Thirty years ago, two grandmasters - Viktor Korchnoi and Geza Maroczy - met at the chessboard. There would be nothing special in this fight, if not for one circumstance: Geza Maroczy died in 1951.
First, about the participants in this unusual game. Their chess fates are in many ways similar: both were considered one of the best, but they could not win the title of world champion.
Viktor Korchnoi was born in 1931 in Leningrad, survived the blockade. He started playing chess at the age of 13. He graduated from the Faculty of History of Leningrad State University, but did not change chess - he participated in serious tournaments, and eventually entered the Soviet chess elite.
Viktor Korchnoi became the champion of the Soviet Union four times, and as a member of the USSR national team he won gold at the Chess Olympiads six times.
In 1976, after an international tournament in Amsterdam, he refused to return to his homeland and settled in Switzerland. Of course, in view of such a demarche, the name of Korchnoi was deleted from the history of Soviet chess, he was stripped of the title of Honored Master of Sports.
Soviet chess players boycotted the tournaments in which Korchnoi took part. Nevertheless, the attention of the Soviet public was riveted to Korchnoi at least twice more - in 1978 and in 1981, when he met Anatoly Karpov in matches for the world title. True, then in the sports news he was referred to as a contender. Korchnoi lost both matches to Karpov.
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Now about Korchnoi's opponent. Maroczy was born in 1870 in Szeged, Austria-Hungary. He started playing at the age of 15. Educated as a mathematician and a process engineer, he took part in many chess tournaments.
He was best known as a defensive chess player and endgame master. He died in Budapest in 1951 - 34 years before the start of the match with Viktor Korchnoi.
Three candidates
The idea of holding this unusual party belongs to the doctor of economic sciences from Switzerland Wolfgang Eisenbeis. It was he who turned to Korchnoi with a proposal to measure his strength with one of the departed grandmasters.
Korchnoi laughed and said that the idea was crazy, but since all chess players are a little crazy, he agreed. When Eisenbeis asked who Viktor would like to meet at the chessboard, Korchnoi answered: with the second world champion Cuban Jose Raul Capablanca, the Soviet chess player of Estonian origin Paul Keres or the Hungarian Geza Maroczy.
A guide to the other world was Eisenbeis's longtime acquaintance - Robert Rollance, a musician, and part-time medium, who owned the technique of automatic writing in a state of trance. Eisenbeis chose Rollance not only because he knew him well. Firstly, the medium knew absolutely nothing about chess, so he could not play along with the dead man. Secondly, Rollance agreed to participate in the experiment completely free of charge. By the way, Korchnoi did not receive a single franc for his participation in the game with Maroczy.
A week later, Rollance reported that he had failed to find Capablanca and Keres in the other world, but Maroczy had been found and was ready to play. The experiment started.
“I am Maroczy Geza,” wrote the spirit of the famous chess player with the hand of a medium at the first contact. "I greet you."
The Hungarian got white, and he made a move. True, before he expressed concern about his form - after all, he had not trained for many years.
Of course, the organizer of the party was interested in finding out why Maroczy agreed to sit down at the chessboard again. “I will be at your disposal for two reasons,” Rollans wrote for the Hungarian. "I want to help humanity to make sure that death is not the end: the mind is separated from the physical body and lives in a new world, in other dimensions." The second reason he called the desire to glorify his homeland - Hungary.
Meanwhile, the party was entering a decisive stage. Rollance passed the moves to Maroczy Eisenbeis. He informed Korchnoi about them. Victor informed the organizer of the game about the return move, he called the medium. They played, to put it mildly, slowly - either Maroczi was out of sorts, or his opponent was leaving for the next tournament.
After the 27th move, Korchnoi commented on the game as follows: “The one I am playing with did not start very confidently, and his play is old-fashioned. But I must admit that I do not guarantee my victory. The opponent compensated for the opening's shortcomings with strong decisions at the end of the game. In the endgame, the player's abilities are manifested, and my afterlife opponent is playing very well. Endgame … You and I remember that the Hungarian grandmaster was considered a master of spectacular completions.
Purity of experiment
Of course, it was not so much important for Dr. Eisenbeis to identify the winner as to observe the purity of the experiment. He knew that, one way or another, he would be accused, if not of fraud, then of trying to create a cheap sensation. That is why he brought in the director of the Pacific Institute of Psychoneurology, Dr. Neppe, as an independent observer. The professor, among other things, was a strong chess player.
After analyzing the course of the game, the expert summed up: “The supposed Maroczy initially acted at the level of a master, but then his game began to correspond to that of a grandmaster. The indecisive debut may have been the result of Korchnoi's use of new theoretical ideas developed after the death of his opponent."
But most importantly, Professor Neppe was absolutely sure: neither Robert Rollance nor his acquaintances could imitate Maroczy's game, since for this one had to study chess at the highest level for many years. The use of a computer for the same purpose was also ruled out - the machine could not so subtly simulate the stylistic personality of Maroczy.
The expert's conclusions seemed to Eisenbeis not enough, and through a medium he asked the late grandmaster to share the details of his life.
Maroczi took the idea favorably: he issued an autobiography as much as forty pages. It was then that the real miracles began - the spirit of the Hungarian grandmaster provided details that no one but Geza Maroczy could know about. So, for example, he told about the game he played in 1930 in San Remo with a certain Romy. The named person no longer appeared in any of the protocol of chess competitions, although he played brilliantly against Maroczy.
“First of all,” Eisenbeis later recalled, “Maroczy noted that the name of the person with whom he played in San Remo is written with the letter h at the end. He further said: “During my school years, I had a friend Romih who once beat me at chess. I treated him with great respect, but lost sight of him for many years. And decades later, we unexpectedly met at a tournament in San Remo and played one of the most interesting games in my life.
In the course of the game, there were moments when not only those who followed the course of the game were ready to admit my defeat, but also I myself, a born optimist by nature. But at some moment the right decision came to my mind and I won. So I took revenge for that long-standing school party. According to the results of the tournament Alekhine became the winner, I took the ninth place, and my friend - the sixteenth."
The end of the medium
Also preserved are the memories of Robert Rollans about how he communicated with the spirit of the late grandmaster:
“I found myself in two different states. The first was my usual trance state, when Maroczy wrote with my hand. The second was completely new. Maroczy considered his possible moves. He turned to me and then showed me various options for the development of the party. I was sitting in front of the chessboard, and Maroczi was demonstrating to my inner eye how he could move the pieces. At the same time, I fully understood all the grandmaster's reasoning, although I had never played chess in my life."
The duel between Maroczi and Korchnoi ended on February 11, 1993. The Hungarian grandmaster admitted defeat on move 48. At that time he had a king and two pawns, Korchnoi had a king and three pawns. In total, the game lasted seven years and eight months.
Journalists, chess historians were already preparing to find out from the main character of this story - medium Robert Rollans - the details of communication with Geza Maroczy. Alas, these hopes were not destined to come true: on March 2, 1993, Rollance died suddenly. Whether long-term communication with the other world could have caused death is unknown: the spirit of Robert Rollans never got in touch.
Mikhail MAMALADZE