11973.
Announced mates
Zachary Saine (Amsterdam) asks how the practice of Announced
Mates arose.
11974.
Cyril Pustan (1929-77)
Willibald Müller (Munich, Germany) draws our
attention to a 1967 East German film Die
gefrorenen Blitze, with particular reference to
‘Cyril Pustan, the second husband of Bobby Fischer’s
mother’:
Preview;
Lengthy
extract
from the documentary.
We add that the University
of
Bradford states:
‘The Cyril Pustan archive collection has recently
been kindly donated to Special Collections at the
University of Bradford’s JB Priestley Library and
will be made available to researchers in the near
future.’
11975.
The most spectacular queen sacrifice
From Richard Forster (Winterthur, Switzerland):
‘When chess.com
presented a list of the ten most spectacular chess
moves of all time in September 2020, first place
went to Shirov’s famous ...Bh3 move against
Topalov. However, second place was taken by a
virtually unknown specimen:
White played 1 Qc7, and Black resigned after
1...Rdxc7 2 Re8.
It was pointed out that White had other winning
moves, with Stockfish listing the spectacular 1
Qc7 only in about fifth position.
A more interesting question concerns the
circumstances and provenance of the ending.
Chess.com only wrote “Meier was White against
Muller in 1994”, which invited some speculation in
the comments section about the identities of the
players and the authenticity of the game.
Elsewhere on the Internet, “Germany” can be found
added as the country, but the origins of the game
seem to remain a mystery.
Most likely, the ending was picked up by the
chess.com team (directly or indirectly) from John
Emms’ controversial 2000 book The Most
Amazing Chess Moves of All Time, which had
heavily relied on previous work by Tim Krabbé and
others with scant acknowledgement (see item
70 on one of Krabbé’s webpages). Emms gave
the caption to puzzle 178 as “R. Meier – S.
Müller, Switzerland 1994”. As already pointed out
in my Late Knight column no. 28 at Chesscafe.com
(“Amazing?”), August 2000, the source will have
been my earlier Late Knight column no. 2 of June
1998 (“Alpine Accounting”), where I gave the whole
game and specified that it was played between René
Meier and Stefan Müller in Thun, Switzerland in
1994.
Here is the full score with all the players’
details and the original source:
René Meier (Sihlfeld) – Stefan Müller (Thun),
Thun, 7 May 1994. 1 Nf3 c5 2 g3 Nc6 3 Bg2 g6 4 d3
Bg7 5 e4 e6 6 O-O Nge7 7 Nbd2 O-O 8 Re1 d5 9 c3 b6
10 Nf1 Ba6 11 e5 Rc8 12 Bf4 b5 13 a3 Qb6 14 Qd2
Rfd8 15 Bh6 Bh8 16 Qf4 Rd7 17 Ne3 d4 18 Ng5 Nf5 19
Nxf5 exf5 20 e6 fxe6 21 Rxe6 Bb7 22 Rae1 Qd8 23
Qc7 Rdxc7 24 Re8 Resigns.
The game was played in round five on the seventh
and last board of a team match in the second class
(“2. Bundesliga”) of the Swiss workers’ Chess
Union league (“Gruppenmeisterschaft”). It first
appeared in print with a few annotations by the
winner in the Schweizerisches Schach-Magazin,
no. 6, June 1994, page 189.
A curious twist was added in KARL, no.
3/2023, page 59, when Michael Ehn and Ernst
Strouhal gave the ending as “the most spectacular
queen sacrifice of all time”, attributing it to
“Smith-Walls, USA 1993” without any further
indication of their source.
Here for the record is the 1994 publication of
the Meier v Müller game:’
11976.
Alekhine and Capablanca
Our new feature article on Sir
George
Thomas does not yet include a famous observation
attributed to him, because we currently lack a
verifiable source.
From page 161 of The Unknown Capablanca by
David Hooper and Dale Brandreth (London, 1975):
‘One is reminded of a remark made by Sir George
Thomas, “Against Alekhine”, he said, “you never knew
what to expect; against Capablanca you knew what to
expect, but you couldn’t prevent it!”’
From page 77 of Capablanca’s Best Chess Endings
by Irving Chernev (Oxford, 1978):
‘Capablanca’s clear-cut play in this ending calls
to mind a comment by Sir George Thomas, “Against
Alekhine you never knew what to expect; against
Capablanca you knew what to expect, but you couldn’t
prevent it!”’
