Twee vrienden ontmoeten elkaar op straat. Eén van hen: “Mijn vrouw zegt dat wanneer ik morgen toch naar het schaaktoernooi ga, ze bij me weggaat en de kinderen meeneemt”. De ander vraagt: “En wat ga je doen?” “E4, net als anders”, is het antwoord.Eind 1972
volgen gevangenen in een kamp in Siberië de Spasski-Fischer match om het
wereldkampioenschap schaken op de radio. Op een dag komen bewakers naar binnen
en maken korte metten met de verboden radio. Een paar weken later, als een
nieuwe gevangene is gearriveerd, wordt hem gevraagd of hij op de hoogte is van
de afloop. “Ik heb verloren”.Tijdens een internationaal toernooi interviewt een
journalist het zoontje van een bekend schaakkampioen. “Wat wil je later
worden?” “Ik wil schaakarbiter worden!” “Wat? Je wilt dus niet kampioen worden,
net als je vader? Waarom wil je arbiter worden? “Omdat mijn vader toen hij
daarstraks binnenkwam tegen me zei: “Zie je die goed in de kleren zittende
idioot die daar uit zijn nieuwe Mercedes stapt: dat is de arbiter!” Schaken als beroep.
Tijdens een treinreis naar
Londen raakt wereldkampioen Steinitz in gesprek met een geslaagd uitziende
zakenman. In de loop van het onderhoud wordt Steinitz gevraagd wat zijn beroep is.
“Ik ben schaker”, antwoordt hij. “Goed, maar ik zou graag willen weten wat u
voor de kost doet” is de reactie van de zakenman. Daarop zegt Steinitz: “Ik
maak geen grapje, schaken is werkelijk mijn beroep. Zijn gesprekspartner, die
vergezeld wordt door zijn achtjarige dochter, kijkt nu hoogst ongelovig.
Maar plotseling mengt het
dochtertje zich in het gesprek: “Speelt u nog altijd schaak?”. Steinitz glimlacht
en zei: “Ja natuurlijk, waarom niet?” “Ik heb ook met de stukken gespeeld”,
antwoordt de achtjarige, “toen ik nog heel klein was - maar nu speel ik er al
lang niet meer mee!”
Bovenstaande Anekdotes verschenen ook in de Groninger regiokrant BuurContact van vrijdag 11 december 2015.
Terzijde:
7 | THE WIZARD OF ICE
The two faces of the double clock in the shiny, domed case looked out across the chess-board like the eyes of some huge sea monster that had peered over the edge of the table to watch the game.
The two faces of the chess clock showed different times. Kronsteen’s showed twenty minutes to one. The long red pendulum that ticked off the seconds was moving in its staccato sweep across the bottom half of his clock’s face, while the enemy clock was silent and its pendulum motionless down the face. But Makharov’s clock said five minutes to one. He had wasted time in the middle of the game and he now had only five minutes to go. He was in bad ‘time-trouble’ and unless Kronsteen made some lunatic mistake, which was unthinkable, he was beaten.
Kronsteen sat motionless and erect, as malevolently inscrutable as a parrot. His elbows were on the table and his big head rested on clenched fists that pressed into his cheeks, squashing the pursed lips into a pout of hauteur and disdain. Under the wide, bulging brow the rather slanting black eyes looked down with deadly calm on his winning board. But, behind the mask, the blood was throbbing in the dynamo of his brain, and a thick worm-like vein in his right temple pulsed at a beat of over ninety. He had sweated away a pound of weight in the last two hours and ten minutes, and the spectre of a false move still had one hand at his throat. But to Makharov, and to the spectators, he was still ‘The Wizard of Ice’ whose game had been compared to a man eating fish. First he stripped off the skin, then he picked out the bones, then he ate the fish. Kronsteen had been Champion of Moscow two years running, was now in the final for the third time and, if he won this game, would be a contender for Grand Mastership.
In the pool of silence round the roped-off top table there was no sound except the loud tripping feet of Kronsteen’s clock. The two umpires sat motionless in their raised chairs. They knew, as did Makharov, that this was certainly the kill. Kronsteen had introduced a brilliant twist into the Meran Variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined. Makharov had kept up with him until the 28th move. He had lost time on that move. Perhaps he had made a mistake there, and perhaps again on the 31st and 33rd moves. Who could say? It would be a game to be debated all over Russia for weeks to come.
There came a sigh from the crowded tiers opposite the Championship game. Kronsteen had slowly removed the right hand from his cheek and had stretched it across the board. Like the pincers of a pink crab, his thumb and forefinger had opened, then they had descended. The hand, holding a piece, moved up and sideways and down. Then the hand was slowly brought back to the face.
