Richard Réti

Richard Réti
Association	Czechoslovakia
Born	May 28, 1889 Pezinok
Died	June 6, 1929 Prague
Best Elo rating	2710 (December 1920) ( Historic Elo rating )

Richard Réti (born May 28, 1889 in Pezinok near Pressburg , † June 6, 1929 in Prague ) was a German-speaking Austro-Hungarian , Czechoslovak chess master after the collapse of the Danube Monarchy. His older brother was the pianist and composer Rudolph Reti .

Life

Réti's father Dr. Samuel Réti (1853–1904) was a Jewish doctor who specialized in the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. In 1890 the von Pezinok family came to Vienna , where Réti began studying mathematics after graduating from high school . Soon, however, he devoted more time to playing chess than studying. When he forgot his seminar paper in Vienna's Café Central and couldn't find it again, he finally gave up mathematics and became a professional chess player.

Savielly Tartakower said about this time:

Réti studies mathematics without being a dry mathematician, represents Vienna without being Viennese, is a native Hungarian without knowing Hungarian, speaks extremely quickly so that he can act all the more carefully, and becomes the best chess player without being world champion. He is a researching artist who is more concerned with the "why" of things than with their essence ...

In contrast to other chess masters, Réti was not a “ child prodigy ”, despite undisputed talent , but had to work a lot for his later results. Through self-study and practice, he increased his playing strength considerably from 1908 to 1912. In his first international tournament (Vienna 1908) he only achieved 3 draws out of 19 games, in the second it was 5.5 points out of 10. In the following years he made a close friendship with the very talented Gyula Breyer , one of the later “comrades-in-arms” “The hypermodern chess school .

Match form from Rétis' win against Capablanca, New York 1924

During the First World War , international chess life stood still, Réti was only active in local tournaments. At the end of the war he moved to Prague . Like his contemporary Aaron Nimzowitsch, Réti criticized the dogmatic playing style of the older masters. In doing so, Réti did not proceed as aggressively as Nimzowitsch, who had journalistic feuds with Siegbert Tarrasch , the advocate of the old, dogmatic style.

Réti's victory against world champion José Raúl Capablanca in New York in 1924 was an important step in propagating the hypermodern ideas in chess. The Réti opening - (1. Ng1 – f3 d7 – d5 2. c2 – c4) - has been played a lot, and the ideas of indirect control of the center on which it is based are now part of the knowledge of every good chess player. The same game ended at the same time Capablanca's unbeaten series, which had existed since 1916.

In 1925, Réti set a world record in blind simulta- neous on 29 boards. He won 21 games, held 6 draws and lost only 2. Réti took part with the Czechoslovak national team at the 1927 Chess Olympiad in London and achieved the third-best individual result of all participants. Réti made considerable contributions to chess theory and was the author of several chess books : The New Ideas in Chess Game (1922) and The Masters of the Chess Board (1930) are classics.

His best historical rating was 2710, which he reached in December 1920.

Réti died of scarlet fever in Prague at the age of only 40 . He is buried in the Vienna Central Cemetery .

Lots

• Réti - Tartakower, Vienna 1910
• Réti - Alekhine, Baden-Baden 1925

Endgame studies

Réti's most famous study: the Réti maneuver

53 endgame studies by Richard Réti are known. In the work published posthumously by Mandler, which Réti himself had prepared, all studies are listed in volume 2 for which he claimed authorship. Apparently there are also chess positions among them which he had shown to an audience (e.g. at lectures) and which were then wrongly assigned to him.

Réti's genius is evident in his profound ideas. He deliberately gave some of his studies a form that would nowadays be considered incorrect in chess composition because its solution is not unambiguous ( secondary solution , dual ). He was of the opinion that the game closeness of the study was more important than a clear game. Unaware of this conception, some composers later revised these studies in order to enforce their claim to correctness. Admittedly, this made the studies less close to the game.

The depiction of the Réti maneuver is probably his most famous work. But the following study is also world-famous and an excellent example of his views on the composition of the study.

Richard Réti
Hastings and St Leonard's Post, 1923

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

White to move wins

To understand the solution, one should know that after 1. Rd4 – d1 d5 – d4 a position of mutual pressure arises: White to move can only achieve a draw, but Black to move loses because he has to give up the opposition .
Solution:

1. Rd4-d3 (d2) d5-d4

2. Rd3 (d2) -d1! Kc5-d5

3. Kc7 – d7 Kd5 – e4 After 3.… Kd5 – c4 White wins analogously with 4. Kd7 – e6 Kc4 – c3 5. Ke6 – e5 d4 – d3 6. Ke5 – e4 d3 – d2 7. Ke4 – e3.

4. Kd7-c6 Ke4-e3

5. Kc6-c5 (b5) d4-d3

6. Kc5 (b5) -c4 d3-d2

7. Kc4 – c3 and win

See also

• Chess Fever Réti as an extra in a film humor

literature

• E. Spitzenberger:  Réti Richard. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 9, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7001-1483-4 , p. 92 f. (Direct links on p. 92 , p. 93 ).
• Harry Golombek : Richard Réti's best games , Joachim Beyer Verlag , Eltmann 2014 (edited and revised by John Nunn ), ISBN 978-3-940417-74-9 .

Web links

Commons : Richard Réti  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Replayable chess games by Richard Réti on chessgames.com (English)
• Edward Winter : The Réti Brothers
• Twenty Réti studies
• John Beasley: The chess endgame studies of Richard Réti . E-book as PDF files, published on January 14, 2012. (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ André Schulz : Richard Reti on his 130th birthday: Chess instead of math In: de.chessbase.com. May 28, 2019, accessed November 18, 2019.
2. ↑ Richard Rétis results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
3. ↑ Richard Rétis historical Elo numbers on chessmetrics.com (English)