11037. Castling
twice
Sheffield Daily
Telegraph, 15 June 1928, page 5
Following on from the reference to C.R. Gurnhill in
C.N. 11036, below is a game in which, playing Black
against D.G. Ellison, he castled twice:
1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 exd4 4 c3 dxc3 5 Bc4 Be7 6 Nxc3
Nf6 7 e5 Ng4 8 Qd5
8...O-O 9 h3 Nh6 10 Bxh6 gxh6 11 Qe4 Kg7 12 Bd3 Rh8 13
Qg4+ Kf8 14 Qh5 Bg5 15 h4 Be7 16 Qxh6+ Ke8 17 Qg7 Rf8 18
Bxh7 d5 19 O-O-O Be6 20 Be4 Nxe5 21 Nxe5 Bf6 22 Qg3 c6
23 f4 Qa5 24 Bc2
24...O-O-O
The illegality of this move was indicated by a
looker-on, and Black therefore played 24...Rd8. The game
ended 25 Bb3 Bf5 26 Rhe1 Be7 27 Qe3 Be6 28 f5 d4 29 Rxd4
Rxd4 30 Qxd4 Bxb3 31 Qd7 mate.
The occasion was the Major Open of the British Chess
Federation Congress in Sunderland in August 1966, as
reported on pages 285-286 of the October 1966 BCM:
When the topic of double castling arises, the game
commonly referred to is W. Heidenfeld v N. Kerins,
Dublin, 1973. On page 70 of Chess Curiosities
(London, 1985) Tim Krabbé quoted from a report by P.
Cassidy on page 236 of the June 1973 BCM (which
stated that the game had been played ‘in this year’s
Armstrong Cup’) but could not present the game-score. It
was published on page 76 of the February 1988 BCM
when J. Walsh submitted it to K. Whyld’s Quotes and
Queries column. The source was vague: ‘from a recent
issue of the Irish Chess Journal’. The full
score:
1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Be3 Nf6 4 e5 Nfd7 5 f4 c5 6 c3 Nc6 7
Nf3 Qb6 8 Qd2 c4 9 Be2 Na5
10 O-O f5 11 Ng5 Be7 12 g4 Bxg5 13 fxg5 Nf8 14 gxf5
exf5 15 Bf3 Be6 16 Qg2 O-O-O 17 Na3 Ng6 18 Qd2 f4 19 Bf2
Bh3 20 Rfb1 Bf5 21 Nc2 h6 22 gxh6 Rxh6 23 Nb4 Qe6 24 Qe2
Ne7 25 b3 Qg6+ 26 Kf1 Bxb1 27 bxc4 dxc4 28 Qb2 Bd3+ 29
Ke1 Be4 30 Qe2 Bxf3 31 Qxf3 Rxh2 32 d5 Qf5
33 O-O-O Rh3 34 Qe2 Rxc3+ 35 Kb2 Rh3 36 d6 Nec6 37 Nxc6
Nxc6 38 e6 Qe5+ 39 Qxe5 Nxe5 40 d7+ Nxd7 41 White
resigns.
The game is on pages 41-42 of Startling Castling!
by Robert Timmer (London, 1997), followed by this
comment:
Below is that Fox/James item (CHESS, December
1993, page 53), after the game Heidenfeld v ‘Kerine’ had
been given.
No mention was made of a paragraph by K. Whyld on page
171 of the April 1988 BCM, also after a
reference to Heidenfeld v Kerins:
In that snippet too the reader was given no source for
the statements.
We can, though, show what appeared on page 131 of CHESS,
June 1954:
The reference to Meek may surprise anyone consulting Chess
Personalia by Jeremy Gaige (Jefferson, 1987) and
finding his year of birth given as 1865. However, Meek
was not aged nearly 90 at the time of the Newquay
tournament. As reported in C.N. 4836, the
privately-circulated 1994 edition of Chess
Personalia had a corrected, expanded entry:
Page 35 of the British Chess Federation Year Book
1954-1955 (London, 1955) confirms that Meek died
‘at the age of 69’.
