Personalia

With Yuri Lvovich Averbakh who celebrated his 88th birthday on February 8th we pay tribute to a worldwide famous grandmaster of the Russian chess school. As Paul Werner Wagner knew to recall some time ago, Averbakh had a crucial chess experience as a thirteen-year-old when he could force a draw from ex-world champion Emanuel Lasker in a simul at Moscow, 1935 (Textarchiv Berliner Zeitung). For a long time his books belong to the classics of chess literature, his splendid Chess Tactics for Advanced Players (3rd edition) was still reprinted in 2008. Harry Schaack's interview with Yuri Averbakh which particularly picked out his textbook of endgames as a central theme appeared in KARL 2/08 (excerpt, in German), and only recently an article from his pen on "Petrosian and modern chess" was published (in German translation), an excerpt is linked here as well – KARL 4/09.

Our English member John Derek Beasley had his special day on February 15th when he looked back on full 7 decades. It was 3 years ago that he was for the first time honoured in our column in more detail, in the meantime he has succeeded in finishing his great book project, the revised edition of D.B. Pritchard's The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (2nd ed., 2007). He has also continued his work as the editor and secretary of the magazine Variant Chess, though this periodical is currently threatened by extinction if there will be found no new editorial team who is able to continue. We have listed John's most important books in the Publications of our Members, we still link an article on him written by Brian Stephenson which was first published in CHESS 9/2007: www.bstephen.me.uk/...

Only one day later the doyen of our association followed: Benjamin F. Levene from the US-American town of Bedford, NY, celebrated the 92nd anniversary of his birth. In the last time we didn't hear anything new from or about him, we wish that he will take the leading position in our birthday list for still many years to come.

Our Danish member Jes Knudsen however is the youngest this month, he turned 55 on February 26th. He was a frequent guest (and mostly an "invigorating element") at our KWA events as well as at chess auctions in Brunswick and Malmö, here a vibrant photo from Brunswick (2005) as proof.



Congratulations!




PS: You will find all previous birthday greetings in our archives!