The Rise and Fall of David Bronstein

There is a mystique surrounding some great players. Capablanca is the “Mozart” of chess. There’s Mikhail Tal, the fiery swashbuckler . There is Bobby Fischer, the colossal American talent, that like Paul Morphy, turns his back on chess and then sinks into madness.And there is David Bronstein. Author, martyr and consummate chessboard artist, mostly considered with affection.Author: Two of his books are considered a must for any well appointed chess library. His “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is a collection of his best games while his book on the Zurich International Tournament of 1953 is often called the best tournament book in all chess literature.Martyr: He is rumored to have been pressured by the Soviet chess bureaucracy into not winning the World Chess Championship of 1951 against Mikhail Botvinnik because of the latter’s favored status and two years later to have been pushed aside because of his Ukrainian birth, along with Estonian Paul Keres, in favor of Russian-Soviet, Vasily Smyslov, in the 1953 Candidate’s Tournament.His artistry is attested by dozens of games that are virtuoso performances. There is also the tale of his hour-long monk-like meditation on the untouched chess pieces while his tournament clock ticked away valuable time. Bronstein, gazing on the deeper “truth” of the game.Genna Sosonko, many of whose conversations with Bronstein are quoted in this book, addresses each of these areas and I think his treatment has to be viewed largely as a corrective which reduces the size, if not entirely removes, the pedestal beneath Bronstein’s image.On his authorship, Bronstein passes this judgement: “I don’t like any of my books. The one they all praise, the Zurich book, it’s stupid. I didn’t actually write it….I only provided the variations and analysis."On pressure from the Soviet chess machine, Bronstein is murky at best. His career makes it plain that Soviet chess was rife with “fixed” games. His candidates match with Boleslavsky contained games that both players has “composed” beforehand. Sosonko concludes it’s impossible to determine which games were genuine and which were not. Generally Bronstein benefitted from a Soviet system which nurtured his chess talent.Bronstein’s games are an undeniable indication of his great, maybe unique, talent. But as the years passed, Bronstein became an chronic complainer and a person that others chose to avoid. His “philosophy” emphasizing the artistic side of chess, ignoring the competitive nature of chess and of games in general - scores shouldn’t be kept, etc., his constant reference to his loss to Botvinnik and its myriad causes and his assertion that modern players were simply capitalizing on the work of his generation – these are among the things that made some of his friends think he might have profited by professional counselling.I have four of GM Sosonko’s previous books on personalities of 20th century, mostly Soviet, chess and they’re the best reads available for anyone interested in that area of chess history. This however is a book length consideration of one extremely gifted man, who had the misfortune to have his “genius” come to fruition in a time and place that wounded him deeply. Many of Bronstein's comments are drenched in bitterness: today's GM's are "little squirts" who want to be treated like A-list celebrities because they can push a pawn, FIDE should dissolve itself, Nabokov thought he was super intelligent because he could compose chess problems. You have your choice of negative pronouncements on both chess and people.But you'll also find a re-affirmation of the Bronstein whose stature as an artist on the board allowed him to truly boast, "I always tried to breathe life into the pieces". I can't think of “Davy” Bronstein, the person, in quite the same way as before, but his games still stand as a wonderful testament.