11977.
Staunton and religion
John Townsend (Wokingham, England) writes:
‘In his book, The Great Schools of England,
Howard Staunton was a staunch opponent of
flogging. Pages xlii to xliii of the second
edition (1869) contain these remarks:
“Again and again, in treatises on Education, and
in periodicals, it has been condemned; but from
dread lest England should be ruined, lest ancient
traditions and old-world customs should perish,
the administrators of Public Schools passionately
fight for flogging, as if it were a kind of
sacrament, to be added to the other seven.”
This last observation about sacraments earned
him the attention of the writer of a critique in Weekly
Review (7 August 1869, page 16), who commented
that Staunton’s own “ecclesiastical standpoint”
could be “gathered” from it. (Presumably, the
reviewer was hinting that, by acknowledging the
existence of as many as seven sacraments, Staunton
was displaying a Catholic point of view.)
Was anything else ever written which suggested
Staunton’s association with religion?’
11978.
Cecil De Vere
Also from Mr Townsend:
‘Cecil De Vere was illegitimate, and the
identity of his father has been a mystery. Now,
some new information has been found in the death
certificate of his mother, Katherine De Vere
(General Register Office, Sept. qtr. 1864,
Pancras, volume 1b, page 41). It shows that she
died on 7 July 1864 at 10 Lower Calthorpe Street
(Grays Inn Road, London), the informant being
Eliza Hooker, “present at death”, of the same
address. The cause of death was “Cancer Uteri 2
years”; her age was given as 42, and she was
described as the widow of Alexander De Vere, naval
surgeon.
The name Alexander De Vere is new. This
occupation of her alleged late husband is
consistent with information entered on Cecil De
Vere’s 1846 birth certificate, where the father’s
name was left blank (indicating illegitimacy), but
his occupation was nevertheless entered as
“surgeon”. The birth certificate was discussed by
Owen Hindle in the Quotes & Queries column of
the BCM, conducted by Chris Ravilious, in
December 2003, February 2004 and November 2005.
Katherine De Vere had already been living at the
address where she died at the time of the 1861
census, when she was described as a widow, aged
36, born in Wales (National Archives, RG 9 107,
folio 91, page 9). At that time, she had as
lodgers Francis Burden, a civil engineer, and
Albert Lane, a landscape painter, both
chessplayers, who taught the young De Vere to
play.
It has not so far been possible to identify the
individual referred to as Alexander De Vere, and
he will need to be the subject of ongoing
research. Likewise, details of his supposed
marriage to De Vere’s mother have not been readily
found.
De Vere’s mother was buried in Brompton Cemetery
on 11 July 1864 in a private grave paid for by
“Valentine De Vere”, “gentleman”, of the same
address. There was neither probate nor letters of
administration.’
Illustrations of the chessplayer are rare. Below is a
detail of the Redcar, 1866 group photograph in C.N.
5614:
11979. Copying
Four recent additions to Copying:
The entirety of our compilation of quotations from
the three volumes of W.E. Napier’s Amenities
and
Background of Chess-Play has been
copy-pasted, without acknowledgement, on a chessgames.com
page.
There is an Alchetron
page which helps itself to various illustrations
from our Sultan
Khan
article. That makes it convenient for the
chessgames.com page on him to be illustrated as
follows:
The Bill
Wall method: ransacking our work on Capablanca,
without credit, and giving worthless, partial sources.
The ChessBase
contributor
Davide Nastasio has been lifting a huge number
of C.N. photographs (about 80 in the past week alone),
without credit, acknowledgement or authorization, for
his personal X/Twitter page.
Addition on 22 October 2024:
ChessBase has informed us that Davide Nastasio is now
a former ChessBase author.
11980. Chess
clubs
The first
episode of a new PBS television series, Today
in Chess, refers to ‘the chess capital of the
US, Saint Louis, Missouri’. Through the munificence of
Rex Sinquefield, the Saint Louis Chess Club is often
described, without contradiction, as the greatest
chess club in the United States. What comparable chess
clubs (whether in terms of premises, opulence,
membership, activity or any further criteria) exist in
other countries? In short, if the Saint Louis Chess
Club were described as the greatest in the world,
would any clubs have a legitimate grievance?
This photograph of the Saint Louis Chess Club was
taken for us on 12 February 2024 by Yasser Seirawan:
11981.
