Description
Bob Wade was a pioneer from New Zealand who went to England in the 1950s to play as a professional chess player and at the time was the only one in the whole country. His numerous successes included winning the British Championship twice and drawing with legendary World Champion Bobby Fischer. He became firm friends with Fischer and often supplied him with tournament bulletins and books to help his chess preparation which includes the famous World Championship match against Boris Spassky in 1972. This collection of 327 games is a tribute to a strong master and a great man. Softback, 350 pages. Dimensions 148 x 210mm, 470g.
Online review: Bob Wade: Tribute to a Chess Master is, first and foremost, a games collection. It collects together just under 250 of Bob Wades games, played between 1945 and 2006. There are 27 or 28 (see below) annotated games, with about a third annotated by Wade himself (and included among this number is a hard fought draw with Bobby Fischer). His comments are instructive and rather droll at times too. This opening variation is recommended if one wants to have ones pieces awkwardly placed, he comments at one point (p.96). One game, a dramatic encounter with Korchnoi, is annotated twice (the reason for the 27 or 28 above) and the second time around Wade even gives it a title: Anatomy of Murder. He goes on to explain: The title of this game comes from the American thriller Anatomy of Murder by Robert Traver. The night before, after my midnight stroll along the Malecon, I sat up in bed reading this book and couldnt put it down until I finished it at 5 a.m. As usual I got up for breakfast. (p.53) One can well imagine the authors of all those improve your chess books, writers like Rowson, Dvoretsky and Yermolinsky, blanching at this tournament regimen! There are 213 unannotated games, accompanied by a generous number of diagrams; at least 2 per game. Although he never became a grandmaster, these games, taken as a whole, show that Wade was a formidable player.
He was alert to his opponents errors and had the tools necessary to exploit them: an efficient technique, sound positional judgement and a good eye for a combination. With the greater opportunities for play and competition of our day, he may well have achieved the highest international title. What is certain is that he had an appetite for chess, a desire to seek out strong competition and test himself against it. Here there are wins against Korchnoi, Furman (later to become Karpovs coach), Robert Byrne, Penrose and Sax, and draws with Tartakower, Geller, Bronstein, Zaitsev and Fischer. The games are the heart of this book, but there is also an introductory appreciation of Wades career by Raymond Keene and 15 tactical puzzles taken from his coaching work, with solutions to follow. One would have liked a fuller account of Wades tournament and match record, and perhaps an article on the Defence that bears his name (1.Nf3 d6 intending 2 Bg4; there is also the line in the Advanced French with Qb6 and Bd7b5 that is associated with Wade too).
But overall this is a fine tribute to a fine chess player, and a fine man too by all accounts. ISBN 9780955535529
