Chess Notes

Edward Winter

When contacting us by e-mail, correspondents are asked to include their name and full postal address and, when providing information, to quote exact book and magazine sources. The word ‘chess’ needs to appear in the subject-line or in the message itself.

5870. Game conclusion (C.N. 5851)

Black to move.

This position was featured in a Sherlock Holmes vignette ‘Chess in Fiction’ by Hotspur on pages 15-16 of the January 1964 BCM. In a cliff-ledge showdown, Moriarty played 36...fxg2 (‘Time to resign, I think, Mr Holmes.’), but ‘Holmes nonchalantly produced his hypodermic syringe and applied a shot of his favourite drug Morphy-A’ and played 37 Qe2+ Rxe2 38 Nb4+ cxb4 39 Ra5+. Moriarty then ‘made the only move open to him – over the cliff – board, men and Moriarty’. As Holmes later reflected, in the diagrammed position Black could have played 36...Re1+ 37 Qxe1 Bxb2+, with mate in two more moves.

5871. Hanham v Mackenzie

Marc Hébert (Charny, Canada) refers to the game given as ‘Captain Mackenzie-J.M. Hanham, London, 1886’ on page 57 of Adolf Albin in America by Olimpiu G. Urcan (Jefferson, 2008). Play began 1 e3 c5, and Mackenzie is said to have resigned after Black’s 33rd move.

We note that other publications, such as the June 1886 Chess Monthly, pages 296-297, correctly gave Mackenzie as Black. Mr Urcan’s source, page 2 of the New York Times, 15 July 1886, inverted the players’ names.

5872. Inscription to Wade

5873. Loomis

From Brian Ridgely (Raleigh, NC, USA):

‘The recent death of Henry Loomis, the former head of Voice of America, brought to mind his father, Alfred Loomis. The elder Loomis was one of America’s wealthiest men in the first half of the twentieth century and a key, if somewhat unsung, figure in the winning of World War II. He was also a chessplayer, and the following appeared on page 19 of Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant (New York, 2002):

“By age nine, he was a chess prodigy and [...] by age 13 he could play ‘mental chess’ without aid of a board or pieces and could play blindfolded, carrying on two games simultaneously.”

Other passages tell of Loomis playing blindfold (sometimes multiple games) well into adulthood. Is there any record of competitive play by him?’

5874. Tournaments (C.N. 5869)

From Robert John McCrary (Columbia, SC, USA):

‘The Oxford Companion entry on tournaments was taken from my research paper The Birth of the Chess Tournament, which is cited in the Companion entry (second edition) and has been published in full on pages 19-31 of my 1998 booklet The Hall-of-Fame History of US Chess. The paper includes much bibliographical material, including all of Walker’s early uses of “tournament” that I could find.

The word “tournament” appears to have been applied by Walker to the early Yorkshire meetings, which were not “tournaments” in the modern sense. They were more like “congresses” in the modern usage, with no apparent structure to the casual games played there.

The word caught on for general chess gatherings but does not seem to have been applied to “tournament” in the modern sense of structured competition until the 1849 event at the Divan in London. There is reason to assume, though it is hard to prove conclusively, that the term “tournament” in the modern sense then spread from chess to other games and sports. My review of other sporting literature has revealed no occurrences of “tournament” until a few years after London, 1851.

My paper also includes some references (very sketchy and lacking players’ names and other details) to true chess tournaments preceding 1849, which, ironically, were not called “tournaments”.’

Regarding our question in C.N. 5869 about Amsterdam, 1851 we note the publication Schaakpartijen, gespeeld in 1851, gedurende den wedstrijd van het genootschap Philidor, in Amsterdam (Wijk bij Duurstede, 1852).

5875. Chigorin

Olimpiu G. Urcan (Singapore) points out that the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France has a photograph of Chigorin which is likely to be new to readers.

5876. Burger book

From Michael Clapham (Ipswich, England):

‘The dust jacket of The Golden Dozen by Irving Chernev (Oxford, 1976) lists other “Oxford Chess Books”, and the first of these is Chess technique and Bobby Fischer by R.E. Burger. I know of no such work being published, but presumably it would have been the same as Burger’s The Chess of Bobby Fischer, which the Chilton Book Company, Radnor had brought out in 1975.’

Further to C.N.s 5471, 5475 and 5491, we add that in his Foreword to the US book (page viii) Frank Brady wrote:

‘In previous writings I have cited Fischer’s IQ as in the range of 180, a very high genius. My source of information is impeccable: a highly regarded political scientist who coincidentally happened to be working in the grade adviser’s office at Erasmus Hall – Bobby Fischer’s high school in Brooklyn – at the time Fischer was a student there. He had the opportunity to study Fischer’s personal records and there is no reason to believe his figure is inaccurate. Some critics have claimed that other teachers at Erasmus Hall at that time remember the figure to be much lower; but who the teachers are and what figures they remember have never been made clear.’

5877. Alapin’s place of birth

Simon Alapin

Georges Bertola (Bussigny-près-Lausanne, Switzerland) comments that whereas notable sources give S. Alapin’s place of birth as Vilnius there are also statements that he was born in St Petersburg. Instances of the latter version are on page 8 of the Dizionario enciclopedico degli scacchi by A. Chicco and G. Porreca (Milan, 1971) and page 206 of Traité-manuel des échecs by H. Delaire (Paris, 1911).

We note that St Petersburg was specified in the ten-line obituary of Alapin in the October 1923 BCM, page 374, on page 333 of Schachjahrbuch 1923 by L. Bachmann (Ansbach, 1924) and in a number of other publications of the time.

Going his own way, Byrne J. Horton referred to ‘the Czechoslovakian chessmaster S. Alapin’ on page 2 of his Dictionary of Modern Chess (New York, 1959).

5878. Capablanca article

Pages 318-349 of the November 2008 issue of the Moscow magazine Караван (Karavan) have an extensive article Капабланка: гений игры for which we supplied a number of photographs of Capablanca and his second wife. The other illustrations include, courtesy of the Agence France-Presse, a shot of Alekhine outside the Café de la Paix, Paris in 1927.

5879. Loomis (C.N. 5873)

Jerry Spinrad (Nashville, TN, USA) notes that page 10 of the New York Times of 4 March 1906 and page 8 of the New York Sun of the same date reported that A. Loomis had played in the annual Yale v Princeton match in New York. On board ten he defeated W.L. Richard.

We see that this is confirmed by a reference to A.L. Loomis as one of the Yale team on page 45 of the March 1906 American Chess Bulletin. The report states that the match took place at Professor Rice’s residence and that Capablanca was the adjudicator. The following page carried a photograph of the occasion. No identification of the participants was offered, but the Cuban is recognizable, seated on the left.

‘Participants in the Intercollegiate Match on ten boards, photographed in the library of the Villa Julia, New York, 3 March 1906’