Chess: How does White win?

LEV POLUGAEVSKY (1934-95) was a truly great player, worthy of commemorating with a chess tournament or two. But both in the recent Russian event won last month in Samara by Semen Dvoirys and in the famous Buenos Aires Sicilian Defence theme tournament of 1994, held a year or so before his death, no-one paid the man the ultimate tribute by playing his signature variation.

Before becoming professional, Polugaevsky was an engineer who used would fill thick notebooks packed to the gunwales with highly-original chess analysis. Those notebooks became famous when Polugaevsky's remarkable theoretical novelties began to score him a series of stunning victories in the very strong Soviet championships.

He developed his own razor-sharp system known as the Polugaevsky Variation of the Sicilian Najdorf with 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6 6 Bg5 e6 7 f4 b5!? that became something of an obsession for him. His must-read 1977 classic, Grandmaster Preparation, is hailed by everyone as a testament to the pioneering research gleaned from those legendary notebooks on how the author developed and refined his variation through years of exhaustive trial and error.

Polugaevsky was one of the world's best players from the late 1960s until the early 1980s, playing two epic candidates' matches with Viktor Korchnoi, one in 1977 and another in 1980. He lost both, but you really should look again at the games from those matches for the two chess legends threw everything at each other.

I Kovalenko - S Dvoirys

Lev Polugaevsky Memorial, (6)

Queen's Indian Defence

1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nf3 b6 4 g3 Ba6 5 b3 d5 6 Bg2 dxc4 7 Ne5 Bb4+ 8 Kf1 Bd6 9 Nxc4 Nd5 10 e4 Nf6 11 f4 Be7 12 Kf2 Bb7 13 Re1 c5 14 d5 exd5 15 exd5 Bxd5 16 Nd6+ Qxd6 17 Nc3 Na6! 18 Nxd5 Rd8 19 Qe2 Nxd5 20 Bxd5 0–0 21 Bxf7+ Rxf7 22 Qxa6 Bf6 23 Rb1 Bc3 24 Re4 Qd1 25 Qe2 Qh1 26 Ke3 Rfd7 27 Qc4+ Kh8 28 Qxc3 Qf1 0–1