CHESS MASTER FLED COMMUNISM FOR UNITED STATES
Grandmaster defected in '68, aided Fischer
Shortly after Lubomir Kavalek was named an international grandmaster in 1965, he was aboard a train en route to Prague when a countryman, the celebrated Czech player Karel Opocensky, made an observation that proved prophetic.
“You are now nailed to the chess board, young man,” Kavalek recalled.
For the next half-century, until his death on Jan. 18 at 77, Kavalek was an eminence of the game — a two-time Czech champion and a threetime U.S. champion after his defection to the West in 1968. He also was an assistant to Bobby Fischer when the enigmatic American player claimed the world championship from Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky in their dramatic 1972 match.
Kavalek was a noted writer in his field, writing a regular chess column for The Washington Post from 1995 to 2010. He died at his home in Reston, Va. The cause was metastatic lung cancer, said his wife, Irena Kavalek.
Lubomir Kavalek was born in Prague on Aug. 9, 1943. His mother was a nurse. His father, a radio journalist, left Czechoslovakia amid the Communist takeover in 1948 and settled in what was then West Germany.
He had begun playing chess as a boy, joining clubs and poring over chess theory until he had nurtured himself into an accomplished player. While pursuing his incipient chess career, he studied journalism in Prague until the Soviet-led invasion in 1968.
Kavalek, who was competing at a tournament in Poland at the time, decided not to return home and instead join his father in Munich.
In 1970, with the assistance of the U.S. Chess Federation, he came to the United States.
Kavalek represented Czechoslovakia and the United States, where he became a citizen, in the Chess Olympiads. He was ranked among the top 100 players in the world continuously from 1962 to 1988, according to the World Chess Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 2001.
Kavalek retired from playing in the 1990s, devoting himself to coaching, organizing chess tournaments and writing.
Survivors include his wife of 49 years, the former Irena Koritsanska, of Reston; a son, Steven Kavalek of Manchester, N.H.; and a grandson.