Menchik v Mieses (C.N. 3687)
This photograph by Erich Auerbach from The Quiet
Game by J. Montgomerie (London, 1972) was shown
in C.N. 3687, with the question of when it was taken.
From Philip Jurgens (Ottawa, Canada):
‘Vera Menchik and Jacques Mieses played a
ten-game match between 21 May and 13 June 1942. He
was aged 77, some 41 years older than her. Menchik
won by four games to one with five draws. Page 208
of Robert B. Tanner’s book on Menchik (C.N. 10191)
described it as “the first ever serious match
between a woman and a strong master”.
According to the West
London
Chess
Club website, Vera Menchik joined in 1941
after the National Chess Centre was bombed in the
Blitz. Jacques Mieses was also a club member
during the Second World War. It is therefore quite
likely that they played their match under the
auspices of the West London Chess Club and that
the photograph was taken during that period.
The above website also states:
“During World War II, very few clubs remained
open, but thanks to the determination of the
officers, West London Chess Club persevered and
invited players from other clubs to play. This
brought more strong players to the club, including
the likes of Jacques Mieses, Vera Menchik, Sir
George Thomas, and briefly, Capablanca [sic].”’
11982.
Georg Marco
C.N. 4855 reported a remark by Wolfgang Heidenfeld on
page 190 of The Encyclopedia of Chess by Harry
Golombek (London, 1977):
‘... Marco has left an imperishable chess legacy in
his brilliant and witty annotations.’
That is not the only C.N. item in which relevant
quotations from Marco’s writings have been solicited,
without tangible results; see also C.N.s 5248, 7819
and 11380. Examples of Heidenfeld’s own brilliance and
wit could, and perhaps should, be compiled, but Marco
deserves priority. Can readers assist?
11983.
J. Baca-Arús
Jaime Baca-Arús (C.N.
11881)
Further to The
Capablanca
v Price/Baca-Arús Mystery, Yandy Rojas Barrios
(Cárdenas, Cuba) has been looking for games played by
Jaime Baca-Arús, and he offers the following:
Jaime Baca-Arús – René Portela
Casual game, Havana, 1912 (?)
Danish Gambit
1 e4 e5 2 d4 exd4 3 c3 dxc3 4 Bc4 cxb2 5 Bxb2 Qe7 6
Nc3 Nf6 7 Nge2 Nxe4 8 O-O Nxc3 9 Nxc3 Qc5 10 Re1 Be7
11 Nd5 Nc6 12 Nxc7 Kd8 13 Nxa8 Qxc4 14 Rc1 Qb4 15 Qc2
Bf6 16 Bxf6 gxf6 17 Qf5 Qd4 18 Rcd1 Qc3 19 Rc1 Ne7 20
Qf4 Nd5 21 Qd6 Qd4 22 Qb8 Ne7 23 Rxc8 Resigns.
Source: El Fígaro, 10 March 1912, page 138.
Jaime Baca-Arús – E.C. de Villaverde
Casual game, Havana, 28 March 1912
Philidor’s Defence
1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 d6 3 Nc3 Be7 4 d4 exd4 5 Nxd4 Nf6 6 f4
c5 7 Nf3 O-O 8 Bd3 a6 9 O-O b5 10 b3 Bb7 11 Ng5 h6 12
Kh1 b4 13 Nd5 Nxd5 14 exd5 hxg5 15 Qh5 g6 16 Bxg6 fxg6
17 Qxg6 Kh8 18 Bb2 Bf6 19 Rf3 g4 20 Qh5 Kg8 21 Qxg4
Bg5 22 Qe6 Rf7 23 fxg5 Qe7 24 Qg6 Kf8 25 Raf1 Bxd5 26
Rxf7 Bxf7 27 Qf5 Kg8 28 g6 Be6 29 Qh5 Resigns.
Source: El Fígaro, 21 April 1912, page 238.
