships, his highest position being sixth equal in 1924. His attacking, combinational style delivered many memorable games and he regularly played against strong contemporaries such as Bogoljubov, Romanovsky, Bogatyrchuk, Verlinsky and an upcoming teenager called Botvinnik.

Vilner was also a leading chess composer. He won the USSR composition championship for three-move problems in 1929 and in total he won prizes at 30 chess composition competitions.

In this historical work illustrated with rare archival photos from the period, Sergei Tkachenko tells the story of a man who, despite suffering constantly from the respiratory illness that would eventually end his life at the age of just 31, was a leading chess organizer and journalist in Ukraine as well as a player and composer, against a background of major social and political upheaval that significantly impacted the chess world. It was Vilner who, in 1919 as a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Odessa, managed to save Alexander Alekhine from the firing squad, which Tkachenko wrote about in his book Alekhine's Odessa Secrets: Chess, War and Revolution. The latter work was short-listed for the 2018 English Chess Federation Book of the Year.

 

Tkachenko has selected 49 full games and another six fragments, annotated in detail by Vilner himself, Tkachenko, Romanovsky, Bogatyrchuk, and other leading players of the 1920s. The author has also included all 95 of Vilner’s known problems and studies, some of which are fairy problems, as well as many earlier versions and related compositions. Like in Tkachenko’s other collections, all 95 compositions are set on the right-hand side of the page with the solution overleaf.

This book will be of great interest to fans of Soviet chess history, exciting games collections and problem solving.

 

Contents

 

·         Part I – Life and Games (Thirteen sections)

·         Part II – Compositions and related works (Three sections)

·         Index of games and fragments (including openings)

·         Vilner’s key achievements

 

My thoughts and comments

First of all, and just one reason why these books from Elk and Ruby are so important, is that they bring to our attention characters from the past who might otherwise have passed us by. Yakov Vilner does not appear even in the Oxford Companion to Chess (Hooper and Whyld) which is a crying shame. Was nothing known of him at the time? Well anyway here he is, ‘Herz und Seele’ within a single book of dedication. I feel rather humbled to be one of the beneficiaries of such hard work. I admit to having a great interest in Russian/Soviet chess throughout history, so I was looking forward with great anticipation to opening the pages.

 

Here we have a man who like so many before him made significant contributions to chess and who died very young. He passed away at the criminally young age of thirty-one. They say it is not the years that you put in your life, but the life that you put in your years. Well, Yakov Vilner certainly packed a lot in, despite his poor health both with over the board play and chess compositions. The book is written in two parts, the first being an overview of his life and games, and the second containing those compositions and related works.

 

How did the book make me feel?

We tend to think about chess in a contemporary way, forgetting those who have gone before. We live and breathe in the time we are born, for sure. Today we have advanced medicines to keep us alive, especially for respiratory illness, but there was nothing like this for Vilner. Today we can enjoy excellent conditions for playing chess, and a support mechanism in terms of chess engines and a wealth of books and the Internet to aid and develop our game. There was nothing like this for Vilner. What he did, he did by dint of hard work and talent alone. I felt that this man, ill as he was for much of his life, had chess as his constant friend and spirit guide. Without it, his life would surely have been diminished, not so much in a physical, but intellectual sense. So many of us can relate to this.

 

Vilner was the first Ukrainian chess champion, and the games are interesting, because he clearly had a good feel for tactics. Tkachenko gently and skillfully helps the reader to comprehend what is happening. Personally, I enjoy looking through games from this epoch because they do contain errors (not the cold and compliant slavery of computer moves even if they are superior) and one can begin to grasp the style of chess played at that time and how for example openings were explored and developed.

 

Here he was White against Pogrebyssky at Odessa in 1928 and this position was arrived at after 1.d4 d5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bg5 c6 4. Qd3

 

Vilner plays the Veresov. I wonder how many people would play move today? Well, Hikaru Nakamura for one, in a Blitz game in 2019. It is just good fun looking at these openings and occasionally little gems can be found to perhaps employ in your own games later.

 

Then there are the compositions. Some of these are remarkable in their inventiveness and I can only wonder how Vilner actually devised them. Did they come to mind in the bath? Did he do them exclusively at the board, or did they appear at random?  

 

Here is one little example which was published in the Odessa News in 1913. It is White to play and mate in three. I shall provide the answer at the end of this review.

