Lone Pine 1975: Eugenio Torre, Asia's and Philippine’s first GM

Eugenio Torre, born November 4, 1951, made him 23 at Lone Pine 1975. In 1972 he won over Anatoly Karpov in Skopje, Yugoslavia. In 1974, he became Asia’s first Grandmaster, by winning the silver medal in the World Chess Olympiad held in Nice, France. To this day, he is considered strongest Grandmaster to come of the Philippines.

At LP1975, He didn’t lose any games. Drawing all but two. I would like draw attention to the round 8 game against Venezuela’s GM Pilnik. Torre with black, essays a variant of the Pirc Defense that deploys a q-side pawn push. Pilnik responds lightly to the advance at first as the White pieces attempt to counter advance in the center. The theme “ Best Defense against an attack in the center is a counter attack on the flank” makes a good generalization of this game. Black is allowed an impenetrable pawn chain on a5-b4-c3. White’s best bet is to liquidate the minor pieces and reach an endgame with a better King position. In attempting this, white chose to weaken the king side pawns but once a forced Queen exchange ensued, the advanced pawn chain was too muck for White.



GM Torre has a rich chess career following the 1970’s. Eugene Torre shot to prominence in 1976 as a possible future title challenger after winning a strong four-man tournament in Manila ahead of world champion Anatoly Karpov – thus becoming the first player to finish ahead of Karpov in a tournament since the latter became world champion. The high-point of his career came in the early 1980s when he was ranked world No.17; successfully going on to qualify to be a candidate for the world championship after tying for first with Lajos Portisch during the 1982 Toluca Interzonal.

After losing his quarter-final candidates match to Zoltan Ribli in 1983, Torre became disillusioned with chess and more or less went into semi-retirement. He went on to become a minor celebrity due to his daily one hour TV programme “Chess Today”


He shows up in the 1990’s as one of the only confidants of the recluse Bobby Fischer and even becomes Fischer’s second in preparation for the Spassky Re-match in 1992 and also was involved in 1996 when Fischer Random was launched. One anecdote during this period has it that when Torre and Fischer boarded a taxi in Buenos Aires, the driver immediately recognized Torre as a chess player. As both were about to leave the taxi, the driver, not knowing who the other distinguished passenger was, asked Torre: “Whatever happened to that crazy guy Fischer?”

Torre has been playing in several events local since 2002 after becoming National Championship ( Philippines). He’s participated in 19 consecutive Chess Olympiads playing top board until most recently with the rise of some prominent new players like Mark Paragua and Wesley So.

A comment Mr. Torre made about the one of the stars: “It’s time for the new breed of players to take over. I’m confident Mark is up to the challenge,” said Torre.

Lone Pine 1975 : Honorable Mentions: Suttles, Yanofsky and Parr

First my apologies for not keeping up but I’m also hitting a busy season as I picked up a part time teaching gig ( non-chess).

Before I start in on the top tier finishers I thought it would be worth mentioning a couple Canadian GMs and unknown Australian who had some good games in this event.

First up is Duncan Suttles, age 29 at the event. He was born in San Francisco but his family moved to Vancouver when he was child. He was a bit of a teen-age prodigy in Canada playing at a national master strength. In the early 1960’s he breaks into the Canadian scene winning the British Columbian Championship in 1963 at age 17 and then again 1966. He was playing at GM strength by 1968 but due to Cold War politics, he was denied the title due to a technicality. Because he played too many games that got published, several prominent European players complained of his “Ugly” games. He finally was titled GM in 1972 following his performance at the San Antonio Tournament where he scored a ½ point against Tigran Petrosian. Leading up to Lone Pine 1975, he won a couple of Canadian championships.

The game I would like to draw your attention to in this event happens in round 8 as white against Samuel Reshevsky. Reshevksy’s Performance at Lone Pine was a little passed his prime. The game opens up as a clash between English opening and Modern defense.

