 | |
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Larry Melvyn Evans |
| Born | (1932-03-22)March 22, 1932 New York, New York, U.S. |
| Died | November 15, 2010(2010-11-15) (aged 78) Reno, Nevada, U.S. |
| Chess career | |
| Country | United States |
| Title | Grandmaster (1957) |
| Peak rating | 2631 (October 1978) |
| Peak ranking | No. 30 (January 1977) |
Larry Melvyn Evans (March 22, 1932 – November 15, 2010) was an Americanchess player, author, andjournalist who received theFIDE title ofGrandmaster (GM) in 1957. He won or shared theU.S. Chess Championship five times and theU.S. Open Chess Championship four times. He wrote a long-running syndicated chess column and wrote or co-wrote more than twenty books on chess.
Evans was born on March 22, 1932, inManhattan, the son of Bella (Shotl) and Harry Evans.[1] His family was Jewish.[2] He learned much about the game by playing for ten cents an hour on42nd Street in New York City,[citation needed] quickly becoming a rising star. At age 14, he tied for 4th–5th place in theMarshall Chess Club championship. The next year he won it outright, becoming the youngest Marshall champion at that time. He also finished equal second in the U.S. Junior Championship, which led to an article in the September 1947 issue ofChess Review. At 16, he played in the 1948U.S. Chess Championship, his first, tying for eighth place at 11½–7½.[3] Evans tied withArthur Bisguier for first place in theU.S. Junior Chess Championship of 1949. By age 18, he had won aNew York State championship as well as a gold medal in theDubrovnik 1950 Chess Olympiad. In the latter, his 90% score (eight wins and two draws) on sixth board tied withRabar ofYugoslavia for the best result of the entire Olympiad.[4]
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In 1951, Evans first won the U.S. Championship, ahead ofSamuel Reshevsky, who had tied for 3rd–4th in the 1948World Championship match-tournament.[5] Evans won his second championship the following year by winning a title match againstHerman Steiner.[6] He won the national championship three additional times: in 1961–62, 1967–68,[7] and 1980, the last in a tie withWalter Browne andLarry Christiansen.[8][9][10]
FIDE awarded Evans the titles ofInternational Master (1952) andInternational Grandmaster (1957). In 1956 theU.S. State Department appointed him a "chess ambassador".
Evans performed well in many U.S. events during the 1960s and 1970s, but his trips abroad to international tournaments were infrequent and less successful. He won theU.S. Open Chess Championship in 1951, 1952, 1954 (he tied withArturo Pomar but won the title on the tie-break) and tied withWalter Browne in 1971. He also won the firstLone Pine tournament in 1971.[11]
Evans represented the U.S. in eight Chess Olympiads over a period of twenty-six years, winning gold (1950), silver (1958), and bronze (1976) medals for his play, and participating in team gold (1976) and silver (1966) medals.[12][13][14]
Evans' best results on foreign soil included two wins at theCanadian Open Chess Championship, 1956 inMontreal, and 1966 inKingston, Ontario. He tied for first–second in the 1975Portimão, Portugal International[15] and for second–third withWorld ChampionTigran Petrosian, behindJan Hein Donner, inVenice, 1967.[16] However, Evans' first, and what ultimately proved to be his only, chance in theWorld Chess Championship cycle ended with a disappointing 14th place (10/23) in the 1964AmsterdamInterzonal.[17]
At his peak in October 1968 he wasrated 2631 by theUnited States Chess Federation.
He never entered the world championship cycle again, and concentrated his efforts on assisting his fellow AmericanBobby Fischer in his quest for theworld title. He was Fischer'ssecond for theCandidates matches leading up to theWorld Chess Championship 1972 againstBoris Spassky, though not for the championship match itself, after a disagreement with Fischer.
He also wrote the introductions to Fischer'sMy 60 Memorable Games (1969) and urged Fischer to publish when he had initially been reluctant to do so.[18]
Evans had always been interested in writing as well as playing. By the age of 18, he had already publishedDavid Bronstein's Best Games of Chess, 1944–1949 and theVienna International Tournament, 1922. His bookNew Ideas in Chess was published in 1958, and was reprinted in 2011. He wrote or co-wrote more than twenty books on chess.[19]
He wrote the tenth edition of the importantopeningstreatiseModern Chess Openings (1965), co-authored with editorWalter Korn. Some of Evans's other books areModern Chess Brilliancies (1970),What's The Best Move (1973), andTest Your Chess I.Q. (2001).
Evans began his career in chess journalism during the 1960s, helping to found theAmerican Chess Quarterly, which ran from 1961 to 1965. He was an editor ofChess Digest during the 1960s and 1970s. For over thirty years, until 2006, he wrote a question-and-answer column forChess Life, the official publication of theUnited States Chess Federation (USCF), and has also written for Chess Life Online. His weekly chess column,Evans on Chess, has appeared in more than fifty separate newspapers throughout the United States. He also wrote a column for theWorld Chess Network.
Evans also commentated on some of the most important matches forTime magazine andABC's Wide World of Sports, including the 1972Fischer versusSpassky match, the 1993 PCA world title battle betweenGarry Kasparov andNigel Short, and the Braingamesworld chess championship match betweenVladimir Kramnik and Kasparov in 2000.
Evans also contributed a large amount of tutorial and other content to theChessmaster computer game series, most notably an endgame quiz and annotations of classic chess games. He was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1994.
Larry Evans was a prolific author, with many who both liked and disliked his works.
Noted chess author and trainerInternational MasterJohn L. Watson made the following observations on Evans's books and columns: "huge bias"; "long histories of ignoring and distorting evidence" and "Evans' absurd arguments".[20]
By contrast, chess author and International MasterAnthony Saidy noted that Evans brought to his journalism a "taste for intriguing chess", his personal experience at "the summit of US chess", and "sharp opinions" regarding the politics of chess, which contributed to his "spicy, concise columns".[21]
Author and USCF National MasterBruce Pandolfini described Larry Evans'sNew Ideas in Chess as influential and a "first-rate chess book".[22]
Leading chess historianEdward Winter, however, has noted numerous factual errors in Evans' work as well as several examples of possible plagiarism.[23]
On page 175 of Evans' book,Modern Chess Brilliancies, he claimsLodewijk Prins adjourned a clearly lost position against Cuban master Quesada and was lucky enough when the latter died of a heart attack the "next day". Prins noted that he had actually resigned the position, as is proven by the tournament crosstables showing it as a loss for him, and that Quesada played three more games in the tournament before dying five days after the game against Prins. While Evans acknowledged the error, he defended it with "you must admit it makes a good story."[24]
On November 15, 2010, Evans died inReno, Nevada, from complications followinggallbladdersurgery.[25][26][27]
This game, against future grandmasterAbe Yanofsky, was Evans's first victory against a noted player:
| h | g | f | e | d | c | b | a | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |  | |  | | | | | 1 | |
| 2 |  |  | | | |  |  | | 2 | |
| 3 | | | | |  |  | | | 3 | |
| 4 | | |  | | | | | | 4 | |
| 5 |  | | | | | | | | 5 | |
| 6 | | | |  | | | | | 6 | |
| 7 | |  | | | | | | | 7 | |
| 8 | | | | | |  | | | 8 | |
| h | g | f | e | d | c | b | a |
In his bookModern Chess Brilliances, Evans listed four of his own wins:
| Achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | United States Chess Champion 1951–54 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | United States Chess Champion 1961 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | United States Chess Champion 1968 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | United States Chess Champion 1980 (withWalter Browne andLarry Christiansen) | Succeeded by |