11038. The
catastrophe of chess play
On page 10 of the January 1960 BCM (Quotes and
Queries item 1614) D.J. Morgan wrote:
‘It was Adolf Bayersdorfer (184[2]-1901) who called
the chess problem “the catastrophe of chess play
concentrated in a few moves”.’
No source was given, and the closest citation that we
can offer is from page 37 of the Bayersdorfer book Zur
Kenntnis des Schachproblems (Potsdam, 1902):
The indented quote is thus a remark by Bayersdorfer as
recorded by the book’s editors, J. Kohtz and C.
Kockelkorn.
A photograph of Bayersdorfer, the book’s frontispiece,
is in C.N. 7620.
11039.
Purdy on Capablanca
From page 184 of the Australasian Chess Review,
9 July 1936, in a report written during the Moscow, 1936
tournament:
‘Among the great, Capablanca can be great, because he
does not have to play to avoid draws. He has not
Alekhine’s gift for beating inferior players, but when
all the competitors are of his own class, he can give
free rein to his natural style – classical
simplicity.’
11040.
The Bordell case
With regard to the Bordell
case, documentation is still sought to show how
the Spanish press covered the non-participation of Román
Bordell Rosell in Hastings, 1953-54.
11041.
Heidenfeld v Kerins (C.N. 11037)
David McAlister (Stirling, Scotland) provides page 10
of the first issue (November-December 1987) of the Irish
Chess Journal:
11042.
Mecking
Henrique Mecking’s opponent will be the subject of a
C.N. item shortly.
11043. Moshe
Czerniak
The photograph in the previous item comes from page 107
of The Children’s Book of Chess by Ted
Nottingham and Bob Wade (London, 1978 and New York,
1979), which had the caption ‘Mecking at Hastings,
England’.
His opponent was not named, but we identify him as
Moshe Czerniak. At the Hastings tournament on 5 January
1967, Mecking won their game (playing Black), as
reported on pages 39-40 of the February 1967 BCM.
A book by Czerniak, ‘The History of Chess’ (Tel Aviv,
1963), has been mentioned to us by Moshe Rubin
(Jerusalem). It includes many reminiscences, and our
correspondent has forwarded a file comprising
the original Hebrew text of these vignettes, alongside
his translation into English. See too C.N. 4143.
An occasional inaccuracy by Czerniak will be noted
(such as Rubinstein’s year of death). One remark is
worth considering in conjunction with C.N. 11039:
‘In 1939 Capablanca admitted to me that “for some
reason” it was difficult for him to beat even quite
weak opponents (he was referring to average-strength
masters) ...’
11044. An
old ending
Danny Ross Lunsford (Atlanta, GA, USA) asks for
information about the ending shown in C.N. 9421:
It is a composition by Ponziani and can be found in
various editions of his work Il giuoco incomparabile
degli scacchi. Google
Books is invaluable for providing them, and below
is the ending as given on pages 207-208 of the second
edition (Modena, 1782):
11045. Possible
Fischer events (C.N. 10989)
C.N. 10989 showed this report:
An addition from page 157 of CHESS, March 1973:
Leonard Barden (London) informs us:
‘I was contacted in early 1973 by Clarks Shoes,
who wanted to sponsor a chess event involving Bobby
Fischer. Since the maximum budget (probably £10,000,
but I do not recall exactly now) was unrealistically
low, I suggested Spassky instead, but the company
was adamant that only Fischer would be acceptable.
After consultation with Stewart Reuben, I
contacted Stanley Rader with a proposal for a
two-game match between Fischer and the then England
No. 1, William Hartston, with games in London and
York, plus a clock simultaneous display against
eight English juniors.
I had zero expectation that this offer would be
accepted. My hope was that the match format would be
quickly rejected (“Two games? You gotta be
joking!”), but that Fischer would be interested in
the simultaneous exhibition with clocks.