The spectators buzzed and whispered as they saw, on the great wall map, the 41st move duplicated with a shift of one of the three-foot placards. R-Kt8. That must be the kill!
Kronsteen reached deliberately over and pressed down the lever at the bottom of his clock. His red pendulum went dead. His clock showed a quarter to one. At the same instant, Makharov’s pendulum came to life and started its loud, inexorable beat.
Kronsteen sat back. He placed his hands flat on the table and looked coldly across at the glistening, lowered face of the man whose guts he knew, for he too had suffered defeat in his time, would be writhing in agony like an eel pierced with a spear. Makharov, Champion of Georgia. Well, tomorrow Comrade Makharov could go back to Georgia and stay there. At any rate this year he would not be moving with his family up to Moscow.
A man in plain clothes slipped under the ropes and whispered to one of the umpires. He handed him a white envelope. The umpire shook his head, pointing at Makharov’s clock, which now said three minutes to one. The man in plain clothes whispered one short sentence which made the umpire sullenly bow his head. He pinged a handbell.
‘There is an urgent personal message for Comrade Kronsteen,’ he announced into the microphone. ‘There will be a three minutes’ pause.’
A mutter went round the hall. Even though Makharov now courteously raised his eyes from the board and sat immobile, gazing up into the recesses of the high, vaulted ceiling, the spectators knew that the position of the game was engraved on his brain. A three minutes’ pause simply meant three extra minutes for Makharov.
Kronsteen felt the same stab of annoyance, but his face was expressionless as the umpire stepped down from his chair and handed him a plain, unaddressed envelope. Kronsteen ripped it open with his thumb and extracted the anonymous sheet of paper. It said, in the large typewritten characters he knew so well, ‘YOU ARE REQUIRED THIS INSTANT’. No signature and no address.
Kronsteen folded the paper and carefully placed it in his inside breast pocket. Later it would be recovered from him and destroyed. He looked up at the face of the plain-clothes man standing beside the umpire. The eyes were watching him impatiently, commandingly. To hell with these people, thought Kronsteen. He would notresign with only three minutes to go. It was unthinkable. It was an insult to the People’s Sport. But, as he made a gesture to the umpire that the game could continue, he trembled inside, and he avoided the eyes of the plain-clothes man who remained standing, in coiled immobility, inside the ropes.
The bell pinged. ‘The game proceeds.’
Makharov slowly bent down his head. The hand of his clock slipped past the hour and he was still alive.
Kronsteen continued to tremble inside. What he had done was unheard of in an employee of SMERSH, or of any other State agency. He would certainly be reported. Gross disobedience. Dereliction of duty. What might be the consequences? At the best a tongue-lashing from General G., and a black mark on his zapiska. At the worst? Kronsteen couldn’t imagine. He didn’t like to think. Whatever happened, the sweets of victory had turned bitter in his mouth.
But now it was the end. With five seconds to go on his clock, Makharov raised his whipped eyes no higher than the pouting lips of his opponent and bent his head in the brief, formal bow of surrender. At the double ping of the umpire’s bell, the crowded hall rose to its feet with a thunder of applause.
Kronsteen stood up and bowed to his opponent, to the umpires, and finally, deeply, to the spectators. Then, with the plain-clothes man in his wake, he ducked under the ropes and fought his way coldly and rudely through the mass of his clamouring admirers towards the main exit.
Het begin van hoofdstuk 7 van From Russia, With Love (1957) een van de vermaarde James Bond verhalen geschreven door Ian Fleming (1908-1964).
Ook in de verfilming (1963) van het boek speelt uiteraard deze schaakpartij (gebaseerd op een treffen Spasski-Bronstein) een belangrijke rol. Zie hier.
Terzijde:
 |
| Cover van de 1e editie (Jonathan Cape, 1957) |
The two faces of the double clock in the shiny, domed case looked out across the chess-board like the eyes of some huge sea monster that had peered over the edge of the table to watch the game.
The two faces of the chess clock showed different times. Kronsteen’s showed twenty minutes to one. The long red pendulum that ticked off the seconds was moving in its staccato sweep across the bottom half of his clock’s face, while the enemy clock was silent and its pendulum motionless down the face. But Makharov’s clock said five minutes to one. He had wasted time in the middle of the game and he now had only five minutes to go. He was in bad ‘time-trouble’ and unless Kronsteen made some lunatic mistake, which was unthinkable, he was beaten.
