MARK RUBERY CHESS

The author Vladimir Nabokov is probably best known for his book ‘Lolita’, while his novel ‘The Defence’ is considered the finest work of fiction concerning chess. This last book has reached cinema screens under the title of ‘Luzhin’s Defence’ starring John Turturro and Emily Watson (2000).

In the film Luzhin is portrayed as an unworldly chess grandmaster, who plays in a tournament for the world championship at an Italian lake resort in 1929. Although some of the chess scenes might be considered a little over the top, critics with no interest in the game have given the film very positive reviews. The English GM, Jon Speelman, was hired to give the chess scenes an authentic touch.

Nabokov was an ardent chess enthusiast with a particular leaning towards chess composition. “Composing chess problems is a beautiful, complex and sterile art related to the ordinary form of the game only insofar as, say, the properties of a sphere are made use of both by a juggler in weaving a new act and by a tennis player in winning a tournament. Most chess players, in fact, amateurs and masters alike, are only mildly interested in these highly specialized, fanciful, stylish riddles, and though appreciative of a catchy problem would be utterly baffled if asked to compose one.”

Mark Savelyevich Liburkin (1910-1943) was one of the most talented study composers to emerge from the Soviet Union. A winner of numerous composition championship prizes, he supplemented his work as an accountant with being the study editor of the prestigious magazine Shakhmaty v SSSR (Chess in Russia).

Here is an extraordinarily beautiful (and difficult) puzzle from Liburkin’s fertile mind.

WHITE TO PLAY AND WIN

‘Just as the gun enabled the inconsequential loner to somehow ‘equalise’ himself with, say John Lennon or John F. Kennedy, so the computer allows the talentless to prove they are ‘better’ than celebrated grandmasters.’ (Dominic Lawson)