My main basis for optimism was that in July 1972,
after Fischer accepted Jim Slater’s offer to double
the prize fund at Reykjavik, his then lawyer Paul
Marshall told me that Fischer was very grateful and
that as a thank-you would play in England in his
first event after he won the title. Of course, I
told that to Stanley Rader. My hope also was that a
clock simultaneous exhibition against eight
opponents, two of whom would be girls, would sound
sufficiently lightweight for Fischer to accept as an
easy way of keeping his promise to Slater.
The small print, and the reason I took the trouble
to be involved in such a time-consuming episode, was
that the England junior team would have been Tony
Miles, Michael Stean, John Nunn, Jonathan Mestel and
Jonathan Speelman, all future strong
grandmasters, plus one other undecided name
(probably David Goodman). The girls would have been
Sheila Jackson and Susan Caldwell, the obvious
choices at that time.
I was also ready, if it clinched the event, to
reduce the numbers to just the five players who I
was sure had world-class potential.
There was no reply from the United States for
several weeks, and Clarks Shoes became fidgety, so I
telephoned Stanley Rader’s office and repeated the
proposal, emphasizing that there was room for
negotiation and that the event was possible as just
a five-board simultaneous exhibition. Rader told me
that Fischer was physically present in his office,
and put me on hold while they spoke. Fischer knew me
well from our BBC consultation game and his 1960
visit to my home, but would not speak directly to
me. Rader told me that Fischer was undecided and
that they would let me know later. After a couple of
weeks a final negative reply came. At some stage,
possibly after the breakdown of negotiations, a
story about the abortive match appeared in the Daily
Telegraph mentioning Clarks Shoes as the would-be
sponsor. Clarks paid me just £100 for my work in
trying to arrange the event, so received excellent
value for that outlay in the subsequent publicity.’
11046.
Chess is what you see
C.N.s 7122 and 7216 showed publications which
attributed to Pillsbury the remark ‘Chess is what you
see’.
The first C.N. item quoted from page 8 of the New
Orleans Times-Democrat, 26 December 1897, and
below is a slightly earlier specimen, in a letter from
H.C. White on page 6 of the New York Sun, 12
December 1897:
A twinned version of the remarks on chess and checkers,
without mention of Pillsbury by name, was in William
Timothy Call’s Preface to his work Ellsworth’s
Checker Book (New York, 1899), page 5:
‘Quoting a great chess master, who is also a checker
expert, he [Charles Ellsworth] would say: “Chess is
what you see; checkers is what you know”.’
On the Internet it is possible to find such an
observation attributed, sourcelessly, to Pillsbury with
a third Lego block:
‘Chess is what you see, Checkers is what you know.
There is enough in either game to last a man a
lifetime.’
Regarding the ‘lifetime’ remark, we note the following
on page 15 of R.D. Yates Checker Player by W.T.
Call (New York, 1905):
11047.
Another Pillsbury problem (C.N.s 702, 3751 & 9458)
From page 224 of Womanhood, 1903:
Mate in three
The heading was ‘Specially composed for Womanhood
by H.N. Pillsbury’. The following issue (page 296) noted
that there were two solutions.
11048. Good and
bad bishops (C.N.s 7769 & 10844)
Gerd Entrup (Herne, Germany) notes references to ‘good’
and ‘bad’ bishops in the feature ‘Lehrreiche
Endspiele’ on pages
330-332 of the November 1933 Wiener
Schachzeitung. The initial comments on the two
endgames (Löwig v Klein and Tot v Schreiber) are,
respectively:
‘Schwarz besitzt den guten Läufer (der dieselbe
Felderfarbe hat wie die feindlichen Bauern) und ist
in der Lage, die Überlegenheit des Lg8 über den Lc4
(den schlechten Läufer mit derselben Felderfarbe wie
die eigenen Bauern) entscheidend zur Geltung zu
bringen.’
‘Auch dieses Endspiel geht für den schlechten,
durch seine eigenen Bauern gehemmten Läufer
verloren.’