 

 

I felt some of Vilner’s frustration that his illness deprived him of even better results and more opportunities to play chess. I appreciated the inclusion of the rare photographs and drawings which enabled me to ‘step into’ his age.

 

The layout of this book is very good, with plenty of diagrams, photographs and results tables on good quality paper. It is a busy cover, but quite rightly an image of the man himself sits front and centre.

 

Does the book achieve its aim?

The book tells the world about Yakov Vilner’s life and his chess. It has been compiled after many years of hard graft and I am full of admiration for the player, the author and the Publisher on this one. It must have been a labour of love.

 

What really made this book worth reading is the fact that before I picked it up, I knew absolutely nothing about Yakov Vilner. When I finished it, I felt culturally enriched in a personal and chess sense. Tkachenko has done all the work, all you have to do is read and enjoy it.

 

Who is the author?

Sergei Tkachenko, a member of the Ukrainian team that won the 5th World Chess Composition tournament in 1997.

 

Answer to chess composition.

 

1.Ba8! e2 (only move) 2.Rb7! Kxg2 (only move) 3.Rh7#

This is lovely. When the bishop goes to a8, it will lie behind the critical b7 square which the rook will occupy, blocking any stalemate from a bishop check on g1. It paves the way for the rook’s mating ploy. This effect is the essence of the ‘Indian Theme.’ I love compositions like this, they are just so clever.

 

 

From Chess Champion of Russia to Enemy of the People, the truth about my father.

 

BOOK REVIEW by Carl Portman

FROM CHESS CHAMPION OF RUSSIA TO ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

THE TRUTH ABOUT MY FATHER

by NIKOLAI IZMAILOV

 

Nikolai Izmailov

Pages: 213

Published by: Elk and Ruby Publishing House   

2021 Hardcover, Softcover and Forward Chess

 

What is this book about?

 

The official cover text is as follows: ‘Petr Izmailov was considered to be one of the top four players of the Soviet Union in 1929 according to Yuri Averbakh, and he was ranked around number 50 in the world at the time based on chess metrics methodology. Izmailov won the 1928 Championship of Soviet Russia, reached the last four of the 1929 Soviet Championship, and had a 2/2 lifetime score against Botvinnik. He was a regular winner of Siberian regional and city championships as well as a pioneer in some openings, playing a line similar to the Makogonov Attack against the King’s Indian more than ten years before Makogonov himself.

 

Izmailov, like many players of his generation, fell victim to Stalin’s purges. He was arrested on spurious charges in 1936 and executed in 1937. His name was then mostly expunged from the Soviet chess press for over 50 years.

 

At the time of Petr’s arrest, his son Nikolai was less than two years’ old. Once the Soviet-era archives opened up, Nikolai set out to reconstruct the life and chess career of the father he never knew. This book is the result of his research over many years. It contains as complete a tournament record of Izmailov as could be found, as well as all 25 games and fragments that were reported in the contemporary press. At the time of this book’s publication in English Nikolai is a sprightly 86-year-old great-grandfather.

 

All games and fragments have been thoroughly analyzed in this book in move-by-move style by Romanian Grandmaster and leading chess author Mihail Marin. While his analysis is in itself highly instructional Marin has provided a comprehensive historical background to the chess openings deployed in these games, often showing their origin, contemporary treatment by such masters as Alexander Alekhine and Jose Capablanca, and how they have evolved to modern interpretation by today’s leading grandmasters, such as Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri.  This book will hence be of interest both to practical players wishing to improve their play and fans of chess history.’

 

Contents

 

·         List of Games

·         Preface

·         Introduction – A book decades in the making

·         Introduction – to the chess of Petr Izmailov by Grandmaster Mihail Marin

·         Early Life

·         Games and Career

·         Izmailov’s Final Months

·         The Aftermath

·         Afterword

·         Appendix I – Tournament results

·         Appendix II – A brief biography of Nikolai Izmailov

·         Appendix III – Bullet chess in Tomsk

 

My thoughts and comments

There is precious little information out there about Petr Izmailov. I even consulted my chess ‘bible’ The Oxford Companion to Chess (Hooper & Whyld) and found that he was not listed. I have commented before, that books such as this are about much more than chess – they are history, and as such, provide information about people and events that we may not otherwise have known.  For the chess aficionado, this is extremely important.