Jaime Baca-Arús – René Portela
Round 1, Havana Chess Club Championship, 1912
Queen’s Gambit Declined
1 d4 d5 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 c5 4 cxd5 exd5 5 Nf3 Nc6 6 g3
Nf6 7 Bg2 cxd4 8 Nxd4 Qb6 9 Nxc6 bxc6 10 O-O Ba6 11
Qa4 Bb5 12 Nxb5 cxb5 13 Qb3 Rd8 14 Bg5 Be7 15 Bxf6
Bxf6 16 a4 O-O 17 axb5 Rfe8 18 Bxd5 Rxe2 19 Bxf7 Kh8
20 Rad1 Rxb2 21 Rxd8 Qxd8 22 Rd1 Qb6 23 Qe3 Qxe3 24
fxe3 Rxb5 25 Rd7 a5 26 Rd5 Rxd5 27 Bxd5 a4 28 Kg2 g6
29 Kf3 Kg7 30 h4 Kf8 31 Kf4 Ke7 32 Ke4 Kd6 33 Ba2 Kc5
34 Kd3 Kb4 35 Kc2 a3 36 Kd3 h5 37 Kc2 Be5 38 Bf7
Drawn.
Source: Capablanca Magazine, 31 July 1912,
page 108.
Jaime Baca-Arús – Gustavo Fernández
Casual game, Havana, 8 March 1914
Danish Gambit
1 e4 e5 2 d4 exd4 3 c3 dxc3 4 Bc4 cxb2 5 Bxb2 Qe7 6
Nc3 c6 7 Nge2 b5 8 Bxb5 cxb5 9 Nxb5 Qb4 10 Nec3 Qc5 11
Qd5 Qxd5 12 Nxd5 Na6 13 O-O Rb8 14 a4 Bb7 15 Rfe1 Bc6
16 Bd4 Nf6 17 Bxa7 Rb7 18 Bd4 Bb4 19 Reb1 Bxd5 20 exd5
O-O 21 d6 Ne4 22 f3 Nd2 23 Rxb4 Nxb4 24 Bc3 Nb3 25 Rb1
Nd5 26 Rxb3 Nxc3 27 Rxc3 g6 28 Rc7 Rb6 29 Rxd7 Ra8 30
Rc7 Kf8 31 d7 Ke7 32 Na7 Rab8 33 Nc6 Kd6 34 Rc8 Kxd7
35 Rxb8 Rxc6 36 Rb7 Rc7 37 Rxc7 Kxc7 38 Kf2 Kb6 39 Ke3
Ka5 40 Kf4 Kxa4 41 Ke5 f5 42 g4 Resigns.
Source: El Fígaro (Ajedrez Local, Juan
Corzo), 19 April 1914, unnumbered page.
Jaime Baca-Arús – M.A. Carbonell
Round 1, II Intersocial Tournament, Havana, 1931
Caro-Kann Defence
1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Nf6 5 Nxf6 exf6 6
Nf3 Bd6 7 Bd3 Bg4 8 O-O O-O 9 c3 Qc7 10 h3 Bh5 11 c4
Rd8 12 c5 Bh2 13 Kh1 Bf4 14 Be3 g5 15 g4 Bg6 16 Bxg6
hxg6 17 Qd3 Nd7 18 b4 Kg7 19 Rad1 Rh8 20 Kg2 Rad8 21
Rh1 b6 22 Bxf4 Qxf4 23 Qe3 Qb8 24 d5 Rhe8 25 Qc3 cxd5
26 Rxd5 bxc5 27 bxc5 Qc7 28 Rhd1 Nb8 29 Rxd8 Rxd8 30
Rxd8 Qxd8 31 Nxg5 Qd5 32 Nf3 Nc6 33 g5 Ne5 34 gxf6
Kxf6 35 c6 Ke6 36 Qxe5 Resigns.
Source: Diario de la Marina, 13 December
1931, page 18.
Biographical and other information is still being
researched by our correspondent and will be added in
due course.
11984.
Anything is good enough
As quoted in C.N. 876 (see Book
Notes), Charles W. Warburton wrote the following
on page 42 of My Chess Adventures (Chicago,
1980) in a discussion of the Caro-Kann Defence:
‘Typically convincing is the thought of Dr Emanuel
Lasker who was known to say “anything is good enough
to play once”.’
Countless masters are purportedly ‘known’ to have
said countless things, but in this case we can at
least cite a vague attribution from Lasker’s heyday.
On pages 516-517 of the December 1898 BCM J.H.
Blake annotated Tarrasch v Halprin, Vienna, 1898,
which began 1 d4 d5 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 Bg5 Be7 5 Nf3
h6 6 Bf4 dxc4 7 e3 Nd5 8 Be5 f6 9 Bg3 Bb4 10 Qc2 b5 11
a4 c6 12 axb5 cxb5 13 e4.
