Markovich,

Thanks for sharing your memories of "the Old Man".  It is players like these, more than the greats that one reads about, who embody the beauty and humanity of chess.  

Here's to all the artisans of chess who have inhabited and animated chess clubs with their skill and individuality.  As one of my favorite poets has said, 


There should be monuments, there should be odes
to the nameless heroes...

....
Where should we be but for them?
Feral still, un-housetrained, still

wandering through forests without 
consonants to our names, 

slaves of Dame Kind, lacking 
all notion of a city

and, at this noon, for this death, 
there would be no agents.

~W.H. Auden

I post in affectionate remembrance of Vadim Voskresensky, a very old man by the 1960's, when I knew him as a powerful opponent at the Columbus, Ohio YMCA Chess Club; and his system.  Vadim always began 1. e4, and against most responses, played 2. c4, following soon with d3 and f3, thus establishing a sort of left-handed stonewall.  I forget precisely how he deployed his pieces within this framework, but it often happened that a knight would go to f2.  His play of this system was by no means casual, and it was clear that he had a whole theory worked out.  There was a lot of talk in the club about how best to play against "the Old Man."   

Several times I tried Alekine's, and each time I fell to Voskresensky's vicious Four Pawns Attack.  I don't remember what he played against 1. e4, but against the closed systems, he played the Tarrasch.  He maintained a place near the top of the club ladder. I am rather sure he had played at master strength, or better, when he was younger, but his ELO when I knew him was perhaps 2000.

He spoke very little English and was hard of hearing as well, so communication with him was pretty well limited to the moves themselves.  If he wanted to make a point in the postmortem, he would mostly just indicate his ideas by shifting pieces on the board.  It was said that Voskresensky was a Pole, but from his name, I think he was probably a Russian.

Voskresensky's face was deeply lined, but during a game of chess, my deepest impression was of his sparkling, black eyes, his wry expression, and the great alacrity with which he moved. As a young and improving player, I mostly lost to him, and I considered it a sign of great progress when I was finally able to beat him.

Vadim Voskresensky died, as I recall, around 1965 or 1966.  Chess in this town was the worse for it.