Frank Anderson (chess player)
Encyclopedia
Frank Ross Anderson was a Canadian International Master of chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

, and a chess writer. He twice won gold medals at the chess Olympiads, for the best scores on his board. Anderson tied for the Canadian Chess Championship
Canadian Chess Championship
This is the list of all the winners of the Canadian Chess Championship, often referred to as the Canadian Closed Championship to distinguish it from the annual Canadian Open tournament. The winner of the Canadian Closed advances to the next stage of the FIDE World Chess Championship cycle...

 in 1953 and won this title outright in 1955.

Biography

Frank Anderson became very ill with childhood rheumatoid arthritis in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, and learned to play chess while bedridden. Unable to exercise his body, he exercised his mind. He first played correspondence chess
Correspondence chess
Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, usually through a correspondence chess server, through email or by the postal system; less common methods which have been employed include fax and homing pigeon...

, becoming a strong player quite quickly. He was encouraged by chess promoter Bernard Freedman (who became his first sponsor), his good friend Keith Kerns and later by John G. Prentice, who served as Canada's representative to the FIDE, the World Chess Federation. Despite his physical disability, he graduated in Physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 and Mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 from the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

.

His first noteworthy result was in the 1946 Canadian Championship in Toronto. Anderson scored 10/13 in the preliminaries, just missing qualification for the top section finals; he won section 2 of the finals. Anderson won the Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

 Championship six times (1947, 1948, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1958). In 1948, he tied for first place in the U.S. Junior Championship in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with future Grandmaster Arthur Bisguier
Arthur Bisguier
Arthur Bernard Bisguier is an American chess Grandmaster, chess promoter, and writer. Bisguier won two U.S. Junior Championships , three U.S. Open Chess Championship titles , and the 1954 United States Chess Championship title. He played for the United States in five chess Olympiads...

. He won the Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

 Open Championship in 1948, 1949, and 1951 (source: David Cohen's Canadian Chess site).

He twice won Closed Canadian Chess Championship
Canadian Chess Championship
This is the list of all the winners of the Canadian Chess Championship, often referred to as the Canadian Closed Championship to distinguish it from the annual Canadian Open tournament. The winner of the Canadian Closed advances to the next stage of the FIDE World Chess Championship cycle...

s. In 1949, he tied for 3rd-4th, after Maurice Fox
Maurice Fox
Maurice Fox was a Canadian chess master. He won the Canadian Chess Championship eight times; this is tied for the most Canadian titles with Daniel Yanofsky.-Biography:...

 and Fedor Bohatirchuk, in Arvida (CAN-ch). In 1951, he took 2nd, behind Povilas Vaitonis
Povilas Vaitonis
Povilas Vaitonis was a Lithuanian–Canadian International Master of chess. He was a five-time Lithuanian champion, and was twice Canadian champion...

, in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

 (CAN-ch). In 1953, he tied for 1st with Daniel Yanofsky
Daniel Yanofsky
Daniel Abraham Yanofsky, OC, QC was Canada's first chess grandmaster, an eight-time Canadian Chess Champion, a chess writer, a chess arbiter, and a lawyer.-Life in chess:...

 in Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...

 (CAN-ch). In 1955, he won in Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

 (CAN-ch). In 1957, he tied for 3rd-4th with Miervaldis Jursevskis
Miervaldis Jursevskis
Miervaldis Jursevskis is a Latvian-Canadian chess master.He left Riga in 1945, just just prior to the Soviet forces arriving. As a displaced person after World War II, he took place in several chess events in Germany, including Blomberg and Lübeck , Meerbeck , and Hanau...

, after Vaitonis and Géza Füster
Géza Füster
Géza Füster was a Hungarian-Canadian chess International Master.Born in Budapest, he won his first of many Budapest Championships in 1936. During World War II, he played in several strong tournaments. In 1941, he won the Hungarian Championship...

, in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

 (CAN-ch).

Anderson played three times for Canada in Chess Olympiads (1954, 1958, 1964). He won the second-board gold medal at Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 1954, with a score of (+13 =2 -2), and repeated the feat at Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 1958, with a score of (+9 =3 -1). At Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

 1964, he scored (+4 =3 -5) on second board (http://www.olimpbase.org). He came closer to the Grandmaster title than any other player, but became ill (reaction to an incorrect prescription), and was unable to play his final round in Munich. He missed the Grandmaster title because of this. Even if he had played and lost, he would have made the final norm necessary for the Grandmaster title. His Olympiad totals were (+26 =8 -8), for 71.4 per cent.