Kronsteen sat motionless and erect, as malevolently inscrutable as a parrot. His elbows were on the table and his big head rested on clenched fists that pressed into his cheeks, squashing the pursed lips into a pout of hauteur and disdain. Under the wide, bulging brow the rather slanting black eyes looked down with deadly calm on his winning board. But, behind the mask, the blood was throbbing in the dynamo of his brain, and a thick worm-like vein in his right temple pulsed at a beat of over ninety. He had sweated away a pound of weight in the last two hours and ten minutes, and the spectre of a false move still had one hand at his throat. But to Makharov, and to the spectators, he was still ‘The Wizard of Ice’ whose game had been compared to a man eating fish. First he stripped off the skin, then he picked out the bones, then he ate the fish. Kronsteen had been Champion of Moscow two years running, was now in the final for the third time and, if he won this game, would be a contender for Grand Mastership.
In the pool of silence round the roped-off top table there was no sound except the loud tripping feet of Kronsteen’s clock. The two umpires sat motionless in their raised chairs. They knew, as did Makharov, that this was certainly the kill. Kronsteen had introduced a brilliant twist into the Meran Variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined. Makharov had kept up with him until the 28th move. He had lost time on that move. Perhaps he had made a mistake there, and perhaps again on the 31st and 33rd moves. Who could say? It would be a game to be debated all over Russia for weeks to come.
There came a sigh from the crowded tiers opposite the Championship game. Kronsteen had slowly removed the right hand from his cheek and had stretched it across the board. Like the pincers of a pink crab, his thumb and forefinger had opened, then they had descended. The hand, holding a piece, moved up and sideways and down. Then the hand was slowly brought back to the face.
The spectators buzzed and whispered as they saw, on the great wall map, the 41st move duplicated with a shift of one of the three-foot placards. R-Kt8. That must be the kill!
Kronsteen reached deliberately over and pressed down the lever at the bottom of his clock. His red pendulum went dead. His clock showed a quarter to one. At the same instant, Makharov’s pendulum came to life and started its loud, inexorable beat.
Kronsteen sat back. He placed his hands flat on the table and looked coldly across at the glistening, lowered face of the man whose guts he knew, for he too had suffered defeat in his time, would be writhing in agony like an eel pierced with a spear. Makharov, Champion of Georgia. Well, tomorrow Comrade Makharov could go back to Georgia and stay there. At any rate this year he would not be moving with his family up to Moscow.
A man in plain clothes slipped under the ropes and whispered to one of the umpires. He handed him a white envelope. The umpire shook his head, pointing at Makharov’s clock, which now said three minutes to one. The man in plain clothes whispered one short sentence which made the umpire sullenly bow his head. He pinged a handbell.
‘There is an urgent personal message for Comrade Kronsteen,’ he announced into the microphone. ‘There will be a three minutes’ pause.’
A mutter went round the hall. Even though Makharov now courteously raised his eyes from the board and sat immobile, gazing up into the recesses of the high, vaulted ceiling, the spectators knew that the position of the game was engraved on his brain. A three minutes’ pause simply meant three extra minutes for Makharov.
Kronsteen felt the same stab of annoyance, but his face was expressionless as the umpire stepped down from his chair and handed him a plain, unaddressed envelope. Kronsteen ripped it open with his thumb and extracted the anonymous sheet of paper. It said, in the large typewritten characters he knew so well, ‘YOU ARE REQUIRED THIS INSTANT’. No signature and no address.
Kronsteen folded the paper and carefully placed it in his inside breast pocket. Later it would be recovered from him and destroyed. He looked up at the face of the plain-clothes man standing beside the umpire. The eyes were watching him impatiently, commandingly. To hell with these people, thought Kronsteen. He would notresign with only three minutes to go. It was unthinkable. It was an insult to the People’s Sport. But, as he made a gesture to the umpire that the game could continue, he trembled inside, and he avoided the eyes of the plain-clothes man who remained standing, in coiled immobility, inside the ropes.
The bell pinged. ‘The game proceeds.’
Makharov slowly bent down his head. The hand of his clock slipped past the hour and he was still alive.
Kronsteen continued to tremble inside. What he had done was unheard of in an employee of SMERSH, or of any other State agency. He would certainly be reported. Gross disobedience. Dereliction of duty. What might be the consequences? At the best a tongue-lashing from General G., and a black mark on his zapiska. At the worst? Kronsteen couldn’t imagine. He didn’t like to think. Whatever happened, the sweets of victory had turned bitter in his mouth.
But now it was the end. With five seconds to go on his clock, Makharov raised his whipped eyes no higher than the pouting lips of his opponent and bent his head in the brief, formal bow of surrender. At the double ping of the umpire’s bell, the crowded hall rose to its feet with a thunder of applause.
Kronsteen stood up and bowed to his opponent, to the umpires, and finally, deeply, to the spectators. Then, with the plain-clothes man in his wake, he ducked under the ropes and fought his way coldly and rudely through the mass of his clamouring admirers towards the main exit.
Het begin van hoofdstuk 7 van From Russia, With Love (1957) een van de vermaarde James Bond verhalen geschreven door Ian Fleming (1908-1964).
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