11049.
Euwe v Donner
Drawing attention to a Dutch
news film report (5 January 1956), Wijnand
Engelkes (Zeist, the Netherlands) comments:
‘In his 1955-56 match against Donner for the Dutch
championship, Euwe had just won the seventh game,
taking a strong lead. In the film report his
daughter Caroline explains that she and her sisters
have teased their father by turning objects in his
house upside down, threatening to leave them like
that if Donner were to win the match. Donner said
that if he won, he would go to Euwe’s house and
remove most of the hideous furniture.’
The second screen-shot, below, is from further footage
of the Euwe-Donner match:
11050.
Tom Driberg and John Rety
From page 8 of Chess for Children by Ted
Nottingham, Bob Wade and Al Lawrence (New York, 1993 and
1996):
The list of acknowledgements on page 5 included:
‘The late Tom Driberg MP, for “An International
Language”, from his report in The Reynolds News,
London, 1947.’
Can a reader provide that report? For now, we must make
do with Driberg’s text as published on page 168 of King,
Queen and Knight by N. Knight and W. Guy (London,
1975):
Rety was the translator of Planning in Chess by
J. Flesch (London, 1983), named there as ‘John Réti’.
Elsewhere, ‘Reti’ and ‘Réty’ are also found.
11051. A legal
judgment on the educational value of chess
Page 182 of CHESS, 28 March 1963 had a filler
paragraph of legalese:
Chess in the Courts
provides this summary of the case:
1944: Dupree’s Trusts, Daley and Others v Lloyds
Bank, Limited and Others (C.N. 360)
The question arising in this case was whether chess
was of sufficient educational value for a gift to
encourage chessplaying to qualify as a valid
charitable gift. The verdict was yes, whilst
acknowledging that the whole affair was rather a
slippery slope: ‘If chess, why not draughts: if
draughts, why not bezique, and so on, through to
bridge, whist, and, by another route, stamp collecting
and the acquisition of birds’ eggs?’, concluded J.
Vaisey of the Chancery Division. This affair was
brought to our attention by Paul Timson (Whalley,
England), who provided a copy of the judgment.
Below, from our correspondence file, is the full text
forwarded by Mr Timson in 1983 (pages 443-445 of the All
England Law Reports Annotated, volume 2, 18
November 1944). The text quoted, not quite accurately,
by CHESS is on page 444.
11052.
Tartakower v N.N.
From page 462 of L’Echiquier, 5 April 1934, in
a ‘fins de partie curieuses’ article by
Tartakower:
11053. Quotes
by Fenton and Golombek
A Quotes and Queries item by D.J. Morgan on page 446 of
the October 1973 BCM:
Since no sources were specified, they are added below.
The Fenton remark ‘Never try to checkmate your
opponent, but try to win the game’ can be seen in C.N.
10355, which had an extract (pages 233-234) from an
article about Purssell’s chess resort in the May 1891 BCM.
A further passage concerning Fenton from the same
article:
‘When the end approaches, if by chance he is losing,
he gives in without submitting to the last indignity
of the game, and he freely advises his opponents to do
the same. “Never allow yourself to be checkmated”, he
often says. “No human being has ever seen me
checkmated yet.”
Golombek’s ‘The tactical master may or may not develop
into a great player, the positional one always does’
comes from page 16 of The Games of Robert J. Fischer
edited by Robert G. Wade and Kevin J. O’Connell (London,
1972). Golombek contributed an introductory essay,
‘Fischer the Artist’.
On page 15 Golombek wrote:
‘The game of chess is neither a sport nor a science,
but really an art.’
11054.
Flohr on Capablanca (C.N.s 11039 & 11043)
A third observation about Capablanca’s play in the
1930s:
Source: an article entitled ‘Chess Theory is Grey’ by
Salo Flohr on pages 157 and 180 of CHESS, March
1967. No information about the article’s provenance was
supplied, or about the circumstances of Capablanca’s
alleged incipient lamentation.
