HELLO, CAISSA:

David Bronstein (Jim Kelly, 07/12/2006)

David Bronstein, who died on Tuesday aged 82, was a leading Soviet chess grandmaster and writer; like Viktor Korchnoi, he was often described as the greatest player never to have won a world championship. [...]

Bronstein's game demonstrated a high degree of creativity and tactical verve. He introduced many new ideas into the King's Indian Defence and King's Gambit. His theoretical work on the King's Indian Defence is reflected in his book Bronstein on the King's Indian (1999).

He was one of the originators of Rapid Chess played at a faster time limit, with 30 minutes or less for the game, and developed a form of Random Chess well before Bobby Fischer claimed ownership of the concept. In Bronstein Random Chess the pawns are set out and the first eight moves involve placing the pieces on the vacant back rank.

Bronstein's serious manner was belied by a ready smile, and he was held in particular affection among chess cognoscenti for his unaffected love of the game and his commitment to explaining its higher mysteries to the average player. [...]

A second cousin to Leon Trotsky, David Ionovich Bronstein was born on February 19 1924 at Bila Tserkva, near Kiev, in the Ukraine. He was taught chess by his grandfather and began playing competitively at the age of six.

His rise was meteoric. After he won a tournament for adults and juniors at Kiev in 1938 he soon became one of the strongest young Soviet players in the period before the outbreak of the Second World War.

In 1941 he was ordered to leave Kiev as a conscript in the Red Army, taking only the clothes he was wearing — though he avoided being sent to a combat unit due to his poor eyesight. His mother left Kiev immediately, fleeing the German army.

When Bronstein returned home a couple of years later, he found that the family home was empty. As relatives of Trotsky, his family were constantly under the eyes of the Secret Police, and his father served seven years in the Gulag. [...]

The Soviet authorities allowed Bronstein to travel abroad until 1976, when he refused to sign a letter condemning the defection of Viktor Korchnoi. This was the most difficult period of his life and coincided with a bout of cancer, which he successfully fought off. Bronstein remained confined behind the Iron Curtain until the collapse of Communism in 1989.