 

Born in 1906 Petr Izmailov lived a tragically short life. He died on 28 April 1937, after execution by shooting. This was carried out by the NKVD, the so called ‘People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs’ of the USSR which undertook mass extrajudicial executions of untold numbers of citizens, and conceived, populated and administered the Gulag system of forced labour camps.

 

Izmailov’s ‘death warrant’ was signed by an NKVD Senior Lieutenant Shevelev, and hastily arranged in about 20 minutes with no hearing. He was accused of being a member of the ‘counter-revolutionary Trotskyist-fascist terror organisation.’ It seems ridiculous now but so many people were put to death under this charge.  

 

Let’s look at some chess. Clearly the man had chess talent and he was the champion of Siberia and indeed Soviet Russia. He could have done even more were it not for the remoteness of his residence and the fact that he had so many work commitments which cost him dear. His chess was of very high quality and he was not afraid to employ new ideas. This was the game Kosolapov-Izmailov from the Kazan Championship in January 1924.

 

White has just played 18.f4 threatening to fork the knight and bishop with …f5. Izmailov was too good a player to play the natural looking 18…f5 but why?

 

 

 

After 18…f5 White has the move 19.g4! winning a pawn. There really is much to learn about chess in this book if you play through the games with care. We can see how pawn structure is fundamental in chess and that it will inevitably be a key feature in a high number of endgames. This is also about how to play endgames without the major pieces. 

 

Here is another position that caught my eye. One of many, to be fair. This was a game that Izmailov lost but that matters not. What is important is the game itself. Here he is playing an opponent who was also executed in the Great Terror, Alexander Schtenger, who had the White pieces in the 3^rd Siberian Championship in Novosibirsk in March 1926.

 

Izmailov had just played 26…Bd8 and the position looks complex to me. Both sides strive to attack. The question is, what did White play next?

 

 

Did you find 27.Rxf4! at all?

 

The book describes this as ‘a simple but elegant combination, winning material.’ Now it is all too easy to input games played decades ago into a chess engine. The simple fact is. Those players never had any of that technology and it was all done in their head. They used carbon, not silicon.

 

I did however, put this into my ‘Fat Fritz 2’ engine and to be fair it chose 27.Rh6 as the optimum move, giving a huge advantage, followed by moves such as 27.Bd2 or 27. Rf2.

 

When I put the text move in, the assessment halved, still giving White an advantage though. 1.Rxf4 gxf4 2.Bh7+ Kh8 3.Bg6+ Kg8 4.Bxf7+ Rfxf7 5.Qc8 Rd7 6.Bxf4 Ne6 7.Bh6 Rgf7 8.Rf3 Rfe7 9.Rf6 1-0

 

Does the book achieve its aim?

The book is about bringing Petr Izmailov’s short but rich life to the public and telling his story through the diligent research and pen of his son, Nikolai. It does just that.

 

What is ‘The Truth’ anyway? They say there are three versions. His version, her version and the truth. Well, the Truth here is that I feel enriched for having read the book. I felt stimulated intellectually, culturally and even spiritually. I feel lucky to be alive in these times and able to enjoy chess and life. Not so for the countless innocent people such as Petr Izmailov, killed in senseless purges. His light may have been snuffed out at the terribly young age of 30, but this book must surely do some justice to him and to what occurred. Can anyone even imagine what it would be like to have someone knock on your door one day – and lead you off to be shot? It’s man’s inhumanity to man. Pointless. Senseless. Cruel. However, Petr Izmailov left us with the legacy of his games, and for that we should remember him, and celebrate him.

 

Additional comments.

The book is well presented. In a quirky way the fact that some pages are in two column format (for chess commentary) and others single column (only text on the page) works well and breaks up the reading process. There are plenty of diagrams to accompany the text, which I found of great value because it was easier to follow without a physical board and pieces.

 

The analysis from GM Marin is light and easy to understand, so it can reach a wider audience. With plenty of Championship tables and some very rare photographs the book is sufficiently detailed to give the reader a feel for the times and more importantly for the man. It describes more than chess – it offers a view of the culture of the USSR at that time and it is quite frankly terrifying, as well as being unremittingly sad.

 

The time and effort taken to compile this work has been great but the result has justified the means. It is in my humble view, a worthy addition to any chess book collection.

 

Who is the author?

Nikolai Izmailov is the son of Petr Izmailov.