Larry Evans
Larry Melvyn Evans was born on March 23, 1932 in Manhattan. He learned much about chess by playing for 10 cents an hour on 42nd Street in New York City. By the age of 18, he had won a New York State Championship as well as a gold metal in the Dubrovnik Chess Olympiad of 1950.
In 1949, Evans tied with Arthur Bisguier for 1st place in the U.S. Junior Championship. Two years later he won his first U.S. Chess Championship ahead of Samuel Reshevsky. He won the national championship three more times, in 1962, 1968, and in 1980 (tied with Walter Browne and Larry Christiansen. FIDE awarded him an International Master title in 1952, and in 1956 the U.S. State Department appointed him a "chess ambassador" and he became a Grandmaster in 1957.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Evans performed well in many U.S. events, but his trips abroad to international tournaments were less successful and infrequent. He won the U.S. Open Championship in 1951, 1952, 1954, and tied with Walter Browne in 1971. He also won the first Lone Pine tournament in 1971. He represented the U.S. in seven Chess Olympiads over a period of 20 years, winning one gold medal and one silver medal for his play, and in 1966 one team silver medal.
Evans' best results abroad included a 1st place finish in the 1975 Portimao International in Portugal and a 2nd place tied behind Jan Hein Donner in Venice of 1967. His first chance at a World Chess Championship title ended in a dismal 14th place finish in the Amsterdam Interzonal of 1964. He was rated 2361 at his peak in October 1968, but despite being a child prodigy, he was subsequently overshadowed by the genius of Bobby Fischer. He never entered the World Championship cycle again and concentrated his efforts on assisting Fischer in his quest for the world title. He tutored his friend from 1968-1972 and guided Fischer to the world title in the famous match against Boris Spassky in 1972.
Evans had always been interested in writing as well as playing, and before he turned 18, he had already published David Bronstein's Best Games of Chess, 1944-1949 and the Vienna International Tournament of 1922. He is credited with having written or co-written over 50 books about chess, some of which are classics of the genre. His New Ideas in Chess proved very influential on the chess players of the 1950s and 1960s and it has been a consistent seller over the years.
Other well received books include Modern Chess Brilliancies (1970), What's the Best Move (1973), and Test Your Chess I.Q. (2001). He revised the 10th edition of Modern Chess Openings (1965), co-authored with editor Walter Korn. At the time, many players considered it to be 'the Chessplayer's Bible', and it is now a collector's item. He also made a significant contribution to Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games (1969) and had urged him to publish when he had initially been reluctant to do so.
During the 1960s, Evans developed a very successful chess journalism career and helped found the American Chess Quarterly which ran from 1961-1965. He was also an editor of Chess Digest during the 60s and 70s, and he still writes regularly for Chess Life - the official publication of the United States Chess Federation (USCF). His popular question and answer column is read by more than 250,000 readers every month and has been running for over 30 years as of 2005. His weekly chess column, Evans on Chess, has appeared in more than 50 separate newspapers thoughout the United States.
Evans has also commentated on some of the biggest matches for Time magazine and ABC's Wide World of Sports, including the 1972 Fischer vs Spassky match, the 1993 PCA world title match between Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short, and the Braingames World Chess Championship match between Vladmimir Kramnik and Garry Kasparov in 2000. He has earned many awards for his contributions to chess writing and journalism, including the USCF's Chess Journalist of the Year award in 2000. In 1994, he was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.
Download 419 chess games by Larry Evans
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