After 8 Be5, Blake wrote:
‘Black’s moves six to ten constitute a line of
defence to the attack by B-KB4 in the Q. Gambit,
which is little known, and which, though not
strictly recommendable, may occasionally serve its
turn, in accordance with a maxim attributed to
Lasker, that in the opening “anything is good enough
to play once”. Dr Tarrasch, however, was on
this occasion no stranger to it, since it was played
against him (after 4 B-B4 PxP 5 P-K3 Kt-Q4, etc.) by
Maróczy at Buda Pesth [in 1896]; it is the more
surprising therefore that he should so nearly have
fallen a victim to it here, as his continuation on
the previous occasion by 6 KBxP KtxB 7 PxKt is in
the present position the only good defence, and a
perfectly satisfactory one.’
11985.
Backward moves and empty squares
Instruction manuals sometimes note the difficulty of
visualizing a) sacrifices on empty squares and b)
backward moves by pieces. Who first made such
observations in print? Also requested: practical
examples (the less well known, the better).
11986.
Rupert Brooke’s notebook
It is still not proving possible to find out more
about the texts included in the notebooks (circa
1902-04) of Rupert Chawner Brooke (1887-1915), as
shown in our feature
article on him. For example:
We observed that Brooke appeared to be copying
openings material from a book or magazine, and that
the reference to Staunton related to remarks
originally published on page 148 of his Handbook
(London, 1847). Can nothing further be found?
From page 69 of Rupert
Brooke by Michael Hastings (London, 1967)
11987. Samuel
Reshevsky
Avital Pilpel (Haifa, Israel) sends, courtesy of
Herbert Halsegger, a feature about the prodigy
Reshevsky on page
2
of part 6 of the Richmond Times-Dispatch,
20 March 1921:
Larger
version
11988.
Preparation
Wanted: little-known accounts by masters of their
chess preparations for important tournaments and
matches.
11989.
Steinitz and Séguin
Our recent feature article Wilhelm
Steinitz
Miscellanea quotes remarks such as the following
by Steinitz about James Séguin, on page 86 of the International
Chess Magazine, April 1888:
‘And I mean to devote to
the task [i.e. exposing the alleged dishonesty of
James Séguin], if necessary, the space of this column
for the next 12 months, or for as many years, in case
of further literary highway robberies perpetrated by
the same individual, and provided that I and this
journal survive, in order to statuate for all times,
or as long as chess shall live, an example that the
only true champion of the world for the last 22 years
(I may say so for once), who has always defended his
chess prestige against all-comers, has also a true
regard for true public opinion, and that he can defy
single-handed all the lying manufactories of press
combinations to show any real stain on his honor; and
that he can convict and severely punish any
foul-mouthed editor who, like the shystering
journalistic advocate of New Orleans, attempts to rob
him of his good name outside of the chess board.’
Has there been a trustworthy investigation of
Steinitz’s objections concerning Séguin?
11990.
The Thomas family
As a supplement to Sir
George
Thomas, John Saunders (Kingston upon Thames,
England) submits this report from page 9 of the Morning
Post, 22 June 1895:
Our correspondent is the Webmaster of BritBase –
British Chess Game Archive.
11991.
Difficult to visualize (C.N. 11985)
In addition to backward moves and sacrifices on empty
squares, there can be difficulty in seeing collinear
moves, as discussed, with examples, in C.N. 4230 and
4233. Those items are in our feature article on the
originator of the term, John
Nunn.
11992. Staunton and Morphy
The text of C.N. 11939:
What was the largest number of games that either
Staunton or Morphy ever played simultaneously
(excluding the latter’s blindfold displays)?
This surprisingly difficult question has been
mentioned in, for instance, C.N.s 4492 and 11874
(see Howard
Staunton) and C.N. 10423 (see Paul
Morphy). Citations for numbers as low as three
or four will be welcomed, to start the ball rolling.
The ball still stubbornly stationary, we now approach
the issue from a fresh angle (‘prêcher le faux pour
savoir le vrai’). Let it be imagined that,
excluding Morphy’s blindfold displays, a chess author
were to write:
‘In their entire lives neither Staunton nor Morphy
gave a single normal/regular simultaneous
exhibition.’
What facts could be put forward to refute that
imaginary chess author’s assertion?
11993.
