Tactics: Bohatirchuk vs Canadian Champions

John Upper's picture
Submitted by John Upper on Wed, 12/06/2017 - 22:21

November 27, 2017 marked the 125th anniversary of the birth of Fedor Bohatirchuk, the Ukrainian-born Canadian chess master.

Bohatirchuk is probably best known for his excellent score against Botvinnik: +3 =1 -0. The second of those three wins was our previous Canadian Game of the Week: here.

While he never won the Canadian Closed Chess Championship -- he emigrated to Canada at the age of 56 and taught radiology at the University of Ottawa -- he did defeat players who did. The diagrams show positions from games between Fedor Bohatirchuk and four Canadian Chess Champions, including the two who won it the most:

Maurice Fox (1898-1988)
Eight-time Canadian Chess Champion between 1927-49. Defeated Capablanca and drew with Alekhine in simuls, and defeated 13-year-old Bobby Fischer at the 1956 Canadian Open in Montreal. 

Abe Yanofsky (1925-2000)
Eight-time Canadian Champion between 1943-65, the first Grandmaster in the (British) Commonwealth, and the record-holder among Canadian men with 141 Olympiad games played.

Frank Anderson (1928-1980)
Two-time Canadian Chess Champion (1953, =1st with Yanofsky; 1955 clear first). The first Canadian-born International Master.

Lawrence Day (1949- )
Won the Canadian Championship in 1991, as well as the Canadian Open and Quebec Open three times each. Lawrence studied with Bohatirchuk while a student in Ottawa, and his influence may be seen in Day's use of g3 systems against the Sicilian.

The coloured circle in the bottom left of each board shows the player to move. 

Solutions and analysis below:

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 Round:  Result:

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