Awarded the IM title in 1954, he became the first Canadian-born International Master.

He lost a transatlantic cable game with Igor Bondarevsky
Igor Bondarevsky
Igor Zakharovich Bondarevsky was a Soviet Russian chess Grandmaster in both over-the-board and correspondence chess, an International Arbiter, trainer, and chess author...

 played over four days in February 1954. He played at the Canadian Hobby and Homecraft Show. But Anderson won a return game when Bondarevsky visited Toronto a few months later in July 1954. Anderson scored 7/10 in the 1956 Canadian Open Chess Championship
Canadian Open Chess Championship
The Canadian Open Chess Championship is Canada's Open chess championship, first held in 1956, and held annually since 1973, usually in mid-summer. It is organized by the Chess Federation of Canada....

 in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 for a shared 8-12th place, drawing his game in the last round with 13-year-old Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author...

.

He wrote a weekly chess column for The Hamilton Spectator
The Hamilton Spectator
The Hamilton Spectator, founded in 1846, is a newspaper published every day but Sunday in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The paper has a daily circulation of 105,000 and a daily readership of nearly 260,000.-History:...

, 1955–1964, and was co-author (along with Keith Kerns) of the tournament book of the Fourth Biennial World Junior Chess Championship
World Junior Chess Championship
The World Junior Chess Championship is an under-20 chess tournament organized by the World Chess Federation ....

, Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

 1957. In this book, he came up with a small innovation, writing the moves in descriptive notation with no '-'; that is, he wrote PK4 instead of the normal P-K4 (see Descriptive chess notation
Descriptive chess notation
Descriptive notation is a notation for recording chess games, and at one time was the most popular notation in English-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries , . It was used in Europe until it was superseded by abbreviated algebraic notation, which was introduced by Philipp Stamma in 1737...

).

He was a computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

 expert, and played with a computer chess
Computer chess
Computer chess is computer architecture encompassing hardware and software capable of playing chess autonomously without human guidance. Computer chess acts as solo entertainment , as aids to chess analysis, for computer chess competitions, and as research to provide insights into human...

 program in 1958. He moved to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 after the 1964 Olympiad, where he lived with his wife Sylvia, settling in San Diego, where he operated a tax
Tax
To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...

 consulting business.

He was inducted into the Canadian Chess Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2009, American International Master John Donaldson
John Donaldson
John Wesley Donaldson was an American baseball pitcher in Pre-Negro league and Negro league baseball. He was born in Glasgow, Missouri.-Highlights:...

 wrote a biography and games collection The Life and Games of Frank Anderson.

Style

His style was precise and positional, with an emphasis on the endgame, but he could also create clever tactics. He favored 1.e4 as White, usually the Ruy Lopez. He liked knights over bishops.

Famous games

Three of his wins over Grandmasters, shown below, with the moves given in algebraic notation. His opponents were very strong; Yanofsky was an 8-time Canadian champion, Bondarevsky was a former Soviet champion, and Stalhberg was a many-time Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 champion and a 1953 Candidate.

Daniel Yanofsky
Daniel Yanofsky
Daniel Abraham Yanofsky, OC, QC was Canada's first chess grandmaster, an eight-time Canadian Chess Champion, a chess writer, a chess arbiter, and a lawyer.-Life in chess:...

 -- Frank Anderson, Closed Canadian Chess Championship
Canadian Chess Championship
This is the list of all the winners of the Canadian Chess Championship, often referred to as the Canadian Closed Championship to distinguish it from the annual Canadian Open tournament. The winner of the Canadian Closed advances to the next stage of the FIDE World Chess Championship cycle...

, Vancouver 1951, Ruy Lopez
Ruy Lopez
The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening or Spanish Game, is a chess opening characterised by the moves:-History:The opening is named after the 16th century Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, who made a systematic study of this and other openings in the 150-page book on chess Libro del...

, Open Defence (C81): 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Nxe4 6.d4 b5 7.Bb3 d5 8.dxe5 Be6 9.Qe2 Nc5 10.Rd1 Be7 11.Be3 Nxb3 12.axb3 Qc8 13.Bg5 Bxg5 14.Nxg5 0-0 15.c4 Ne7 16.cxd5 Bxd5 17.Qc2 g6 18.f3 h6 19.Nc3 c6 20.Nge4 Qe6 21.Nf6+ Kg7 22.Re1 Bb3 23.Qc1 b4 24.Ng4 Nf5 25.Ne4 Qc4 26.Qf4 Qd4+ 27.Kh1 Rfe8 28.Qc1 h5 29.Ngf6 Rh8 30.Nc5 h4 31.h3 Bc4 32.Nce4 Ng3+ 33.Nxg3 hxg3 34.Ne4 Bd5 35.Nxg3 Rxh3+ 36.gxh3 Bxf3+ 0-1.