11055.
The Bordell case
Further to the request in C.N. 11040, information on
how the Spanish press handled the Bordell case has been
provided by Eduardo Bauzá Mercére (New York, NY, USA)
and Roberto Roig (Lima), both of whom have sent a report
on page 50 of ABC, 7 February 1954:
In addition to three more cuttings, from ABC
and La Vanguardia, which are being added direct
to our feature article, Mr Bauzá Mercére has forwarded
an item on page 33 of Ajedrez Español,
January-February 1954:
11056.
Plagiarism in CHESS
Olimpiu G. Urcan (Singapore) points out a ‘Myths &
Legends’ article on pages 40-41 of CHESS,
October 2018 in which Charles Higgie discusses
Capablanca v Marshall, New York, 1918.
He lists three ‘myths’, and those 32 lines of text
contain no facts not given in our feature article on
the Marshall Gambit. There is even some verbatim
copying, without a word of acknowledgement.
Concerning untrue claims that Marshall saved his Gambit
for many years in order to surprise Capablanca, we
wrote:
... between 1910 and 1918 the Cuban played 1 e4
against Marshall on six occasions. Five times the
American responded with the Petroff Defence and once
with the French Defence.
From Charles Higgie’s article:
‘Between 1910 and 1918 the Cuban played 1 e4 against
Marshall on six occasions. Five times the American
responded with the Petroff Defence and once with the
French Defence.’
With regard to the game Frere v Marshall supposedly
played in 1917, our article states:
Marshall published the Frere game on pages 110-111 of
his rarely-seen book Comparative Chess
(Philadelphia, 1932). ... A further curiosity in Comparative
Chess is that on page 104 it was 7…O-O, rather
than 8…d5, that Marshall emphasized. Of 7…O-O he wrote
(incorrectly), ‘This move of mine, I claim to be
original’.
Charles Higgie’s version:
‘Marshall published the Frere game on pages 110-111
of his rarely seen book Comparative Chess. A
further curiosity in Comparative Chess is that
on page 104 it was 7...O-O, rather than 8...d5, which
Marshall drew attention to. Of 7...O-O, he wrote
(incorrectly), “This move of mine, I claim to be
original”.’
From page 3 of that issue of CHESS:
11057. Endeavour
and Poirot
Books by which chess author appear in both Endeavour
(Shaun Evans) and Poirot (David Suchet)?
The answer is below. (The episodes of these ITV
programmes were entitled, respectively, ‘Game’ and ‘The
Big Four’.)
The answer is E.E. Cunnington (1852-1942).
Near the beginning of the Endeavour episode,
the eponymous detective briefly handled a copy of Chess
Lessons for Beginners:
‘The Big Four’ has a short scene, also early on, in
which Hercule Poirot was researching the Ruy López in a
large-format book with a fictitious cover and title (The
50 Greatest Chess Problems – author’s name
indistinct). The content fleetingly shown is
identifiable as being from Cunnington’s Chess Traps
and Stratagems.
Below are the pages from which fragments of text and
diagrams can be seen, just about, in ‘The Big Four’,
although the lay-out was altered:
11058.
Fischer v Bolbochán
From pages 197-198 of Modern Chess Brilliancies
by Larry Evans (New York, 1970/71):
On pages 322-323 of CHESS, July 1976 Irving
Chernev wrote:
As shown in Fischer’s
Fury, Evans made no correction on page 249 of the
algebraic edition of Modern Chess Brilliancies
(San Francisco, 1994):
Tony Bronzin (Newark, DE, USA) wonders how such a
mistake could have occurred at all in Modern Chess
Brilliancies, given a claim by Evans about Fischer
on page 16 of Chess Life, March 2008:
‘That year [1969] he was my house guest in Reno. I
was working on the manuscript of Modern Chess
Brilliancies and asked him to check it for
errors. He wanted $100 and I paid it gladly. He went
through the games blindfolded and did a wonderful
job.’
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