Klaus Darga
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Grandmaster chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
player.
In 1951 Darga became German Junior Champion after winning the national under-20 championship. He also proved his strength as a young chessplayer by sharing first place in the World Junior Championship
World Junior Chess Championship
The World Junior Chess Championship is an under-20 chess tournament organized by the World Chess Federation ....
of 1953, with Oscar Panno
Oscar Panno
Oscar R. Panno is an Argentine chess Grandmaster.Panno won the World Junior Chess Championship in 1953, and also won the championship of Argentina the same year....
of Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. His best performance is held to be the 1967 Winnipeg tournament, where he also tied for first place with Bent Larsen
Bent Larsen
Jørgen Bent Larsen was a Danish chess Grandmaster and author. Larsen was known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play and he was the first western player to pose a serious challenge to the Soviet Union's dominance of chess...
of Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
.
He was awarded the title of International Master in 1957, and Grandmaster in 1964. He played for Germany in ten Chess Olympiads between 1954 and 1978, and also served as coach
Coach (sport)
In sports, a coach is an individual involved in the direction, instruction and training of the operations of a sports team or of individual sportspeople.-Staff:...
of the German national chess team. He was second reserve for the World team in the 1970 Match of the Century between the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and the rest of the world, but did not play any actual games in the match.
His favourite openings as White were the English Opening
English Opening
In chess, the English Opening is the opening where White begins:A flank opening, it is the fourth most popular and, according to various databases, anywhere from one of the two most successful to the fourth most successful of White's twenty possible first moves. White begins the fight for the...
and the Ruy Lopez
Ruy Lopez
The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening or Spanish Game, is a chess opening characterised by the moves:-History:The opening is named after the 16th century Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, who made a systematic study of this and other openings in the 150-page book on chess Libro del...
. As Black he often played the Sicilian Defence
Sicilian Defence
The Sicilian Defence is a chess opening that begins with the moves:The Sicilian is the most popular and best-scoring response to White's first move 1.e4...
.
Notable chess games
'Post-Chess' Career
Klaus retired as a chess professional and became a computer programmer for IBMIBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
.