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| Jon Speelman | |
|---|---|
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| Full name | Jonathan Simon Speelman |
| Country | England |
| Born | 2 October 1956 Marylebone, London, England |
| Title | Grandmaster (1980) |
| FIDE rating | 2497 (May 2024) |
| Peak rating | 2645 (July 1988) |
| Peak ranking | No. 5 (July 1988) |
Jonathan Simon Speelman (born 2 October 1956 in Marylebone, London) [1] is a British chess player and author. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster in 1980.
Speelman was educated at St Paul's School, London and Worcester College, Oxford, where he read mathematics. [2]
A winner of the British Chess Championship in 1978, 1985 and 1986, Speelman has been a regular member of the English team for the Chess Olympiad, an international biennial chess tournament organised by FIDE, the World Chess Federation.
He qualified for two Candidates Tournaments:
In 1989, Speelman beat Kasparov in a televised speed tournament and then went on to win the event.
On 7 December 1990, Speelman was featured in an experimental interactive BBC2 broadcast called Your Move, which was hosted by Rob Curling and commentated by chess writer William Hartston. In the groundbreaking one-off episode, Speelman was pitted against the audience, who would use a special telephone line to submit their moves, with the move played by the viewers being decided by a democratic vote. [3] Speelman won the match. The broadcast went for approximately three hours, about double the time that it had been scheduled for. [4]
He has written a number of books on chess, including several on the endgame, among them Analysing the Endgame (1981), Endgame Preparation (1981) and Batsford Chess Endings (co-author, 1993).
Among his other books are Best Games 1970–1980 (1982), an analysis of nearly fifty of the best games by top players from that decade, and Jon Speelman's Best Games (1997). Today he is primarily a chess journalist and commentator, being the chess correspondent for The Observer and The Independent and sometimes providing commentary for games on the Internet Chess Club.[ citation needed ]
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Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov is a Russian and former Soviet chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, and politician. He was the 12th World Chess Champion from 1975 to 1985, a three-time FIDE World Champion, twice World Chess champion as a member of the USSR team, and a six-time winner of Chess Olympiads as a member of the USSR team. The International Association of Chess Press awarded him nine Chess Oscars.
Jan Timman is a Dutch chess grandmaster who was one of the world's leading chess players from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. At the peak of his career, he was considered to be the best non-Soviet player and was known as "The Best of the West". He has won the Dutch Chess Championship nine times and has been a Candidate for the World Chess Championship several times. He lost the title match of the 1993 FIDE World Championship against Anatoly Karpov.
The endgame is the final stage of a chess game which occurs after the middlegame. It begins when few pieces are left on the board.
Alexander Genrikhovich Beliavsky is a Soviet, Ukrainian and Slovenian chess player. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 1975. He is also a chess coach and in 2004 was awarded the title of FIDE Senior Trainer.
Yasser Seirawan is a Syrian-born American chess grandmaster and four-time United States champion. He won the World Junior Chess Championship in 1979. Seirawan is also a published chess author and commentator.
Raymond Dennis Keene is an English chess grandmaster, a FIDE International Arbiter, a chess organiser, and a journalist and author. He won the British Chess Championship in 1971 and was the first player from England to earn a Grandmaster norm, in 1974. In 1976, he became the second Englishman to be awarded the Grandmaster title, and he was the second British chess player to beat an incumbent World Chess Champion. He represented England in eight Chess Olympiads.
The fifty-move rule in chess states that a player can claim a draw if no capture has been made and no pawn has been moved in the last fifty moves. The purpose of this rule is to prevent a player with no chance of winning from obstinately continuing to play indefinitely or seeking to win by tiring the opponent.
John Denis Martin Nunn is an English chess grandmaster, a three-time world champion in chess problem solving, a chess writer and publisher, and a mathematician. He is one of England's strongest chess players and was formerly in the world's top ten.
Harold James Plaskett is a British chess grandmaster and writer.
William Roland Hartston is an English journalist who wrote the Beachcomber column in the Daily Express. He is also a chess player who played competitively from 1962 to 1987 and earned a highest Elo rating of 2485. He was awarded the title International Master in 1972, but is now best known as a chess author and presenter of the game on television.
Mark Izrailevich Dvoretsky was a Russian chess trainer, writer, and International Master.
A pawnless chess endgame is a chess endgame in which only a few pieces remain, and no pawns. The basic checkmates are types of pawnless endgames. Endgames without pawns do not occur very often in practice except for the basic checkmates of king and queen versus king, king and rook versus king, and queen versus rook. Other cases that occur occasionally are (1) a rook and minor piece versus a rook and (2) a rook versus a minor piece, especially if the minor piece is a bishop.
The World Chess Championship 1993 was one of the most controversial matches in chess history, with incumbent World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, and official challenger Nigel Short, splitting from FIDE, the official world governing body of chess, and playing their title match under the auspices of the Professional Chess Association. In response, FIDE stripped Kasparov of his title, and instead held a title match between Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman.
Much literature about chess endgames has been produced in the form of books and magazines. A bibliography of endgame books is below.
Daniel John King is an English chess grandmaster, writer, coach, journalist and broadcaster.
Tibor Károlyi is a Hungarian chess International Master, International Arbiter (1997), coach, theoretician, and author.
Malcolm Bernard Pein is a British chess player, chess organizer, author, and journalist. He holds the title of International Master.
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