Saturday, April 28, 2007

Book on Eugene Torre

Fans of the Pinoy legend grandmaster Eugene Torre can now look forward to an important cultural artefact in RP chess. Former RP men's Olympiad captain Bobby Ang, our friend in Manila Raul Sol Cruz (acting as researcher) and the man himself, GM Torre, will produce a book entitled "40 Years of Philippine Chess (Eugene Torre and His Games)". Expected release date will be December 2007, a very appropriate Christmas present for Torre fans!

Mr Ang announced this wonderful news last week in his column for Business World:

We also look at the historical perspective and Eugene himself wants to include crucial games that he lost. For example there is this game with Gyula Sax of Hungary in the 1982 Biel Interzonal, where he only needed a draw to qualify for the second consecutive time to the Candidates' matches. Or his game against Zoltan Ribli of Hungary in their candidates' match – Eugene got winning chances but botched it and even lost the game. What would have happened had he qualified for the next round? Would he have managed to get by former world champion Vassily Smyslov?

I certainly can't wait for the book. You know what, I seem to recall from way back when I was a kid in Cebu, there was already a book about Torre and his games. My memory is a little fuzzy about that so I wonder if some of our Pinoy readers can confirm this. I think the cover had Torre standing on a beach or somewhere rather.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fascinating story! Keep up the good work Amiel (although stories about the irrelevant ACF or Cordover's billion dollar chess business (sic) can be safely ignored). I used to love playing through the games of Eugenio Torre as a kid, he was an inspiration to me.

Anonymous said...

Who is Cordover?

Anonymous said...

Yes, there is one - entitled "beyond the 13th move" published by Marish Book Production.

The introduction for Game 10 - Nice Olympiad, 1974 with Torre (w) against Robert Byrne of the US says "This is the most crucial game of my life so far. The supreme accolade of chess - the grandmaster title - was at stake!"

Thereafter, it has been a glorius history for Philippine chess!

Anonymous said...

The book is called "Beyong the 13th Move"

Ted Teodoro said...

Well, Torre's games are no secret. There used to be a pgn file on the web for his games. One just has to go find it. I think it was at the University of Pittburgh site where many pgn files were free to download. However, there is chessgames.com where one can peruse 956 games by Torre between 1968 and 2006. This planned book should top any collection of Torre's games because---it is safe to presume, I guess---it will have Torre's own analysis. I just hope that this book will not be one of those cheap editions that fall apart after only several years.

Anonymous said...

I think the title of the book you wanted to recall is "Beyond The Thirteen Move".

Anonymous said...

Eugenio Torre played a very interesting game against Robert Byrne in the Leningrad Interzonal 1973 (which he unfortunately lost).
He sadly lost a lot of games he should have won. He had a flair for the adventurous lines, a great player.

Mike B said...

Years have passed since this post. Was the book about Eugenio Torre ever published? Are there any books about him?