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Chessville
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Pal Benko My Life, Games, and Compositions Reviewed by Prof. Nagesh Havanur
Apart from a gripping personal narrative and interviews with Benko and his close friends like GM Larry Evans and IM Ronald Gross, this book includes 138 well-annotated games and 300 compositions. There is also a 130-page essay on Benko’s contribution to opening theory by John Watson, well-known author of award winning titles like Secrets Of Modern Chess Strategy and Chess Strategy In Action.The career graph of Benko makes curious reading. He won the Hungarian Championship way back in 1948 when he was just 20 years old. After his emigration to the USA he has won the US Open Championship eight times. He has also been a candidate for the World Championship twice (1959 &1962). On the flipside he has never won the US Championship title. His best result was the Second Place in the 1974 US Championship (+3,-0,=10) behind Walter Browne who won the title. Benko contested the US Championship more frequently during 1960s with varying success, occupying no higher than Third Place. Fischer and Reshevsky dominated the US chess scene during 1960s. Other GMs like Pal Benko, Robert Byrne and Larry Evans made valiant efforts to vie for top honors.
Benko was a fine performer in international tournaments. His best results include First Prize in Malaga 1969 & 1970, and Second Prize in events like Venice, Netanya 1969, and Oresne 1974. Although Benko was not rated as a super-GM even in his best days, he was a dangerous adversary over the board. His victims in this book include, among others, Smyslov, Petrosian, Tal, Fischer, Korchnoi, Keres and Reshevsky. At the autobiographical level this book is both moving and disappointing (especially, the account of Curacao 1962). Benko was born in 1928, to Hungarian parents in Amiens, France, where his father worked as an engineer. The family returned to Hungary in 1932. Unfortunately, his native land was ravaged by the Second World War, and suffered enormously under occupation by the Nazis and the Soviets in succession. Young Benko and his family became victims of history. At the age of sixteen Benko was drafted and assigned to a regiment. He escaped from the regiment and was caught by the Russians. He escaped from them and returned to Budapest only to find that their apartment had been bombed and his father and brother had been shipped to Russia as slave labor. As Benko recounts, that was not the last of their tragedy:
By a strange quirk of fate both Benko’s father and brother were subsequently released from the labor camp in Russia and soon the family was reunited. Benko was able to complete his graduation and take up a job as a bookkeeper. Chess, however, continued to hold him in its thrall. He won his spurs by winning the Hungarian Championship when he was twenty. If only he had reconciled himself to living under the Communist regime, life would have been easy and tolerable. But Benko’s free spirit could not accept the grey uniformity and authoritarianism imposed by the state. On a visit to Berlin for a chess tournament he tried to defect to West Germany. He was caught and brought back to Budapest and put behind the bars without a trial for more than a year. The harrowing account of his life in prison appears to be straight from the pages of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. One can only mourn the privation, suffering, and degradation of the human spirit. It is to the credit of Benko that he survived this ordeal through hope, courage and fortitude. After his release from prison Benko was under surveillance for quite some time by the secret police and became a persona non grata in the Hungarian chess circuit. It took years for his rehabilitation. Yet Benko had not learned his “ lesson’’. The passionate quest for freedom was begun in earnest all over again. This time he knew that the price for failure would be death or incarceration for life. Opportunity presented itself when he had to qualify for an out-of the country zonal. Benko recounts the irony of the situation with delectable relish:
Three months later he landed in New York. He was broke. But he made friends and after a stint on Wall Street became a chess professional. Much later, following a thaw in the US-Soviet relationship, he was able to visit Budapest, and in recent years he has divided time between the USA and Hungary. What happened in Curacao 1962? This autobiography is not without its share of controversies. It was Benko who played a decisive role in destroying the chances of Keres in the 1962 Candidates’Tournament. The Estonian had beaten Benko (4:0 !) in the 1959 candidates and in Curacao seemed to perform a hat trick, beating Benko whenever they met. Then came the dramatic 20th round. The contemporary British Chess Magazine (August 1962) wrote:
In the book Benko offers his own version of what happened:
Keres obtains a pyrrhic victory (Editor: play through the entire game, with annotations, here), as Benko avenged himself in the penultimate round. Benko writes:
In other words Benko did not discuss the position with them at all. A different version emerges in Jan Timman’s report of the Curacao 2002 Tournament at which he met and interacted with three of the survivors of the 1962 Candidates': Korchnoi, Averbach (member of the delegation accompanying the players) and Benko:
[Editor: Check out the game, with notes based on annotations by Benko himself, here.] In the last round Petrosian was White against Filip and Keres was paired against Fischer. Now the Armenian GM had everything in his favour. In everyone’s mind he was already the winner of the Tournament. As it happened, Petrosian drew with Filip. Keres was forced to follow suit with Fischer.
This contemporary account from the British Chess Magazine (August 1962) is corroborated by Benko. Then comes the damaging statement:
(P.S.: Keres beat Benko with Black pieces when they met at the Santa Monica Tournament 1963-NSH.) To be fair to Benko, he did make a lasting contribution to chess history by conceding his place at the Interzonal to Fischer in 1970, and enabling him to play in the World Championship cycle. It is a pity that Fischer’s chess career came to an abrupt end after his triumph in 1972. Read as an autobiography alone, this is an absorbing account of an extraordinary chess career. But the book has much else to offer.
As for the rest, at least three of Benko’s opening systems have stood the test of time:
The section on interviews, like the curate’s egg, is good only in parts. The interview with Benko is interesting, although he is asked rather bland questions by Silman, the co-author and Editor. The same cannot be said of Larry Evans and Ronald Gross. Both emerge as dissipated individuals with a taste for sleazy stuff. The book has a number of interesting photographs and lively anecdotes...
Tal was hospitalized during the Curacao event,
and Fischer visited him there. However, the narration of one particular episode seems to have missed the point. Here is what happened: At Leipzig, 1960, the Chess Olympiad, Tal and Fischer were the centres of interest. At the closing ceremony Bobby asked Tal to look at his hand and read his future. Tal gave his hand, and Bobby started reading: “I see the World Champion is going to be - a young American grandmaster.’’ “ Congratulations, William” said Tal to Lombardy.
The last part of the book features a remarkable array of 300 compositions, including studies, two-movers, three-movers, help-mates, and an assortment of puzzles. For reasons of space I have only chosen a few of Benko's endgame studies:
This was Benko's first endgame study, composed when he was sixteen!
1-0
1-0
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Subsequently
Benko changed his plans and decided to defect to the US from Reykjavik,
Iceland. (Ironically enough, Fischer today is seeking refuge at the
same Reykjavik, the scene of his 1972 triumph, even as he is being hounded
out by the US Government.) In July 1957 he walked into the American
embassy in Reykjavik and asked for asylum.
The
section on Benko’s contribution to opening theory by Watson is remarkable
for its insights. Benko was a virtuoso in the treatment of flank openings
with White. He managed to beat Tal, Keres, and Fischer with the same
opening: 1.g3. Equally noteworthy is his treatment of the English
Opening. As an acknowledged author of the standard work on the English
Opening, Watson is well-qualified to comment on the subject..jpg)