The fight for control of d5 and e5 is paramount. In the book, David Levy opines that Suttle’s style was developed by years of playing in the old style of King’s Gambits and that he had to learn how to Walk his King before he learned to walk. ( Thus the “ugly” duckling name his games often received under critical European eyes). In this case it was effective with f4 advanced. Reshevsky tries to gain control of some dark squares for his Queen and tosses a pawn away. This only invites Duncan for an Early Queen exchange. One last ditch effort to gain tempo in the endgame has Black tossing another pawn on the fire. By then, White had enough of an advantage to bring home the point.

With 5 ½ points he finishes in the top 20 of this strong event. His biggest legacy to chess is his contributions to the Modern Defense. Funny, how what was once considered “Ugly” is now a looked up to as a contribution to opening theory. He played into the early 1980’s when he dropped out of competition and started up a Software Company focused on the Stock Market ( Microstat Development) and then ventured into other areas such as Grandmaster Technologies. Now he’s president of Magnetar Games, a software based company focused on Internet Gaming community. http://www.magnetargames.com/Company/Team.htm


Abraham Yanofsky, 50 year old at the event, had the honor of being Canada’s first titled GM in 1964. He beat Botvinnik back in 1946 as well as other prominent players of the time like Sammy Reshevsky and Larry Evans. He was never a professional Player, rather he practiced law in Winnepeg and even was Mayor of a suburb. This Canadian Lawyer-politician did have an interesting first round victory over Hungarian GM, Istvan Csom. Though he submitted this game with light annotation for a brilliancy prize for the round, it was eclipsed by the upset with Kushnir over Evans.



In the Game, Yanofsky opens up the king side in this Sicilian and keeps pressure on Csom’s king to remain in the center. Next he opens up the center and holds onto a Bishop pair for the endgame. Like the practicing lawyer, he builds his case with more evidence in the form of pawns and rests the defense with a closing statement of two connected passed pawns on the 5th and 6th rank.

Yanofsky Earned the international Arbiter title in 1977. He played in his last Canadian Championship in 1986 at the age of 61 which qualified him for another interzonal appearance ( since 1946 he’s represented Canada several times) but ceded to a younger player. He passed in 2000 but since then, an annual Memorial Tournament has been held in Winnipeg to honor his contributions.

Lastly, a 29 year old Australian, David Parr is brought to your attention. The eldest son of Frank Parr, another prominent Chess Player from a chess playing family ( His brother Peter, was also of Master Strength). He played internationally for England for a few years and spent some time in Australia playing in Championships. However, he withdrew from one event in 1974 complaining “his opponents were so weak that he could not concentrate”.



Looking for strong competition, David found it at Lone Pine. In this second round victory against GM Forintos, we see an aggressive style of play for this untitled player. Popularized by Fischer at the time, the Austrian Attack was in style against the Pirc. The idea is to get quick development and control of e5. Black is allowed e5 and then Parr weakens his king side even more with a risky advance f4-f5. Black gains control of the now semi-open g-file and dark squares. Parr looks for his only hope in simplification and seizes a opportunity to exchange queens and pieces to benefit a playable endgame. Using pins and initiative, he walks his king up to a favorable position to pick up the h-pawn. The outside passer was all he needed and he gets the point.

He dies the same year as his father in 2003. There is a David Parr memorial in Australia conducted by the Correspondence Chess League of Australia in his honor.

Lone Pine 1975: Kushnir, Tarjan and Denker, Noteworthy IM’s on the second shelf

As I dig deeper into this tournament, more interesting nuggets turn up. This post will focus on a few IM’s who had a strong finish in this event.

Alla Kushnir

Alla was the only woman IM at Lone Pines. She came over from Israel with her other Ex-Russian compatriots, Vladimir Liberzon and Leonid Shamkovich. She was the second ranking woman chess player in the world but in order to expedite her move to Israel in 1974 from the Soviet Union, she had to agree not to enter the current cycle for Woman’s World Championship. She had been the previous challenger three times against Nona Gaprindashvili. She was awarded the WIM title in 1962 and a year after Lone Pines, she earned her WGM title.

Born August 11,1941 in Moscow, this 33 year old held her ground against GM’s at Lone Pine. She Drew against GM’s Reshevsky, Csom and Robatsch and beat GM Bilek of Hungary and most notably, the upset in round one against Larry Evans. This must have been the fire lit to drive him to place second in this event.

