Jan Hein Donner

Johannes Hendrikus "Jan Hein" Donner (July 6, 1927 – November 27, 1988) was a Dutch chess grandmaster (GM) and writer. Donner was born in The Hague and won the Dutch Championship three times: 1954, 1957, and 1958. He earned the GM title in 1959. Donner was also a chess columnist and writer. He was the uncle of former Dutch justice minister, Piet Hein Donner.

Quotes

*“I love all positions. Give me a difficult positional game, I will play it. Give me a bad position, I will defend it. Openings, endgames, complicated positions, dull draws, I love them and I will do my very best. But totally won positions, I cannot stand them.” — Hein Donner

*(On playing the Black pieces against the move 1.e4) "I don't like this move. And they know it." - Hein Donner. "The Master Game" BBC2

*"The game of chess has never been held in great esteem by the North Americans. Their culture is steeped in deeply anti-intellectual tendencies. They pride themselves in having created the game of poker. It is their national game, springing from a tradition of westward expansion, of gun-slinging skirt chasers who slept with cows and horses. They distrust chess as a game of Central European immigrants with a homesick longing for clandestine conspiracies in quiet coffee houses. Their deepest conviction is that bluff and escalation will achieve more than scheming and patience (witness their foreign policy)." - Hein Donner.

*"How could a Western Grandmaster lose to a Chinaman?" (after becoming the first grandmaster to lose to a Chinese player: Liu Wenzhe (2200) - Donner,J (2490), Buenos Aires, 1978: 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Be2 Bg7 5.g4 h6 6.h3 c5 7.d5 0-0 8.h4 e6 9.g5 hxg5 10.hxg5 Ne8 11.Qd3 exd5 12.Nxd5 Nc6 13.Qg3 Be6 14.Qh4 f5 15.Qh7+ Kf7 16.Qxg6+ Kxg6 17.Bh5+ Kh7 18.Bf7+ Bh6 19.g6+ Kg7 20.Bxh6+ 1-0). [ [http://home.hccnet.nl/jhw.heesen/#donner Jan Hein Donner] ]

Trivia

The character Onno Quist in the novel (and film) The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch is based on Hein Donner.

References

External links

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* [http://www.olimpbase.org/players/z7f3znjb.html OlimpBase]
* [http://www.chessworld.net/chessclubs/statistics_pgn_rating_chart.asp?username=Donner,Jan%20Hein Statistics at ChessWorld.net]