Duncan Suttles (born 21 December 1945) is a Canadian chess grandmaster.[1] Canada's second grandmaster after Abe Yanofsky, Suttles was recognized internationally for the originality of his strategic play in the mid-1960s and 70s. He retired from competitive chess in 1985.[2][3]
Early years
Born in San Francisco, Suttles moved to Canada at age 8 when his father began teaching at the University of British Columbia. Mentored by Elod Macskasy, he was of national master strength by his mid-teens, which was unusual for Canadian chess at that time.[4]
Suttles was 15 when made his first appearance in the Closed Canadian Chess Championship at Brockville, 1961, scoring 3/11.[5] Suttles won the British Columbia Championship in 1963 and 1966.[6] In his second Closed, he scored 8½ from 15 games at Winnipeg 1963, finishing just above the middle of the strongest and youngest field yet seen in a Canadian final. Suttles tied for 3rd–5th places in the 1964 Canadian Open Chess Championship in Toronto, and as the top junior, qualified for the 1965 World Junior Chess Championship.[7] He took part in the Gijon International Chess Tournament (1965), placing 2nd behind Luis Bronstein.[8] At home in Vancouver for the 1965 Canadian Championship, Suttles scored 8/11, finishing second behind eight-time champion Abe Yanofsky. As a dual citizen (he became a Canadian citizen in 1966), Suttles was also eligible for the US Championship in New York City in 1965–66, where he finished last with 2½/11; Bobby Fischer won.[9]
Suttles attended the University of British Columbia and represented the school in inter-university chess competition.[10] He earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics and began to study for a doctorate, but eventually quit the program to work in private industry.[11] He married his wife Dobrila in 1968.
At 18, Suttles was chosen for the Canadian Olympiad team in Tel Aviv, 1964, the first of his eight appearances, including six in a row over a period of 20 years.[18] He frequently played a large number of games in these team events, near the maximum. His totals for Canada in the Olympiads were +49 −30 =43, for 57.8 percent. He also played Board 1 on the Canadian team at the 1971 Student Olympiad that won the bronze medal.[19]
Suttles was already of grandmaster strength by 1968, and in fact qualified for the grandmaster title at the Lugano Olympiad. However, he was denied the title on the basis of a technicality, namely that he had played (and won) one more than the required number of games in the event.[20][21] Instead, Suttles settled for the International Master title earned at the Sousse Interzonal in 1967. He finally achieved the grandmaster title at the San Antonio tournament of 1972, gaining the last half-point needed by drawing his game against the former world champion, Tigran Petrosian.[21]
He won the International Open at the Vancouver International Chess Congress in 1981, defeating Tony Miles and Yasser Seirawan in the final two rounds.[25] The 1984 Vancouver Futurity marked Suttles's final Canadian event.[7]
While taking a break from over-the-board chess, Suttles won a major international correspondence chess tournament, the Heilimo Memorial, played from 1978–1981. Awarded the title of International Grandmaster of Correspondence Chess in 1982, he is one of the few players in chess history to hold both over-the-board and correspondence GM titles.[7]
In his youth, Suttles was strongly influenced by Aron Nimzowitsch, and became, like Nimzowitsch, well-known for his unorthodox treatment of hypermodern openings.
Suttles championed the Modern Defence from the mid-1960s, showing that the line, which had previously been regarded with skepticism, was a fully playable universal defence against any White opening move. The line was dubbed The Rat, after the Black fianchettoed bishop which kept dodging around in its holes.[26]
As White, Suttles favoured 1.e4, with a predilection for the Closed Variation against the Sicilian Defence, and the baroque Vienna Game after 1.e4 e5. He occasionally played the English Opening (1.c4) as well. By the early 1970s, he was frequently opening with 1.g3 as White, aiming for a reversed Modern Defence, another new opening idea. His unique skills – such as the avoidance of main opening lines, use of a defensive kingside fianchetto, development of knights to unusual squares, and sudden eruption of tactics – are illustrated in the games listed below.
Suttles was the leader in the group of young masters mentored by Macskasy.[27][28] The players fought each other over-the-board, but they also collaborated and learned from each other, and employed original playing styles to largely dominate Canadian chess for the better part of a decade. Other group members from the late 1960s were Peter Biyiasas, Bruce Harper, Jonathan Berry, and Robert Zuk.
Suttles' originality gained the attention of the chess world, but it also sparked some degree of incomprehension.[29]Robert Byrne, chess columnist for the New York Times, wrote:
The taciturn Suttles is notorious for the most eccentric style in current chess – what might be called "outlandish hypermodernism." Not only does he develop his bishops on the wings, he also frequently sends his knights to the edges of the board too. If one can speak of antecedents for Suttles, it would have to be the crotchety British master Henry E. Bird or the defiant Wilhelm Steinitz at his most bizarre.[30]
It is getting more and more difficult to find new ideas in theory, and for this reason one must admire those masters who are able to direct the game according to their original imagination and avoid the commonplace. One of these masters is Suttles, who has been called the Canadian Nimzovich. His wife Dobrila tells me that Duncan has no chess books at home, but this does not mean that he is unprepared for his opponents. He takes the time before each game to go over his systems.[24]
Raymond Keene and George Botterill discussed Suttles' games and the strategy of the Rat in their book-length study, The Modern Defence (1972).[26]
The World of Chess (1974), by Anthony Saidy and Norman Lessing, said that Suttles was the "most original strategist since Nimzowitsch."[31]
"Suttles' style is unusual and he specializes in irregular openings," according to The Batsford Encyclopedia of Chess. "His positions look awkward but his play is sound and he is remarkably good at finding ingenious defences in what seem to be hopeless positions."[32]
The largest annotated collection of Suttles' games (more than 600 in all) is Chess on the Edge. Published in three volumes in 2008, the effort was led by Bruce Harper with assistance from Yasser Seirawan, Gerard Welling, and Jonathan Berry.[33]
