Larry Evans

Larry Evans, 1964
Surname	Larry Melvyn Evans
Association	United States
Born	March 22, 1932 New York City , United States
Died	November 15, 2010 Reno (Nevada)
title	International Master (1952) Grand Master (1957)
Best Elo rating	2555 (January 1977)

Larry Melvyn Evans (born March 22, 1932 in New York , † November 15, 2010 in Reno ) was an American chess player and chess journalist.

Life

Larry Evans grew up in Manhattan and showed great chess talent as a teenager. He played chess for small amounts on the street and won the Marshall Chess Club championship three times . In 1949 he was, shared with Arthur Bisguier , USA youth champion. In 1950 he took part in his first chess Olympiad as the second reserve player in Dubrovnik , where he scored nine points from eleven games, an outstanding result for which he was awarded a gold medal. In 1951 he was national champion of the USA and left among others Samuel Reshevsky behind. In 1952 he became an international master . In the prestigious international matches between the USA and the USSR, he won against Mark Taimanow in 1954 (2-1 in a draw), but lost a year later to David Bronstein (one defeat, three draws). In 1957 he received the title of Grand Master and was appointed Chess Ambassador by the US State Department. In 1961/62 and 1968 he won the USA championship again , both in the absence of Bobby Fischer . In international tournaments he achieved less significant success, so he came in only 14th place at the interzonal tournament in Amsterdam in 1964. Evans then gave up his own ambitions for the world title, but supported his compatriot Fischer as a second . He also worked on his book My sixty memorable games . Evans remained a member of the national team until 1976; he took part in a total of eight Chess Olympiads. It was in 1976 in Haifa Olympic champion and reached 1966 in Havana with the team to second place in the individual competition he won in addition to the gold medal in 1950 a silver medal on the fourth board in 1958 in Munich and a bronze in 1976 on the third board. 1980 Evans came back to 1st place at the state championship, shared with Walter Browne and Larry Christiansen . The United States Chess Federation inducted him into the US Chess Hall of Fame in 1994 .

He died on November 15, 2010 at around 3 p.m. in Washoe Hospital in Reno, Nevada, from complications from gallbladder surgery.

Before the introduction of the Elo numbers , his best historical Elo number was 2673 in August 1952, making him one of the top twenty players in the world. After 1988, Evans no longer played any rated games.

Writing activity

Evans developed a lively journalistic and writing activity early on. As early as 1950 he published the game collection David Bronstein's best games of chess, 1944-1949 , in a limited edition of 500 copies . In 1958 he published the book New ideas in chess , which became a great sales success. Since 1960 he has had a regular column in the highest-circulation American chess magazine Chess life & review , in which he answered reader inquiries on chess topics. Between 1961 and 1965 he also worked on the magazine American chess quarterly . In 1965 he edited the 10th edition of Modern Chess Openings , a standard work on opening theory . In total he wrote over twenty chess books .

From 1973 he worked as a journalist for the Washington Post and other newspapers; a selection of 300 of his articles appeared in 1982 under the title The chess beat ( ISBN 0-08-026926-5 ). He also reported on important chess events for magazines such as TIME Magazine , including the match of the century at the 1972 World Chess Championship between Fischer and Spasski .

Web links

• Literature by and about Larry Evans in the catalog of the German National Library
• Playable chess games by Larry Evans on chessgames.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Willy Iclicki: FIDE Golden book 1924-2002 . Euroadria, Slovenia, 2002, p. 88.
2. ^ Willy Iclicki: FIDE Golden book 1924-2002 . Euroadria, Slovenia, 2002, p. 74.
3. ↑ Larry Evans' results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
4. ↑ Larry Parr / USCF : GM Larry Evans (1932-2010), American Chess Legend, Dies . Retrieved November 16, 2010
5. ↑ Larry Evans' Elo history from 1990 on benoni.de
6. ↑ Larry Evans' Elo development until 2001 at olimpbase.org (English)