Richard Réti

Richard Réti , born the May 28th 1889 with Pezinok (in Hungarian Bazin, in German Bösing) close to Bratislava (in Hungarian Pozsony, in German Pressburg) and dead the June 6th 1929 with Prague) is a player of failures born Hungarian, but become, like its area of Czechoslovakian origin, after the First World War. He is one of the strongest players of the years 1910 and 1920 and is one of the founders of the school hypermoderne.

Biography

The father of Réti was a doctor, Jewish Hungarian, who raised his son with a French préceptrice. In 1890, the family came to Vienna, where Réti after being left the Gymnasium, started to study the Mathématiques. However, it devoted soon more time to the set of failures than being studied. To the Central Coffee of Vienna, it came from there to forget its university work and it definitively gave up mathematics to become professional player of failures.

Xavier Tartakover said over this period of its life: Réti studies mathematics without being a limited mathematician, it represents Vienna without being Viennois, of birth it is a Old man-Hungarian without it being able to be Hungarian, he answers with an extraordinary speed, but acts with all the more of reflection, and with that he becomes the best player of failures without being world champion. It is an artist of the research which deals more of why things that with their essence.

Contrary to other Masters of the failures, Réti was by no means a child prodigy, in spite of his indisputable talent, and it had to work much for the results which it reached thereafter. It is by learning by itself and as a practitioner that it increased considerably his capacities of play between 1908 and 1912. In its first international tournament (Vienna, 1908), it could make only 3 null parts out of 19, the second time it obtained 5,5 points out of 10. The following years, it tied a narrow friendship with a very gifted player, Gyula Breyer, which was to be later with him one of the champions of the school hypermoderne.

During the First World War, the life échiquéenne stopped on the international plan and Réti took part only in local tournaments. After the war, it settled with Prague. Like its contemporary Aaron Nimzowitsch, he criticized the way of playing dogmatic of the older Masters, but he did not go as far in aggressiveness as this last, which quarreled publicly with Siegbert Tarrasch, the lawyer of the old dogmatic style.

Victory of Réti against the world champion Jose Raúl Capablanca, with New York in 1924 - he had played the opening which bears its name (1 today. Cf3 d5 2. ç4) - was a big step in the propagation of the modern ideas in the failures. The Début Réti was played much thereafter, and the idea which is at the base: the indirect control of the center, fact part today of the luggage of any good player of failures.

In 1925, Réti establishes world records by playing 29 parts with the blind man simultaneously, where it obtains +21 -2 =6.

One must in Réti of the considerable contributions to the theory of the failures and he is the author of several books: the modern Ideas with the failures (1922) and the Large Masters of the chess-board (1930) remain the traditional ones.

At the 40 years age only, Réti dies in Prague of the Scarlatine.

A part

(Richard Réti - Xavier Tartakover, Vienna, 1910)

1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Cc3 dxe4 4. Cxe4 Cf6 5. Dd3 e5 6. dxe5 Da5+ 7. Fd2 Dxe5 8. 0-0-0 Cxe4?? 9. Dd8+ Rxd8 10. Fg5+ Rc7 11. Fd8#

In its Breviary of the Failures , Tartakover had the plume to reproduce this part under the title “a splendid chechmate”. It accompanies it by interesting comments.

Works translated into French

“ Large Masters of the chess-board ” (1982, transl. of Frank Lohéac-Ammoun) - ED. Garnier brothers, Paris. - 296 p.
(as a coll with Jaeg) “ modern Ideas in the failures ” (1997), ED. Payot, 93 p.
“ scientific Course of failures ” (1998), ED. Payot, 85 p.

References

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