Anthony Kosten | |
---|---|
Full name | Anthony Cornelis Kosten |
Country | France (until 2023) England (since 2023) |
Born | London, United Kingdom | 24 July 1958
Title | Grandmaster (1990) |
Peak rating | 2551 (July 2002) |
Anthony Cornelis Kosten (born 24 July 1958 in London) is an English-French chess Grandmaster and chess author.
In 1982 he placed third in the British Championship, held in Torquay. In 1989 he moved to France and since then has captained and coached that country in major competitions.
Kosten played many tournaments, finishing first or equal first in the following:
Perhaps the most striking of these performances was at the 1st Geneva Open tournament of 1986 (170 players, including several grandmasters, among them Anthony Miles, Miguel Quinteros or Armenian Smbat Lputian from the Soviet Union). The event was nine rounds and Kosten won all of his first eight games. This was sufficient to already guarantee him first place ahead of a strong international field. In the final game, Kosten accepted a draw offer from his compatriot, Glenn Flear. He agreed after some half an hour's deliberation, for the position was hopelessly lost for Flear. That acceptance prevented Kosten from achieving a perfect 9/9 score. IM Kosten won outright a full point ahead of second placed GM Lars Karlsson.
He lives in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and is now naturalized French and registered on the French Elo list.
Kosten was married to the daughter of Hungarian Grandmaster Győző Forintos.
With the English national team he participated in the European Championship in 1989 in Haifa, where he received the individual bronze medal for his score of 5 points from 7 games on the first reserve board. In 1990 he played for England in the 1st VISA Chess Summit in Rekyavik. England came second.
In the British Team Championships 4NCL, he won with Slough in 1996, 1999 and 2000 and with Guildford in 2004, 2007 and 2008. He twice won the French Team Championships with Monaco, in 2001 and 2002. In Germany he has played on the first board of Schott Mainz since 1994. In Austria, he played for Frohnleiten from 2001, which became Holz Dohr-Semriach from the 2004–05 season. In the 2007–08 season he was the best player with Rainer Buhmann. In Switzerland, he played for Lausanne Le Joueur, and he was also active in the Hungarian (for MTK) and Basque (for Oaso X.T.) Team Championships.
He published many chess books as Tony Kosten, mostly on the openings:
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The rook and bishop versus rook endgame is a chess endgame where one player has just a king, a rook, and a bishop, and the other player has just a king and a rook. This combination of material is one of the most common pawnless chess endgames. It is generally a theoretical draw, but the rook and bishop have good winning chances in practice because the defense is difficult. Ulf Andersson won the position twice within a year, once against a grandmaster and once against a candidate master; and grandmaster Keith Arkell has won it 18 times out of 18. In positions that have a forced win, up to 59 moves are required. Tony Kosten has seen the endgame many times in master games, with the stronger side almost always winning. Pal Benko called this the "headache ending."
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