Benko Pal (15.07.1928-26.08.2019)

U.S. Grandmaster (1958) born in France but raised in Hungary. Endgame artist, theoretician and author. By the age 20, he was Hungarian Champion; but at age 23, he was a Soviet camp inmate because he had been caught trying to escape to the West. To complicate his life further, the Secret Police once suspected he was a spy until he convinced them, with some difficulty, that the code on his correspondence was only chess notation. He was permitted to play first board on Hungary’s team in the 1957 Student Olympiad in Iceland where he defected to the United States.

Benko has been a candidate for the World Championship twice, a level attained by only a few Americans. He has finished top of eight U.S. Open, and has compiled an outstanding record in chess Olympiads as a player and as a team captain.

Benko has taught thousands of players both in person and through his columns. His Chess Life column Endgame lab and Benko’s Bafflers were popular columns in the US Chess Life magazine and in the world, and the Benko Gambit is one of the few distinct opening systems to be named after a modern player.

Peak rating: 2495 in 1979.

Benko is considered a world-class composer of two very different types of endgame compositions: Chess problems and Studies. He has also written a number of well-received books, including Winning With Chess Psychology (with Burt Hochberg) and The Benko Gambit. Benko was inducted into the Chess Hall of Fame in 1993.

Benko was the author of over 36 popular books, including: How to Reassess Your Chess, The Amateur’s Mind, The Complete Book of Chess Strategy, The Reassess Your Chess Workbook, Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy (winner of the 1999 British Chess Federation Book of the Year Award) and Chess Strategy in Action (2003)and Pal Benko, My life, Games and Compositions (2004) and Pal Benko’s Endgame Laboratory (2007).