By David Llada

 

David Bronstein was born on this day in 1924 in Ukraine. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest players never to become World Champion, even though he was incredibly close.

He had his best chance in 1951, when he challenged Botvinnik for the title. The two great players won 5 games each, in one of the most hard-fought world championship matches ever. Bronstein was leading by a full point with two games to go, but he lost the penultimate game and drew the last one, which allowed the defending champion to retain the title.

After the match with Botvinnik, Bronstein continued his brilliant chess career, winning several important international events and playing actively at a high level well into his 70s.

He also authored several celebrated chess books and had a long-running chess column in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia.
His famous "Zurich International Tournament 1953" is still regarded as one of the greatest chess books ever written.

Bronstein was a chess visionary and one of the first advocates of the ‘time increment’ in chess, an idea that Fischer later adopted and popularized.

Something similar occurred with David’s ‘Random Chess’ variant, where the pawns are placed, and the first eight moves involve placing pieces on vacant squares in the back rank. Fischer came up with his own version of the idea, but many consider Bronstein’s original concept to be superior to Fischer Random (or ‘Chess 960,’ or ‘Freestyle,’ if you prefer to call it that).