Chess Trivia

"Here are some thumbnail descriptions of five well-known chess players of history. For each description, your task, and I believe it is a formidable one, is to guess which player it refers to.

The person who wrote these descriptions is a strong player and well-known writer of chess books, so we can at least assume he knows what he's talking about. If you think you know who any of these players are take a stab at it.

1. His aim is always to sieze the initiative. A remarkably deep combination player who can think out and compare long sequences of moves. But also an excellent position player, a good defender and a master of the endgame .... It is no exaggeration to call him the most versatile champion in the history of chess. Only in excessively tedious and dull positions was he vulnerable. And it was this one weakness which cost him a championship.

2. He never concerned himself with any particularly deep planning. In the opening all he asked for was a decent position; a shade the better, a shade the worse, this mattered little to him. Only with the arrival of middlegame complications and dangers did his genius truly awaken. Then he really could discover the best moves...especially when he was courting danger---and this was his real greatness.

3.He took the ideas of Reti and effectively integrated them into his practical play. His play was sound and his style was primarily positional. In addition he had tactical talent which came into its own especially when the opponent had been outplayed strategically. His weak point lay in his optimism and lack of objectivity.

4. His play exhibits on one hand the combinative richness of Alekhine, with a bias towards adventurousness, and on the other hand the solid positional basis of Smyslov and Petrosyan. Since he is the master of so many attacking weapons he is also well qualified to appraise the attacks of his opponents with great accuracy.

5. He's one of the most accomplished strategists in the history of chess,but in contrast to his collegues, he scores most of his positional victories not by intuition but by precise calculation. He is at home in all sorts of positions. He can conduct an attack well, and has registered many successes by mating attacks after the queens had gone. Equally he's a past master of defense, which he manages in active style."
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