This is an extraordinary account of David Bronstein's life and it so held my attention that I was able to read it in under two days. David Bronstein was a great chess player and chess author who reached his competitive peak in the late 1940s and early 1950s, As a chess player he was a talented tactician, and extremely original in creating new opening schemes. What flaws there were in his chess skill probably resided in the dry areas of endgame technique and treating simple equal positions. Brostein also authored or co-authored a number of famous chess books of which his account of the Zurich Candidates Tournament in 1953 is perhaps his best known work. Despite all his chess accomplishments, in the end, his life was ultimately defined by competing and then failing to defeat Mikhail Botvinnik in the 1951 World Chess Championship match. Technically, he did not lose the match and in fact the match ended in a 12-12 tie with 5 wins for each player. However, the rules at the time allowed the champion to retain the title in case of a tie without any further methods of tie breaking that are present in today's World Championship matches. The sad part of the story for Bronstein was that he could have won the match if he had only found the one correct saving move that was present in three of the 5 games that he lost. It was those simple dry endgames that proved to be his Achilles heel. The failure to save at least one of these three games ruined his outlook on life and it seemed the rest of his life (55 years!) was a long apology for this failure. It is this apology that is the foundation of this biography. There are no games in this book, just a detailed psychological portrait of Bronstein's life and his varying views on chess that frequently changed over time. Genna Sosonko, who also is a well known Chess Grandmaster and author, visited and interviewed Bronstein dozens of times since the late 1960s. If you have read Russian Silhouettes or The Smart Chip from St. Petersburg you will instantly have a feel for this book, which goes into great detail about what the man being written about really was like. Unlike those books, which usually had several 20-40 page treatment of different players, this is a full length biography on one man. In many chess biographies we have a feel about how the famous player played, but usually little about what the man really was like. With Sosonko's writings the opposite is true and you are able to reach out and touch the inner psyche of the man. There are many interesting details in the book. Some perhaps like the allusion towards sinister political forces acting both overtly and psychologically against Bronstein winning the match in 1951 already being well known. Many like his fixing along with Isaac Boleslavky the final result of the 1950 Candidate's matches and the numerous composed games in their playoff match to determine Botvinnik's challenger, maybe not so well known. .Another interesting revelation in the book is how much Bronstein disliked his own books! Zurich 1953 and Sorcerer's Apprentice in particular. He seems to have resented the fact that to modern chess players the books were more famous than he was! In the end We chess players certainly can come up with a number of excuses for our losses. Even losses in local club championships can be devastating. Many chess players can ruefully say that they have never beaten a well man! I can only imagine what the disappointment must have been to fail in a World Championship match with all the eyes of the chess world on you. That Sosonko can ably convey the vast disappointment of this failure for his readers in this biography is its grand accomplishment. A disappointment that extended over 55 very long years! .

Sosonko is a terrific writer, so it's no surprise that this book is excellent. The thing that is REALLY surprising is just what a deformed person Bronstein was. As Sosonko makes clear, most people probably couldn't stand to be around him for more than about three minutes. (I also had the impression that Sosonko admired him as a chess player, but probably liked him little, if at all.) BTW, for those people who get worked up about the alleged- and unproven- allegations concerning the match with Botvinnik, you might first want to address the fixed match Bronstein-Boleslavsky that earned Bronstein his match with Botvinnik.

I'll sum this book up... Bronstein drew a world title match in 1951 and spent the rest of his life boring everyone around him moaning about it.Imagine after you are dead your worst enemy writes a book about you. I don't think the author said one complimentary thing about Bronstein. Page after page of Bronstein's shortcomings detailed in endless detail. Repeatedly. What's worse is that his shortfalls don't really bear retelling. Apparently, Bronstein was a bore. Yep, that it. And in 273 pages the book certainly gets that point across.It was an act of sheer determination that got me through this book. But, I now absolutely loath Bronstein. Was that the author's intent? I can not imagine why a "friend" would write such a book. With "friends" like this Bronstein didn't need enemies.Relentlessly awful, and boring.

This is a book by a chess grandmaster about another (David Bronstein). The first observation is that the book does not contain any of Bronstein's games and in that sense, it's a first for me. This is not necessarily a bad thing. However, the style of writing is monotonous and frequently sounds like a broken record, repeating time after time that Bronstein never got over the bitterness after he failed to defeat Botvinnik in the World Championship match and was not the same person again - which is probably true. There are interesting stories here and there but overall, I think David Bronstein's life could be written about in more interesting ways.

This is a warts and all portrait. Some people have found it overly critical. I think, on the other hand, that the fact the author is disillusioned with his old friend has added spice to the narrative and makes this a book that stays in the memory. Certainly, Bronstein himself had sought to perpetuate a number of myths about himself and a corrective to these was overdue. There are life-lessons in this book too, largely what not to do, that could benefit a reader. It's actually an enjoyable read, as always with Sosonko, but be prepared to indulge in some schadenfreude.

