Super Nezh, Rashid Nezhmetdinov
by Alex Pishkin

"Nobody sees combinations like Rashid Nezhmetdinov"
Mikhail Botvinnik, world champion 1948-1957, 1958-1960, 1961-1963

Rashid Nezhmetdinov was unlike most chess players. Draws were almost an accident, or at the very least, a necessary evil to prevent losing a game which had gone awry. Raised in austere circumstances and learning to play checkers as well as he played chess, he became the Russian chess champion five times. His method was: ATTACK... ATTACK... ATTACK. His Tartar ferocity became legendary. World champion Mikhail Tal had become his victim so many times that Nezh became one of his trainers!
Nezh was more than a giant killer, he produced some games of genius-like creativity, such as the one against Polugaevsky in 1958. He could deliberate for the longest periods of time, over a game which appeared lost, only to finallly reveal what he knew all along, that the game was his.
Besides his incessant ability to make deep combinations, he was also a purveyor of opening novelties, the best known being his 1954 origination of the poisoned pawn line in the Najdorf Sicilian (used later with great success by World champion Bobby Fischer). His chess (being a 1.e4 player) embodied the Ruy Lopez, the Sicilian Defense, and the King's Indian Defense. Only once in awhile does a true chess assassin come forward a player of great imagination, ability, and fearlessness. Nezhmetdinov was one in a very elite group.

Euro 28.90

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