In the game that was highlighted in the July 1975 issue of Chess Life and Review ( her photo is courtesy of that periodical), She is shown playing a very aggressive game against a Benoni. She is able to get a mobile pawn march on the e- and f- files. Larry tries to liquidate the center with a rook for a Bishop but it’s too late.

She finished Lone Pine 1975 with 5 points following 3 wins ( Silman was her third), 4 draws and only 3 loses. I could not find much else on Alla following the 70’s. She is still listed on the FIDE website with a rating of 2430 but has been inactive since as indicated by the sparce records. If anybody knows a brief epilog of where she is now, feel free to leave me a message.

James Tarjan:

James Tarjan was 23 at the time of Lon Pines and a native Californian. Five years before this event, he was selected to American Team for the World Student Olympiad. In 1974 he earned the IM title because of his strong performance in these international junior events.
At Lone Pines, he also had a strong performance. His only loss came at the mercy of Walter Browne. He beat Rhodes and Ervin, two of the USA masters. He drew the rest of his games with 5 GMs and 2 IM’s . One of those GM’s was Gligoric and I want to highlight this game.

IN round two, Tarjan played the Grunfeld as Black against Gligoric’s 1.d4. The veteran player took him down an old variation popular in Boleslavsky’s day. The game is an imbalance bishop pair versus Bishop and knight with odds favored for the bishop pair in the endgame. Gliga attempts an early queen exchange but Tarjan is allowed a strong centralized knight before White can deploy the second bishop. It’s a nice defensive endgame and worth going over.



Following Lone Pines, Tarjan wins the next event, the Western Futurity-Qualifying Tournament against a roster very similar to the masters and IMs of Lone Pine and one year after Lone Pine 1975, he received his GM title. Tarjan continues to play in several US championships in the 1970-80’s but never was quite able to pull it off. One of his strongest finishes was in Passadena 1978 where he finished in 2nd place. This was a Zonal Qualifier and he went on to play in the 1979 Riga Interzonal World Championship Cycle. His last competitive tournament was in 1984 at the U.S. Championship at Berkley where he tied for third place.

Arnold Denker:

At 61 at Lone Pine 1975, this veteran player still had some kick in him. What else can one expect from a former boxer and once rival to Samual Reshevsky and Reubin Fine? He was a U.S. Champion in 1944 and held on to it until Sammy took it back in 1946.
He became an IM in 1950 ( the first year the title was awarded by FIDE).

At Lone Pine 1975, he beats three GM’s, Rossetto, Pilnik, and Damjanovic of his four victories. He draws GM Bilek of his 3 Draws. I am disappointed in the tournament book not having any of his games annotated as the win against Rossetto is quite spectacular. In round eight, he plays a Modern Defense as Black and fights for early control of f5. This leaves a hole in the center for White to take advantage of and Denker walks right into a knight fork and loses his rook. Denker holds his ground as White waltzes into troubled waters on the King side. With a Knight and Rook, Denker threatens an unstoppable CHECKMATE! It was a beautiful win. I’m surprised it didn’t get any more recognition other than this humble blog.



He’s famous for going on and become an important chess organizer, serving on the board of American Chess Foundation, The USCF and the U.S. Chess Trust. The Denker Tournament of High School Champions is in his honor. He earned an honorary GM title in 1982, inducted into the Chess Hall of Fame in 1992, and in 2004 was proclaimed the Dean of American Chess. He died in 2005 after a brief illness. In my opinion, he is a role model for all of us chess enthusiasts.

Lone Pine 1975: Rohde, Silman and Weinstein : Upsets from the third shelf

The Lone Pine 1975 had three major groups. The top shelf included the list of Grandmasters who I’ll be chronicling in the coming posts. The next layer includes the international masters ( Ratings below 2500 and above 2300). My next post will include a few upsets from this category. What I’d like to cover in this post are few noteworthy games from the bottom that resulted in upsets from up and comers.
Michael Rohde:

First up, is a very young 15 year old Michael Rohde. By the way, that is how it is spelled in the book and to spell it “Rhode” is not correct. Michael, born August 26, 1959, received the masters title at the tender age of 13 and in 1975 won the National Scholastic Champions Junior High School Champion. Even though he finished dead last at Lone Pine 1975, his attacking style was in noticeable form as he won a Brilliancy prize for the game listed here against International Master, John Grefe.





He earned the IM title in 1976 and later became a GM in 1988. He went on to win the brilliancy prize in three consecutive U.S. Chess Championships from 1986-1988. Some of his strongest finishes includes first place in the 1991 U.S. Open, tied for first at the World Open, and winning the NY state Championship and a few other titles. He took a break from chess to attend Law school


Jeremy Silman:



Honored to be included at such strong event, a young Texan, Jeremy Silman was just 20 years old. He was listed as having a rating of 2258 ( the lowest in the event) in 1975. It is unclear when he first became a master, though in an interview by Robert Brunnemer (http://www.chessvideos.tv/article-Robofriven-interviews-Jeremy-Silman-5.php) he mentions being at master strength at the age of 16. In this upset over IM Dumitru Ghizdavu, he plays a brilliant c3 Sicillian and handles an IQP with ease. It’s a beautiful battle of the center as Silman demonstrates how to strike on two weaknesses.



Silman goes on to get his IM title in 1988 but leading up to that, he had several notable events under his belt, like winning the U.S. Open in 1981 as well as the National and American opens in that decade. He is a popular author of several chess books geared for the amateur class player. I know I have a few in my library. He was also a Chess consultant for the 2001 movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Norman Weinstein:

Norman Weinstein was rated 2372 in 1975 at Lone Pine and is listed as a Master for that event though some sources indicate he earned the IM title in 1973 following becoming the U.S. Champion in 1973. The game highlighted below is his upset over GM Leonid Shamkovich where he plays an older Levenfish Variation against the Dragon Sicilian. He demonstrates the advantage of initiative combined with opposite sides castling can have with a marauding pawn raid.






He left chess to become an investment banker at Banker’s Trust. In 1990 he convinced the firm to put an ad in Chess life reaching out to hire masters and Grandmaster. Max Dlugy was one of the GM’s to come on board. Weinstein’s name may ring an alarming bell for some as it is the same name associated with another chess player, Raymond Weinstein, who went to prison after killing an 83-year old. No worries, there was no relation to our current player turned banker/recruiter.

The Journey Begins: Lone Pine Masters-Plus Tournament of 1975

The time machine has landed me in a small little remote town in the eastern part of California near the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The year is 1975 and 44 chess players are arriving in this town that is about 10 blocks long and three blocks wide. All the games were played at the Lone Pine Town Hall, which Mr. Statham had built for the sole purpose of the anual event.

Back in 1965, a wealthy engineer and inventor named Louis D. Statham, sold his home in Los Angeles to none other than Hugh Hefner to settle into a quieter location in Lone Pine. Statham was a correspondence player and had a modest Class A rating. He loved chess so much that he wanted some chess players around Lone Pine. So he set up a series of masters tournaments footing the entire bill!

He started this series in 1971 with GM Isaac Kashdan as Arbiter. Between 1971-1974 the participants were mostly American and Canadian with the exception of a couple Eastern Europeans traveling abroad.

In 1975, he cast the net further almost on a dare. “ How many GM’s could we bring to Lone Pine if we tried?” Lone Pine was building a reputation as one of the best known sites in the U.S. He raised the prized fund to $12,500 ( about double the prize money in European events) and offered to pay the travel expenses guaranteed against any prize money. To be fair, the local GM’s were given $600 in lieu of travel expenses.

That is why, in 1975, this turned out to be the strongest tournament of the year. Twenty-two GM’s came to Lone Pine. From the Philippines, came Eugene Torre a freshly minted GM. From Argentina, Miquel Quinterros arrived ( though he’d been in the Philippines prior). Israel brought Vladimir Liberon, Leonid Shamkovich who were both ex-Russians immigrating. They traveled with Alla Kushnir, the only female IM.

