Nicolas Rossolimo

◇Between two homelands

Nikolai Spiridonovich Rossolimo was born on February 28, 1910 in Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire, into a well-off Russian-Greek family. The upheavals of the time scattered families like his across Europe, and in 1929 Rossolimo took Greek citizenship, which allowed him to emigrate. That same year he left for France.

Paris became the making of him. In the chess cafés of the city between the wars he sharpened a vivid attacking style, and he rose quickly to the front rank of French chess — a Russian voice among the émigrés, playing with a flair that recalled the romantic masters of the previous century rather than the cautious professionals of his own.

◇Champion of France

In 1948 Rossolimo won the Championship of France, and he made the city of Paris his own, taking its championship a record seven times. His tournament play earned a string of brilliancy prizes, awards given for the most beautiful game of an event — a recognition that suited him exactly, for beauty, not mere points, was what he chased.

He held his own against the best. He had a lifetime plus score against Max Euwe, the former World Champion, and drew with Capablanca, Smyslov and the young Fischer. FIDE awarded him the International Master title in 1950 and the Grandmaster title in 1953, when he was among the best players in the world.

◇The variation that bears his name

Rossolimo's biggest mark on the game is an opening idea. Against the Sicilian Defense he liked 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5, avoiding the sharp tactical main lines in favor of a calm, strategic game on White's terms, and he played it so often and so well that the line was named the Rossolimo Variation.

It was a characteristically civilised choice: an opening that declined to fight chaos with chaos, preferring clarity and long-term pressure. Decades later it is a staple of elite preparation, wheeled out by World Champions, an everyday part of the game's vocabulary. Most who play it have never seen one of his brilliancies — but they speak his name all the same.

◇A new world

In 1952 Rossolimo emigrated again, this time across the Atlantic to New York City. The move did not dim him: in 1955 he won the US Open Championship at Long Beach, California, confirming that the romantic of the Paris cafés could conquer the harder American circuit too.

Bronstein recalled their draw at the Munich Olympiad of 1958 in 200 Open Games (1974). When Rossolimo played an attacking bishop move, Bronstein recognized a page of Chess Review in which Rossolimo himself had analysed the line. Unable to find a satisfactory refutation, he accepted a quick draw. His captain, Alexander Kotov, was unhappy, though he had warned Bronstein before the game that Rossolimo was dangerous, particularly in the endgame.

But chess alone could not keep a grandmaster in mid-century America. To make his living Rossolimo drove a taxi, waited tables, played the accordion and sang — he even recorded an album of Russian songs, its cover designed by his friend the artist Marcel Duchamp. In Greenwich Village he opened the Rossolimo Chess Studio, a salon where ordinary New Yorkers, and notables like Duchamp, could sit down and play the master himself.

◇I shall not turn into a monster

Through every hardship Rossolimo kept his creed. "I will fight for the art of chess," he declared. "I shall not turn into a monster." He refused to reduce the game to a grim hunt for points, and his finest games — flashing queen sacrifices, mating attacks conjured almost from nothing — are his argument made permanent. He set them down himself in his books Les Échecs au coin du feu (1947) and Rossolimo's Brilliancy Prizes (1970).

On 24 July 1975, shortly after finishing third at the World Open, Rossolimo died of head injuries from a fall down a flight of stairs in New York. He was sixty-five. He was buried in a Russian Orthodox cemetery in New Jersey — the wanderer from Kiev, by way of Athens, Paris and Greenwich Village, finally at rest, having kept his promise to the end.