Staunton correspondence
From John Townsend (Wokingham, England):
‘Sixty-two letters, written 1855-74, by Howard
Staunton to his friend and fellow Shakespeare
scholar, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, are
deposited at Edinburgh University Library. The
chess content is precisely nil. That is because
his interest by that stage of his life had turned
to Shakespeare and other literary and historical
matters, some of which he pursued through his
contributions to the Illustrated London News.
Nevertheless, the correspondence has much to offer
regarding Staunton the man and shows him as a
person quite different from the vengeful fiend
which he is sometimes portrayed as being.
In the example which follows, Staunton is elated
at the prospect of a visit to Broadway,
Worcestershire, where Halliwell-Phillipps’ wife
had inherited the library of her father, Sir
Thomas Phillipps, at Middle Hill. Staunton also
expected that the Cotswolds air would be
beneficial for his chest condition (described by
him elsewhere as bronchitis), and he looked
forward to renewing his friendship with
Halliwell-Phillipps, whose company he very much
enjoyed. He was anxious for his friend to turn up.
The letter is typical of Staunton’s prose in his
letters to Halliwell-Phillipps: relaxed and
informal, yet studded with literary allusions.
“117 Lansdowne Road,
Kensington Park (W)
May 17th 1873
Dear Halliwell,
I am off to the famous Cotswolds where Master
Page’s fallow greyhound came off second best. I
hope no mishap will prevent you from joining me on
Monday and, then, ‘What larks!!’
How I long for a tramp over those glorious hills!
‘Broadway rises to a height of 1,100 feet above
the sea.’
Think of that, Master Brook! Think of the
delicious ozoned oxygen! Think of the road side
pebbles when, as poor Lamb used to say, ‘We have
walked a pint’! Think of the fresh eggs & the
streaky bacon! Think of the neat-handed
Phillisses, the Cotsoll Hebes!! and with these
thoughts let no ordinary impediment deter you from
‘taking the road’. Give my best regards to the
ladies and believe me
Sincerely Yours
H. Staunton
J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps”
Source: Edinburgh University Library, Special
Collections, Letters to J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps,
203/20.
The visit was highly successful and he stayed at
the prestigious Lygon Arms in Broadway. In his James
Orchard Halliwell and Friends: IV. Howard
Staunton (1997, page 128), Marvin Spevack
records Halliwell-Phillipps’ sentiments expressed
in a letter from Broadway of his trip with
Staunton to Stratford that they were
“as jolly as sandboys [...] how long can jollity
last in the world, and would there be any without
B. and S.”’
11994. Excuses
‘I had a toothache during the first game. In the
second game I had a headache. In the third game it
was an attack of rheumatism. In the fourth game, I
wasn’t feeling well. And in the fifth game? Well,
must one have to win every game?’
Anyone using a search-engine for that remark, or a
slightly different wording, will be presented with
countless webpages. Most ascribe the comment to
Tarrasch, some to Tartakower, and none to a precise
source.
In print, it is no surprise to find A. Soltis writing
the following sourcelessly on page 11 of Chess
Life, June 1990:
‘And it was Tartakower who had perhaps the final
word on excuses. Asked how he could lose so many
games in a row at one tournament he replied: “I had
a toothache during the first game, so I lost. In the
second game I had a headache, so I lost. In the
third game an attack of rheumatism in the left
shoulder, so I lost. In the fourth game I wasn’t
feeling at all well, so I lost. And in the fifth
game – well, must I win every game in a
tournament?”’
An earlier version was related by Harry Golombek on
page 91 of the April 1953 BCM in a report on
that year’s tournament in Bucharest, at which he ‘had
a really dreadful phase’:
‘If asked to account for these six successive
losses I think I cannot do better than to quote Dr
Tartakower who on a similar occasion was explaining
why he lost five games in a row in an international
tournament. “The first”, he said, “I lost because of
a very bad headache; during the second I didn’t feel
at all well; I was afflicted by rheumatic twinges
throughout the third; in the fourth I suffered acute
toothache; and the fifth – well, must one win every
game in a tournament?”’
Readers may care to imagine themselves entrusted with
editing a chess quotations anthology. What to do with
this ‘final word on excuses’? Omit it owing to the
lack of a source? Give in detail the various versions
and attributions? Plump and hope for the best (the
process described in C.N. 9887)?