From Europe came nine GMs. Veterans of Lone Pine were Svetozar Gligoric from Yugoslavia (a good cross over from Zurich 1953) and Florrin Gheorghiu from Romania . Mata Damjanovic had to play two games in advance in a tournament in Birmingham, England because of a conflicting dates. From Hungary came, Isvtan Bilek, Istvan Csom and Gyoso Forintos. Iceland brought Gudmundur Sigurjonsson. Karl Robatsch came from Austria. Lothar Schmid of West Germany, was the chief arbiter of the Fischer-Spassky match in Iceland.

From Canada came Duncan Suttles and Abe Yanofsky. Oscar Panno and Hector Rosseto came from Argentina. Herman Pilnik came from Vennuzuela. From the U.S came Walter Borwne, Sam Reshevsky ( another veteran from Zurich 1953), Larry Evans and Pal Benko.
There were 11 International masters and 11 national masters. Included in this bunch were Jeremy Silman at 20 and Michael Rhodes at the tender age of 15. Arnold Denker and Arthur Drave were the elder statesmen at 61 and 65 respectively.

With 44 chessplayers in this sleepy little town, several small hotels were filled and chessplayers were seen all over in coffee shops, tennis courts and even getting hair cuts.


It wasn’t without effort that Statham tried to bring in former world champions from the soviet union. Three Czechoslovakians accepted only later to have the federation decline their invites. The speculation was that they were forced to follow the lead of the soviet’s boycott to this event because of the battles that came about from Fischer-Karpov match during that period.

So what is in store you may ask? I plan on following the games and biographies of the Grandmasters. I will most likely have a post or two on some of the more famous national/international masters as they also provided some wonderful upsets.

The tournament book I will reference is “Grandmaster Chess: The book of the Louis D. Statham Lone Pine Masters-Plus Tournament, 1975” by GM Isaac Kashdan and the staff of the California Chess Reporter. The games are lightly annotated and I have no PGN of the entire event to work from. If any of my readers can locate the raw games from this event and provide a link I’d be much obliged. I found one reference to a PGN of a Lone Pine 1975 but it turned out to be the wrong event. Beware of the file 1975LP-PG.zip as it’s not the collection of games I am looking for though labeled as Lone Pine 1975. This turned out to be a different event of that year.

Back in 1975, chess informants were starting to become popular for opening preparation. Thus, Lone Pine 1975 happens the days before the generation of overly prepared openings through computer databases. Old fashioned preparation of reading books and building on the reputations of your predecessors was the mainstay here. We’ll be seeing a lot of Sicilians and English openings as they were the style of the day.


Gligoric was quoted as saying ( in the Chess Life and Review, July 1975) “ Lone Pine 1975 brought together an unusual gathering of people, some of whom had not met for ten or even twenty years. Naturally enough, the past was partly rebornat some of these chess boards, too.” He was referencing that many of the lines and systems which were popular in his youth were revived at Lone Pine. “At those rare moments when your commentator watches the ‘strange’ positions from the Two Knights Defense, Marshall Attack or Meran Defense, he cannot escape the queer, tender feeling of being refreshed by an old idea”

I’ll be entering all these games by hand into chess base, a labor of love. I will be providing commentary, descriptive annotations by the players and checking the variations with computer.

I hope you enjoy.

Twas the Knight before Checkmate

Twas the knight before Checkmate and across the board
There were advancing pawns like a marauding hoard
The queen said “ What pests!”
While the King replied “ I cannot rest”
When in his finachetto
The Bishop said “ I’ll send them back to their ghetto.”
And started to devise a plan that was grand
But with who might be partner for the stand
On Flank, on file and even if Fritzed-in
The pawns were well supported and rather well fixed-in
When in from the dark
The knight decided to hark
“ I will take fight with the lead thug,
I'll take down this wall of bugs”
“It’s suicide” the queen did shout.
The knight ignored them all and jumped about.
Down went the pawn in one blow indeed
The bishop joined in by the death of the steed
The queen saw an opening and took her stance.
“Check!” she said with mixed feelings and chance
The opposing King retreated at a hasty rate
The next move that came was a quick check mate.
All through the land, the feelings were not light
For all the king's peoples were saved by this brave and good Knight!

Merry Chessmas to all my readers

I’ll be resuming the Magical History tour sometime after Christmas with an intro to the Lone Pines tournament.