Vlastimil Hort - Legendary Chess Careers (K-5099/1)

Preface:

My interview with Vlastimil took place seven years ago in his home in Cologne. The original idea was to make a book with several interviews with former world class players who made it to the world championship candidates matches. Unlike present top players they can talk much more freely

about their secrets and approaches to chess. Also we know so much about the achievements of the world champions, but less about the players who were a bit below, although they on their inspired days were able to beat anybody. However, the original idea never materialised. Grandmaster Csaba Balogh came up with the idea to make separate books of these interviews as he thought there was rich enough material in each interview for a whole book. I am grateful to him for this. The fi rst two books of the series were on Timman and Portisch. Fortunately these books were successful. Therefore Chess Evolution decided to publish some more. Dear Reader, in this book you can first read the original interview. As it is a whole book on Hort I feel lucky to be able to provide more material, so I happily analysed some more superb games from the Czech-born German grandmaster. I would like to express my gratefulness to many people who helped with this book. First the strong grandmasters, Jan Smejkal, Rainer Knaak and Vlastimil Jansa who know Hort very well and wrote appraisals on their contemporary. Mark Lyell, Kevin Goh Weiming and Nick Aplin helped me to raise the level of English in the interviews. Several people helped in parts: Zachary Loh, Dave Kennedy, Justin Tan, Alan Ansell, Giancarlo Franzoni and Yochanan Afek. I received some pictures from Pavel Matocha and Jan Kalendovsky. Of course the biggest thanks go to Hort himself who was kind enough to give the interview. I hope the quality of the book will please him. The way I selected games for the second part of this book changed a bit. I chose games in which he beat world champions and truly world class players and he produced a marvel-lous endgame. These victories illustrate how strong Hort was, but they will serve at least two more purposes: they will entertain you a lot and one can learn a lot from them.

International Master Tibor Károlyi was Hungarian Champion in 1984 and is renowned as an author and trainer. He won the Guardian Book of the Year prize in 2007 and coached Peter Leko until he became a world class grandmatser.

In this book, the author drives you through the very rich chess career of Vlastimil Hort while interviewing him. This unique concept makes the book easy to read and gives the reader some inside information about what is happening also off the board, things you normally don`t get to know about.

Grandmaster Vlastimil Jansa on Vlastimil Hort:

"In my opinion V. Hort was one of the cleverest players in the world. He was a very universal player. He was probably not exceptional in strategy or tactics, but very well balanced in all aspects of the game. Because of this he was always able to change his style to meet new opponents by playing more psychological chess".

International Grandmaster, Adrian Mikhalchishin:

As a trainer with more than 35 years` experience at the highest level, I know just how important chess education is - and this is not only dedicated to openings, or calculation, but also our chess history - to respect our great predecessors and to understand how chess developed into the game that we all enjoy today.