Playing Style and Legacy
In his youth, Suttles was strongly influenced by Aron Nimzowitsch, and became well known due to his preference for hypermodern openings. He was perhaps the world's leading advocate of the Modern Defence from the mid-1960s, and showed that this line, a universal defence against any White opening move, was fully playable, which had not been the case before his time. The line was nicknamed the 'Rat', for the Black fianchettoed bishop which kept dodging around in its holes! 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 king-side fianchetto, development of knights to unusual squares, and sudden eruption of tactics – are well illustrated by the selection of games listed below, which are all characteristic of Suttles at his best.
Suttles was the leader in a group of strong young British Columbia masters, mentored by the veteran Macskasy. The players competed hard head-to-head, but also worked together, learned from each other, and employed original playing styles to largely dominate Canadian chess for the better part of a decade. Other members of this group from the late 1960s included Peter Biyiasas, Bruce Harper, Jonathan Berry, and Robert Zuk.
In the book The World of Chess (1974), authors Anthony Saidy and Norman Lessing described Suttles as the 'most original strategist since Nimzowitsch'.
A significant project, entitled Chess on the Edge, includes the largest annotated collection of his games, more than 600 in all. Simultaneous publication of the three volumes took place in March, 2008, with the publisher being the Chess'n Math Association. FM Bruce Harper, one of Suttles' students, led the effort, with assistance from GM Yasser Seirawan, Dutch IM Gerard Welling, and GMC Jonathan Berry.
Read more about this topic: Duncan Suttles
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