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Chess Buccaneer
The Life and Games of Manuel Bosboom
by Peter Boel & Merijn van Delft, New in Chess, 283 pp., publ. 2021.
Chess biographies are rare, biographies of players still alive even rarer and biographies of lesser-known players virtually non-existent, so this offering from NiC is both intriguing and welcome.
Bosboom might not be a big name, but his uncompromising, creative chess and romantic, bohemian lifestyle have made him something of a cult figure in his native Netherlands.
He is a strong player, an IM with three GM norms – amongst his victims in classical chess we find Bronstein, Smyslov, Leko and Sofia Polgar – but it is as a blitz specialist that he is better known; not even Garry could keep up with him at 3+2.
The chapters are arranged in chronological order, from Bosboom’s early steps in chess to the present day. Sixty-six games illustrate his development (if that’s the right word!) as a player, showcasing the wealth of often crazy ideas to be found inside this singular chess mind. The openings cover everything from wild and woolly King’s Gambits to more restrained Rétis and Slavs. Bosboom is attracted by interesting ideas, wherever they might be found, and his creative mind is always on the look-out for them, e.g. his games were featuring lots of early g- and h-pawn pushes long before AlphaZero came along, as evinced by one of his blitz games from 2008 which began 1 Nf3 Nf6 2 Rg1 d5 3 h3 c5 4 g4 and all bets were off.
In short, many of the games display ideas unlikely to be found in any ‘normal’ (is it OK to use that word?) player’s practice, and it is often hard to tell who is doing what to whom. As Bosboom puts it: “My games became wilder...was this move a blunder or a sacrifice?! I didn’t mind!...I learned that you just had to keep going, regardless of the situation”. If creative, no-holds-barred chess is your cup of tea, you’ll find plenty of it in here.
The chess fare is leavened with lots of anecdotes and ‘human interest’ stories, some of which reflect the more ‘experimental’ side of the human experience, e.g.
‘On the night prior to the crucial league match...Manuel took a pill, and on the playing day he told Rudy Douven in bright colours how wonderful the experience had been. “He must have played his game with Dennis de Vreugt in a state of dreaming,” Douven wrote inSchaaknieuws.’(MB won.)
Other players are also presented in amusing pen portraits. The Russian GM Dvoirys (another of Bosboom’s victims)‘...was not exactly an ordinary guy. He seemed to know nothing but chess in his life and would only mumble an unintelligible reply every time you asked him something’. Having seen Dvoirys in action on the senior circuit I can confirm that this sums him up to a T. He really does give the impression of someone going through life in what we Scots would instantly recognise as a dwam.
I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea. This is not your usual chess book, in fact it’s hardly your usual biography. Bosboom most certainly qualifies as a ‘colourful character’ whose play shows many aspects of the game that you rarely see in more mainstream works. If nothing else (or, arguably, more importantly) he shows that it is possible to do things differently and still be successful (and probably enjoy yourself more while doing so). As he himself puts it, “Follow your Heart and use your Mind. Play without Dogma!”.The world – even the chess world! – would be a very boring place indeed without ‘characters’.
The book is well structured. The well-annotated, entertaining games and often LOL anecdotes are sprinkled with photos which allow us to put faces to the names. There are also chapters on combinations and one called ‘Curiouser’ which, by Bosboom’s standards, is quite something else. It is the perfect antidote to claims that the game is played out. It is certainly something different, and I cannot imagine anyone not enjoying it.
Recommended!
Ian Marks
May 2022