CHESS BY VICTOR STRUGO
In a week when I could be reporting that Magnus Carlsen repeated his December trouncing of Ian Nepomniachtchi in the Airthings Masters, I have instead to announce the sad news that another SA chess stalwart died in Johannesburg last Saturday.
I met Eddie Price at my very first tournament in 1971. A physics lecturer at Wits, Eddie won many tournaments including one SA Open, competed many times in the Closed and represented us at the 1966 Chess Olympiad in Havana. He was also a tireless organiser and administrator. As President of the SA Chess Federation he defended the SACF’s non-racial constitution and pushed recalcitrant clubs toward change. During the key years of political change, he and his good friend Arthur Kobese (died 2010) acted as FIDE delegates and facilitated true unification in 1996 into the all-embracing organ that is today Chessa (but should be ChesSA!).
While 83 is a good innings, the stars that have shone the longest leave us with more to miss when extinguished. He was an original chess thinker, a genial and eccentric companion, a great raconteur with a brilliant mind and a stickler for truth and fairness in both chess and life.
In retirement, his mobility was impeded by osteopathic degeneration but (until covid) he would walk with canes to a nearby café in Greenside for Friday lunchtime blitz with friends. At the board, laziness and time-trouble were never far away, but he was always alert to pouncing on unexpected tactics, as in this brief encounter with the (then) SA No 1.
Eddie Price – Charles de Villiers (SA Open, Durban 1984): 1 e5 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 exd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6 6 Bd3 e5 7 Nde2 b5 8 a3 Bb7 9 Ng3 Nbd7 10 0-0 g6 11 Bg5 h6 12 Be3 Bg7 13 Qe2 0-0 14 Rae1 Re8 15 f3 Qc7 16 Kh1 Bc6 17 Rf2 Qb7 18 Ref1 d5?! (Forestalling White’s tediously slow build-up to playing f4, but anticipating the resulting e4 weakness by 18 … Nc5 was more solid) 19 exd5 Nxd5 20 Nxd5 Bxd5 21 Qd2 Kh7 22 Nh5 Bf8? (22 … Bh8 losing h6 was not serious, but weakening f6 allows a quietly lethal rejoinder) 23 Be4!
(A piece is lost after 23 … Bc6 24 Bxc6 Qxc6 25 Qxd7! while 23 … Bxe4 24 fxe4 gxh5 25 Rxf7 is curtains) Black resigned. Charles later reminisced “I was quite shocked by Eddie’s winning move. I’d been under the sadly *