Chess Guru Checks on Ex-Students

Chess grandmaster Eduard Gufeld doesn’t know whom to root for as he hunches over a plastic game board on a kitchen table in Hollywood, carefully following each move being played out at a world chess championship 3,500 miles away.

And it is not just because the first eight games between defending champ Garry Kasparov of Russia and challenger Viswanathan Anand of India ended in frustrating draws.

It is because the effusive Gufeld helped teach both Kasparov and Anand how to play chess.

Gufeld, 59, is a veteran Russian chess coach who found himself giving Kasparov and Anand personal lessons when the two were teen-agers living a world apart.

These days the grandmaster is staying at his sister’s La Brea Avenue apartment during a Los Angeles visit. He is monitoring the Professional Chess Assn. championship in New York with the help of local chess enthusiasts who follow the action through the Internet.

The term action is a misnomer in chess, of course.

The best-of-20-games championship started Sept. 11, runs through Oct. 13 and allows each game to last as long as seven hours. Along with the eight draws, Kasparov and Anand have each won once; game 11 will be played this afternoon.

So who at the halfway point seems likely to win?

In Gufeld’s view, the first one to forget what his teacher taught him will be the one who gets rooked out of the $1-million championship prize.

Teacher’s advice sounds downright simple when Gufeld recounts it: Both players should keep focused on playing an aggressive, adventuresome game that will keep the opponent off balance.

“Anand should make surprises for Garry. Novelty is the weapon to use against him,” Gufeld explained. “Garry must play everything different. He must vary his openings--use more novelties against Anand.”

Kasparov, 32, is considered by some to be the strongest player in the history of chess. Anand, 25, has been described as “the quickest” grandmaster playing today.

Gufeld goes back nearly 20 years with Kasparov and more than 10 with Anand.

He was coaching a Soviet girls chess team in 1976 when he half-kiddingly proposed a match between one of his charges and Kasparov--then a 13-year-old boys champion. In the process, Gufeld offered him pointers on the game.

“I’ve taught him many things--strategy, attack and counterattack, not be defensive,” he said of Kasparov. “He doesn’t play symmetrical openings; his are like mine. We are very similar.”

Gufeld gave Anand an unforgettable 120-minute lesson late one night in India in 1985.

Gufeld had come to help teach Indian chess team players. But before he could start, he was buttonholed by Anand’s mother, who wanted some quick pointers for her son before he departed for an Asian juniors tourney.

“I didn’t unpack my bags,” Gufeld said. “I gave him a lesson. And look what happened to Anand after just two hours of my lesson. I joke, of course.”

Gufeld isn’t joking when he talks of his passion for the game, though. And by the way, please don’t call it a game in front him.

“For me, it’s an art. It’s science. A game is dominoes,” he said. “And it’s not just chess playing . To me, chess is absolute life. People who understand chess know what I’m saying. People who don’t, smile when they hear that.”

His enthusiasm--along with his aggressive playing style--has made Gufeld famous throughout the chess world, according to Jack Peters, chess columnist for The Times. Locally, Gufeld is meeting with players at the Chess Palace in Long Beach, Peters said.

“He’s helping me learn not only the sport, but the art and science of chess too,” said David Saville, a Santa Monica convenience store owner who is learning from Gufeld. Just like Kasparov and Anand.