Mihai Suba

[LawrenceCooper]

Seems to have no games prior to 1990 when he had already turned 40, slightly curious.

I found them dating back to 1972 so possibly an issue with how his name was input in the early days.

[Jonathan Rogers]

I think that Suba had the better of the draw with Kasparov in the 1986 Olympiad, rather than the 1984 one; I even vaguely recall that this game discouraged Kasparov from repeating the line, which had given him a smooth win over Karpov in the first game of the 1985 rematch.

I also think that he beat Tony Miles with Black in the 1984 Olympiad (and then some - but Miles was prone to the odd disaster as White, just as Suba could play brilliantly with Black).

I did buy his book Dynamic Chess Strategy where he suggested that the Romanian team had to restrain itself from doing too well in Olympiads, because if they did, they would only come under extra pressure to maintain it. Doing well enough in a repeatable sort of way was thus the aim.

He played at Lloyds Bank in 1988, and early on he played our very own Loz. I remember this because Nigel Davies was asked to give one of his idiosyncratic coaching sessions to a number of juniors on the morning of that day, and he told Loz that Suba's understanding of chess out of his league, and so on and so forth. I think that Loz drew quite easily, though of course it later turned out that Suba would have had other things on his mind.

I played some blitz with him during the British of 1990! He would play with anyone - a real chess lover. I actually did OK, and he did not seem to mind a bit, both of which came as a pleasant surprise.

[LawrenceCooper]

He played at Lloyds Bank in 1988, and early on he played our very own Loz. I remember this because Nigel Davies was asked to give one of his idiosyncratic coaching sessions to a number of juniors on the morning of that day, and he told Loz that Suba's understanding of chess out of his league, and so on and so forth. I think that Loz drew quite easily, though of course it later turned out that Suba would have had other things on his mind.

Yes it was one of my fairly typical games of that era where I was white against a higher rated player and hoovered all the pieces off the board. We also shared a win each with him winning a hard fought game as white at the Goodyear Open in 1991 where him and Mickey Adams were vying for the Grand Prix. I managed to equalise our score at Benasque in 1996 where his attempts to steer the game away from a draw cost him material.

[Matt Mackenzie]

He played at Lloyds Bank in 1988

What was when he defected, wasn't it? It made some newspaper front pages ISTR.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Yes.

[John Upham]

GM Mihai Șubă (1 vi 1947):

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[John Upham]

and

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