Jim West On Chess: Gutman Plays the Fajarowicz

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Gutman Plays the Fajarowicz

I have been playing the Fajarowicz variation in the Budapest defense for one year. To me, the Fajarowicz is to 1.d4 what the Philidor Counter Gambit is to 1.e4, a risky but playable attempt at winning for Black.

Lev Gutman, who has written a book Budapest Fajarowicz, drew this game in 2001 against Felix Levin.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov