Liu Wenzhe (; October 7, 1940 – September 20, 2011) was an

International Master FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

player. He was one of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

's top chess trainers. Liu Wenzhe played for

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

chess club A chess club is a club formed for the purpose of playing the board game of chess. Chess clubs often provide for both informal and tournament games and sometimes offer league play. Traditionally clubs host over the board, face to face chess more t ...

in the

China Chess League The China Chess League (CCL) () is a Chinese professional league for chess clubs. The league is organized by the Chinese Chess Association. It is sponsored by Youngor Group and was sponsored by the Shandongbr>Torch Real Estate Group(2005–2009 ...

(CCL).

Chess career

He was the first Chinese player to defeat a grandmaster (

Nikolai Krogius Nikolai Vladimirovich Krogius (; 22 July 1930 – 14 July 2022) was a Russian chess Grandmaster, International Arbiter (1985), psychologist, chess coach, chess administrator, and author. He won several tournament titles at Sochi and in Easte ...

in 1965) and the first to be awarded the title of

. He is considered a pioneer of chess in China and a founding father of the Chinese School of Chess. He won the

Chinese Chess Championship The Chinese Chess Championship is the annual individual national chess championship of China. Following are the official winners of the national championship from 1957 to date. Winners : Women's Crosstables : Average Elo: 2324 Cat: 3 m = 6 ...

in 1980 and 1982. Two years after the end of the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...

and

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

's death and the fall of the

Gang of Four The Gang of Four () was a Maoist political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and were later charged with a series of treasonous crimes. The gang ...

in 1976, China competed in their first Olympiad in Buenos Aires. It was there that Liu Wenzhe defeated grandmaster

Jan Hein Donner Johannes Hendrikus (Hein) Donner (July 6, 1927 – November 27, 1988) was a Dutch chess grandmaster (GM) and writer. Donner was born in The Hague and won the Dutch Championship in 1954, 1957, and 1958. He took part in the Internacional Chess Tou ...

of the Netherlands in crushing style after only 20 moves. It remains his best known game:

Liu Wenzhe—Donner, Buenos Aires Olympiad, 1978.
Pirc Defence The Pirc Defence (pronounced ) is a chess opening characterised by the response of Black to 1.e4 with 1...d6 and 2...Nf6, followed by ...g6 and ...Bg7, while allowing White to establish a with pawns on d4 and e4. It is named after the Slovenian ...
( ECO B07)
1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Be2 Bg7 5.g4 h6 6.h3 c5 7.d5 O-O? 8.h4 e6 9.g5 hxg5 10.hxg5 Ne8 11.Qd3 exd5 12.Nxd5 Nc6 13.Qg3 Be6 14.Qh4 f5 15.Qh7+ Kf7 ''(diagram)'' 16.Qxg6+! Kxg6 17.Bh5+ Kh7 18.Bf7+ Bh6 19.g6+ Kg7 20.Bxh6+ 1-0

In total, Liu made three appearances at the

Chess Olympiad The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 and ...

s (1978–1982) with an overall record of 37 games played (+14, =4, -19). He also made four appearances in total at the Men's Asian Team Chess Championship (1979–1981, 1991–1993) with an overall record of 17 games played (+10, =4, -3). In 1986 he was appointed to the post of Chief Trainer of the Chinese Institute of Chess and head coach of the Chinese national chess team. He was succeeded by

Ye Jiangchuan Ye Jiangchuan (born November 20, 1960) is a Chinese chess player. He is the second Chinese player, after Ye Rongguang, to achieve the title of Grandmaster, which FIDE awarded him in 1993. On 1 January 2000, he became the first ever Chinese pl ...

in 2000. In 2002-3, he wrote a seminal book on the " Chinese School of Chess" called the same name (see Further reading). In the book he charts the dramatic progress of Chinese players over the past 25 years.

Quotes

"Systematically training players is more important than selecting them."—Liu Wenzhe, head coach, women's Chinese Olympic team.Chessville Reviews – Chess Bitch – by Jennifer Shahade – Reviewed by Michael Jeffreys
/ref>

References

External links

* *

Chessmetrics Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo rating system. Implementation Chessmetrics is a weighted average of past performance. The score considers a player's win percen ...

br>Career Ratings for Liu Wenzhe
{{DEFAULTSORT:Liu, Wenzhe 1940 births 2011 deaths Chess International Masters Chess coaches Chess players from Harbin

Chess career

Quotes

See also

References

Further reading

External links