The Rise & Fall of David BronsteinRecently I couldn’t resist buying the r&f of db by Sosonko. Anyone who has read Sosonko’s articles (in New in Chess magazine or books published by them) on masters of yesteryear appreciates his inside look of the chess world. Filled with anecdotes from a world now gone – but not yet forgotten – he recreates life as it was in those (for us westerners) dark Soviet times. His article on Genrikh Chepukaitis may still be the very best one yet.So when Sosonko writes about David Bronstein, the man closest to the world chess championship, without effectively ever reaching it, you know this is worth your while.For starters: the book contains no games of Bronstein’s, don’t expect some unknown game or some previously unpublished analysis. This is not a chess book – it’s a book about the person behind the chess player. Also no personal memoirs are presented either, this is “just” Sosonko’s view on Bronstein through his own observations, talks, discussions …The book is divided in some chapters, roughly chronologically following Bronstein’s life.Bronstein’s quotes on chess and his achievements in the first ten pages made a big impression on me: this was a chess hero completely nullifying his efforts, his accomplishments by stating that is was all for nothing. That what he did on a board with pieces meant nothing. It is one thing to think such a thing as a normal person, who considers chess as a hobby and after twenty or thirty years thinks that all this time in preparation, playing and analysing chess was worth nothing, but it’s another thing to read this coming from an “almost world champion”.For me in particular this was sobering and enlightening in the same instant – as a hobby player I recently quit chess (the official playing part – still follow the news on internet and play blitz), and find myself – approaching 50 – at a turning point in my life. Reading this and understanding the curse of chess – and at the same time realizing that for someone as Bronstein this must have been 100 times harder (after all he was so close…) – that struck me as very painful – for Bronstein.Unfortunately, the impact of this hammer blow at the start of the book creates expectations which cannot be sustained throughout the story told.Very early in his life, Bronstein sees factors looming that hinder him in the realisation of his dream: become world champion and change the history of chess. With his dazzling play, he is almost the antipode of the classic, dogmatic Botvinnik. He shoots to the top, eclipsing upcoming players as Keres and Smyslov and establishing himself as the challenger for the world title. He gets help from Vainstein and Boleslavsky, who support him against the state supported Botvinnik.But his progress in chess knowledge is not complete: his opponents quickly realise that when the queens come of, Bronstein plays less inspired – and in the endgame he is not particularly better than any other grandmaster. His forte is imagination, his weakness technique. But just like Tal ten years later, the plusses outweigh the minuses and he becomes challenger. In the world title match the score favours Botvinnik, but the games themselves show that Bronstein is the one “making the match”. When he is one point up after game 22, everyone beliefs he will be the new world champion. But he does not want to take a time-out to calm down and to reset his mind to “play two more draws” and loses his advantage.From that point onwards – his downfall begins. In chess, Keres, Smyslov, Geller and others start surpassing him. In life, his frustration on the missed opportunity starts devouring him. Both combined have the effect that he slowly gets more and more isolated, which only fuels his anger and selfpity. He becomes the “has-been” and fades away. Bronstein can’t forget, looks back in anger and keeps finding new external factors that must have influenced him in that famous 23rd match game.He considers himself as the real forerunner of modern chess, thinks that he was the true giant, on whose shoulders the young players are standing, but the “lack of recognition” and his constant – but inconsistent – wining about this and other bad things happening to him, isolate him further. He is no longer taken seriously, loses the right to travel abroad and fades away.Till… in 1989 the fall of the Berlin wall triggers the collapse of the Soviet Union and he gets to travel again. The west is delighted to have this famous name back in their midst – still unaware of his mental drawbacks. Bronstein himself loves the new attention and respect he gets everywhere, but gradually age catches up, the constant travelling starts to become a drag, his native country calls… and he goes back to Russia and a meagre pension of 50 dollars per month…The book describes these changes in his life not exactly, but gives some details unknown to me before – especially the comments of his fellow grandmasters are insightful. Despite the respect he had amidst them, they did know his eternal babbling, which could make your head spin before or after a game. His neverending variations on how to play a new variation of chess, new time controls, new tournament formats…And then on page 198 it hit me: when reading “His philosophizing could be described by the term ‘asynchrony of appositions’, meaning a lack of connection between semantic strings. (note of the reviewer – at least for the listener – for the thinker uttering these words, there may very well be a connection, just like for a mathematician the link between electricity and a hyperbolic cosine is simple: the high voltage line hanging from a transport line mast) Put more simply, this meant jumping from one subject to another and a lack of coherent reasoning.” I realized the book itself mirrored Bronstein’s mind: by jumping from one piece of information to another, Sosonko (willingly?) recreates the associative mind of Bronstein, linking everything