Chess Opening Names: The Fascinating & Entertaining History Behind The First Few Moves by Nathan Rose

Author:Nathan Rose [Rose, Nathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stonepine Publishing
Published: 2017-07-15T06:00:00+00:00

Pirc Defense

“Vasja Pirc” is a name that everybody gets wrong. Normally when a foreign name is Anglicized, the English spelling is suggestive of its pronunciation. Not so for Pirc – his name is correctly articulated as “Peerts”, not “Perk”. Due to the reorganization of national borders over the course of the 20th century, a quick history lesson is necessary to explain where Pirc came from.

Pirc was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was a union between the kingdoms of Austria and Hungary and the lands they had annexed. When the empire found itself on the losing side of World War I, it dissolved.

Yugoslavia was formed when some of the old empire’s lands were joined by some new areas. Pirc won the national chess championship of Yugoslavia five times and died a Yugoslav in 1980. But just over a decade later, Yugoslavia itself fragmented into several independent countries because of inter-ethnic tensions and the collapse of the former heavy-handed regime. Now the area in which Pirc spent his life is known as Slovenia.

Pirc’s best chess was in the 1930s. He was the sort of player who was good enough to be invited to the top tournaments, but not so strong that he would win them. Still, he played plenty of chess against the game’s leading lights including Max Euwe, Savielly Tartakower, Aron Nimzowitsch, Emanuel Lasker and Alexander Alekhine.

World War II saw Pirc’s home city of Ljubljana occupied by the Axis forces. The war put a stop to European chess tournaments, so Pirc contented himself by meeting every Tuesday with another local grandmaster, Milan Vidmar. Over the course of the war they reportedly played around 1,000 games.

When international competition finally resumed, Pirc represented Yugoslavia. His country hosted and won the ninth chess olympiad in 1950 – the first olympiad held since the fateful 1939 tournament which trapped all those players in Argentina at the war’s outbreak (see the chapter on Najdorf for that story).

The Pirc Defense sees White establish himself in the center, which Black aims at from the sides. The Classical line of the Pirc Defense sees Black continue with a kingside fianchetto:

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