Frank Anderson -- Igor Bondarevsky
Igor Bondarevsky
Igor Zakharovich Bondarevsky was a Soviet Russian chess Grandmaster in both over-the-board and correspondence chess, an International Arbiter, trainer, and chess author...

, Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

 1954, Ruy Lopez
Ruy Lopez
The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening or Spanish Game, is a chess opening characterised by the moves:-History:The opening is named after the 16th century Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, who made a systematic study of this and other openings in the 150-page book on chess Libro del...

, Modern Steinitz
Steinitz
- Places :* Steinitz, Germany, a town in the district of Altmarkkreis Salzwedel in Saxony-Anhalt in Germany...

 Defence (C73): 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 d6 5.Bxc6+ bxc6 6.d4 f6 7.c4 Ne7 8.Nc3 g6 9.c5 Bg7 10.cxd6 cxd6 11.0-0 Bg4 12.dxe5 dxe5 13.Qe2 0-0 14.h3 Be6 15.Na4 Qa5 16.Qc2 g5 17.Nc5 Bf7 18.Be3 Qc7 19.Rfd1 Rfd8 20.Rxd8+ Rxd8 21.Nxa6 Qc8 22.Nc5 Ng6 23.a4 Bf8 24.a5 Bxc5 25.Qxc5 Qa6 26.Rc1 Rc8 27.Qd6 Kg7 28.b4 h6 29.Nh2 h5 30.Nf1 h4 31.Nh2 Nf8 32.Ng4 Nh7 33.Bb6 Qa8 34.Rc3 c5 35.Rxc5 Rxc5 36.Bxc5 Qxe4 37.Be3 Qd5 38.Qe7 Qc6 39.Nxh6 Kxh6 40.Qxf7 Qc3 41.Qe7 Qd3 42.Qe6 Qd8 43.a6 Nf8 44.Qc6 1-0.

Frank Anderson -- Gideon Stahlberg
Gideon Ståhlberg
Anders Gideon Tom Ståhlberg was a Swedish chess grandmaster.He won the Swedish Chess Championship of 1927, became Nordic champion in 1929, and held it until 1939....

, Munich Olympiad 1958, Sicilian Defence
Sicilian Defence
The Sicilian Defence is a chess opening that begins with the moves:The Sicilian is the most popular and best-scoring response to White's first move 1.e4...

, B45: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.Ndb5 Bb4 7.a3 Bxc3+ 8.Nxc3 d5 9.exd5 exd5 10.Bd3 0-0 11.0-0 h6 12.Bf4 d4 13.Nb5 a6 14.Nd6 Bg4 15.Qd2 Qd7 16.h3 Be6 17.Rfe1 Rfd8 18.Re2 Nd5 19.Bh2 Qe7 20.Ne4 Rc8 21.Rae1 b5 22.Kh1 Qf8 23.Ng3 Nde7 24.Qf4 Bc4 25.Qe4 Bxd3 26.Qxd3 Ng6 27.Nf5 Qc5 28.Qf3 Kh7 29.Qg4 d3 30.cxd3 Nd4 31.Re5 Qb6 32.h4 Nxf5 33.Rxf5 Qd4 34.Qxd4 Rxd4 35.h5 Nh8 36.Be5 Rd5 37.Rf3 f6 38.Bc3 Rxh5+ 39.Kg1 Rc6 40.Re7 Ng6 41.Ra7 Kg8 42.Ra8+ Kh7 43.Ra7 Kg8 44.g3 Rd5 45.Re3 Rd8 46.d4 Rcd6 47.Kg2 Red7 48.Rxd7 Rxd7 49.Re6 Ra7 50.Bb4 Kf7 51.Rb6 Nf8 52.Bc5 Nd7 53.Rc6 Ra8 54.b4 h5 55.Kf3 g5 56.Rc7 Ke8 57.Ke4 a5 58.Kf5 axb4 59.Bxb4 h4 60.gxh4 gxh4 61.d5 h3 62.Rc3 Kf7 63.Rxh3 Nb6 64.d6 Re8 65.Rh7+ Kg8 66.Rb7 1-0.

External links

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