with everything. Oh yes, here’s another analogy. And here, another anecdote illustrating how contradictory he was. And there, another good quote from an artist, philosopher, writer, scientist, characterizing Bronstein as he was indeed – such a good comparison – as if written with Davy in mind. It all piles up and there seems to be no direction, no storyline, just heaps of information, comparisons, ideas, similarities. And then you realize that this omnidirectional style is how Bronstein’s mind must have worked.Indeed, when talking about chess, why not have the possibility to skip a move once in a game, or have a one-time knight jump available for a king in peril? Or the possibility to place a captured pawn back in the game? The game of chess is rich enough in variations (according to Wikipedia, more than 2000). There are limitless possible ramifications in the design of chess – everybody can be world champion in his own “style”. But is having thoughts like this not fleeing the reality? If you are not anymore the best in your field, it is easy to muse about a variation where you can still be the best. Take Fischer: he copied Bronstein’s idea for random chess (which – as far as I know it – is much older than both), to avoid that tedious bit of opening theory. Or Capablanca, who wanted to play on a bigger board with two sets of chessmen.So we see an image of a chess player that I’ve not seen before. Of course, Sosonko has first-hand experience. You cannot compare this book to a biography of a historical chess player (see for example the series by McFarland). There, there is only indirect proof of how the player was in real life. The book shows us that chess players – even the very best – can have their demons, that they are not “perfect people”, successful, rich, amiable, gently, well-disciplined, respectful. A chess player is formed by his upbringing, his cultural background, his talent, his environment. And sometimes this all makes a good match, but sometimes the genius part is placed in a man “too light” to bear that part. It is a good thing we can read about the struggle of a man with his talent – and how he dealt (unsuccessfully) with that once-in-a-lifetime missed opportunity. This is the opposite of a hagiography: it shows the man Bronstein – and that’s all Sosonko wanted to show us. We may not like the subject of the picture (and I’d say, maybe the style of the painting is a bit too baroque), but just like Adolph Northen’s painting of Napoleon’s retreat from Russia, it shows us reality.What about the book production quality? The format of the softcover book is OK, the typesetting also, it reads fluently. The text on the back cover is printed slightly oblique (but it seems that’s due to Amazon’s print on demand job). The cartoon on the front cover is very well done: Bronstein throwing darts to a picture of Botvinnik on a wall – one has hit the aim, but the other is next to the frame, as a symbol that Bronstein in the end had critique on almost everything, Botvinnik-related or not. The wall representing not just the system supporting Botvinnik, but the whole world, limiting him, Bronstein to achieve his full potential.So conclusion: is it a good read? Well, that’s the wrong question. “Good” is not the right word for this book. The story Sosonko tells us is insightful, tells us something about life, about achievement, about purposefulness. It is not a happy story – it does not end well. Our hero dies blind, alone, and almost forgotten, a relic from the past. A too large portion of his life he used his shield of eccentricity to camouflage his uncertainty, his indecisiveness, his disillusionment. It made him bitter, but in the end, he came close to reconcile himself with his past and the demons he made himself.It is a difficult read – but the advantage of the complexity of the text is that it makes it easier to understand Bronstein’s train of thought – his stream of consciousness. Don’t expect a well-defined article about a certain topic like the ones Sosonko has written on other chess players. Bronstein was too complex and Sosonko’s interactions with him too frequent to draw a one or two-dimensional picture of the man.Could the text have been written more “fluently” – probably. But by writing the way he did, Sosonko showed us there was more to cunning Davy than meets the eye. I think Davy would have liked the book: nuances and contradictions surrounded the man, and this book illustrates this well. Tip of the hat to Elk & Ruby for publishing this; not the easiest subject, not the easiest elaboration, but definitely worth your while.

This is a remarkably poignant book about one of the great chess legends. David Bronstein was without question one of the finest and most imaginative chess masters of his impressive generation. His games and his writings, notably on the great Zurich 1953 tournament, have earned him a place in the chess hall of fame. Yet, as Sosonko recounts, over and over again, he never recovered from his failure to wrest the world championship from the towering figure of the period, Mikhail Botvinnik. The portrait is of a whining loser. I would like to think that it fails to do justice to a remarkable chessplayer.

Sosonko escribió un retrato crudo del gran ajedrecista David Bronstein, que quedó varado para siempre en 1951.A diferencia del cálido retrato de los otros maestros soviéticos que describe, con Bronstein no es nada indulgente, hasta parece que le falta empatía.En vez del título que tiene bien podría llamarse "The Fall of David Bronstein", porque su ascenso ocupa un mínimo lugar.Gracias a las numerosas grabaciones y apuntes que tomó Sosonko de las charlas entre ambos, podemos conocer muchas frases literales y las obsesiones de un genio llamado David Bronstein.No hay libros como este, es un trabajo original, muy bueno.Posiblemente a Bronstein este libro no le hubiese gustado, pero... tampoco le hubiera gustado uno distinto.