New York.

1924.

The reigning World Champion Jose Raul Capablanca who hasn’t lost a game in 8 years appears.

Richard Reti uses 1 Nf3.

It is super effective.

Richard Reti was a born in a Jewish family in Bazin, Austria-Hungary (today Pezinok, Slovakia). He was the third son of the physician Samuel Reti and his wife Anna, but his older brother Otto died in infancy.

He learned how to play chess when he was 6 – by watching his father and mother play. When he dared to ask permission to play against his dad, he immediately beat him in the first two games.

When he was 12, he secretly corresponded with Gottschall, the editor of the chess column in a popular weekly magazine Über Land und Meer. He submitted a chess puzzle which got published. When he was 13, his brother Rudolph arranged a meeting with none other but future World Championship Candidate Karl Schlechter, who played a couple of games against Richard, praised him and directed him to go to a more serious chess club.

Even so, Richard focused on his studies for a while and considered chess merely as a hobby. When the First World War broke, he was called to serve as a clerk and got the opportunity to play in some chess tournaments, winning the tournament in Kassa 1918, ahead of Vidmar, Breyer and Mieses.

Even so, he still decided to stick to mathematics afterward, until one extraordinary event changed his fate forever. He was on the verge of his thesis when he lost his booklet which contained all his formulas. At the same time, he got an invitation to Holland. After his unexpected victory in Göteborg 1920 tournament (in which Tarrasch complained to his participation), he decided to become a chess professional.

For the next ten years, he would become a member of the world elite. His afore-mentioned victory against Capablanca was not the only win against a World Champion, as he also beat Alekhine in the same tournament. Alas, he never actually got the opportunity to play for the title.

But his chess playing career is not the reason „every Russian schoolboy“ knows his name. Even though he started as a combinative player and played the King’s Gambit early in his career, in the 1920s he decided to make a radical switch. Together with Nimzowitsch and Breyer, he became a pioneer of the so-called hypermodernism in chess. In his own words:

„In probing deeper into the mystery of the 64 squares it gradually occurred to me that certain moves and systems of development which did not open more terrain for one’s game or rescue one from the opponent’s attack could nevertheless, if properly handled, finally lead to a superior position.“

His most notable invention is the afore-mentioned Reti Opening starting with 1 Nf3, which together with 1 c4 and 1 d4 plays 2 Bf4 completes the holy trinity of club player’s nightmare openings to face with the Black pieces.

Apart from that, he was also a famous study composer. Is there anyone who doesn’t know what Kg7-Kf6-Ke5!!-Kd6-(or Kf4) refers to?

Today is the Jubilee 130th anniversary of his birth!

It is a terrible pity he died in 1929 of scarlet fever. He was only 40 years old!

 (Main source for this post: http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/reti.html)

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