Chess
BY PHILIDOR No. 4. L. LACNY (let Prize, Prague, 1954)
WHITE, 8 men mate in 2 moves: solution next week.
Solution to last week's problem by Mari : Kt-Kt4, threat Kt-B6, 1 ... Kt -B7; 2 R - R5.
CHESS IS A YOUNG MAN'S GAME The conventional layman's idea of a chess master is that the strength of a player's game is proportional to the length of his beard, and that while there may he a few promising youngsters in the seventies, a player is only really mature at about eighty-five. Nothing could be further from the truth. While it is true that a strong player will not normally deteriorate seriously till he is in the middle fifties (and exceptional players, like Lasker, remain in the front rank till well on in the sixties), nearly all great players have already made their mark at the age of twenty to twenty-five (sometimes sooner), and reach their peak at about thirty-five. So although a chess player's career is much longer than that
of a champion in a physical sport, he reaches the front almost as soon and his prime not much later.
The reason for gradual decline after thirty- five to forty is twofold. In the first instance, the creative and imaginative powers deterior- ate. This is particularly noticeable in fields such as chess and mathematics, where the intellectual content is divorced from 'real life.' The second and more important reason is that after forty most players arc less able to stand the great nervous and physical strain of a long tournament or match. Botwinnik, the world champion, is a man of very unusual stamina and will-power; nevertheless at the end of his twenty-four-game match with Smyslov it was obvious that at the age of forty- four he was far more exhausted than Smyslov (aged thirty-three), and had the match been thirty games instead of twenty-four, I have little doubt that Smyslov would have won.
As for young players, there are any num- ber. Spassky, eighteen, is amongst the twenty best players in the world, and possibly amongst the best half-dozen. Fenno (aged twenty at the time) won the South American Zonal Cham pionship ahead of I,ajdorf lam year; John Purdy, nineteen, is the present champion of Australia, and J. Penrose, twenty-two, is now probably the strongest player in England. In all the East European countries a lot is done to bring on young players. In the West, with no State aid, it is much harder, but far more is being done in England now than ever before. Let us hope it results in a British Capablanca I [Commcriorc Black pawn on K Kt 3 in Problem No. 2 (Harley) should have been White pawn. Apologies to all solvers for misprint.]
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