An attempt may first be made to establish when, if
ever, Tartakower or Tarrasch lost five consecutive
tournament games, and when the story was first
attributed to, if not voiced by, either of them.
See also Excuses
for
Losing
at Chess.
11995.
Photographs
Olimpiu G. Urcan (Singapore) has provided this
photograph of Bogoljubow and Rubinstein which he owns.
Exact details of the occasion are sought.
Mr Urcan has also sent us this 1976 photograph of Tony Miles
(Camera Press Archive):
11996.
Staunton and Morphy (C.N. 11992)
Jerry Spinrad (Nashville, TN, USA) informs us that
the only simultaneous display by Staunton which he has
seen mentioned in the Chess Player’s Chronicle
is a very small one at the Rock Ferry Chess Club (July
1853 issue, pages 217-218):
‘A special Meeting of this Society was held on the
evening of the 5th ult. at the Club Rooms, Rock
Ferry Hotel, for the purpose of welcoming to
Cheshire Mr Staunton, who, during his short visit,
was the guest of Mr Morecroft, of the Manor House
... In the course of the evening there was some very
interesting play. Mr Staunton conducted
simultaneously two games against the Liverpool
gentlemen, in consultation at one board, giving them
the odds of pawn and two moves, and against the Rock
Ferry gentlemen, at another board, giving them the
odds of the knight.’
After supper and speeches the games were resumed, but
the report did not specify the outcome.
On Morphy, Jerry Spinrad and John Townsend
(Wokingham, England) refer to a simultaneous display
which is well known. Mr Townsend writes:
‘David Lawson, in Paul Morphy, the Pride
and Sorrow of Chess (new edition by Thomas
Aiello, 2010), quoted (on pages 213-214) from an
account of a simultaneous exhibition which took
place at the St James’s Chess Club in London on 26
April 1859, the source being the Illustrated
News of the World, of “the following Saturday”:
“A highly interesting assembly met in the
splendid saloon of St James’s Hall, on Tuesday
evening last [26 April], when Mr Morphy
encountered five of the best players in the
metropolis.”
The opposition was formidable:
“The first table was occupied by M. de Rivière;
the second, by Mr Boden; the third, by Mr Barnes;
the fourth, by Mr Bird; and the fifth, by Mr
Löwenthal. Mr Morphy played all these gentlemen
simultaneously, walking from board to board, and
making his replies with extraordinary rapidity and
decision. Although we believe that this is the
first performance of the kind by Mr Morphy, it is
a remarkable fact that he lost but one game. Two
other games were won by him and two were drawn.”’
Those reports, one display apiece by Staunton and
Morphy, are all that can currently be cited here,
although the following may be recalled from C.N. 10423
(concerning Morphy after his match with Anderssen):
‘He confined himself to simultaneous displays,
playing 20, 30 and even 40 people at once ...’
Source: page 274 of Keene On Chess by R.
Keene (New York, 1999). The identical wording was on
page 275 of Complete Book of Beginning Chess
by R. Keene (New York, 2003).
11997. Rook
ending note
João Pedro S. Mendonça Correia (Lisbon) draws
attention to this annotation on page 217 of the Caissa
Editions translation (Yorklyn, 1993) of Tarrasch’s
book on St Petersburg, 1914 and wonders whether any
personal acrimony underlies the reference to billiards:
From the original German edition (page 151):
The game was Capablanca v Marshall in round four of
the final section: 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 Nxe5 d6 4 Nf3
Nxe4 5 Qe2 Qe7 6 d3 Nf6 7 Bg5 Be6 8 Nc3 h6 9 Bxf6 Qxf6
10 d4 Be7 11 Qb5+ Nd7 12 Bd3 g5 13 h3 O-O 14 Qxb7 Rab8
15 Qe4 Qg7 16 b3 c5 17 O-O cxd4 18 Nd5 Bd8 19 Bc4 Nc5
20 Qxd4 Qxd4 21 Nxd4 Bxd5 22 Bxd5 Bf6 23 Rad1 Bxd4 24
Rxd4 Kg7 25 Bc4 Rb6 26 Re1 Kf6 27 f4 Ne6 28 fxg5+ hxg5
29 Rf1+ Ke7 30 Rg4 Rg8 31 Rf5 Rc6 32 h4 Rgc8 33 hxg5
Rc5 34 Bxe6 fxe6 35 Rxc5 Rxc5 36 g6 Kf8 37 Rc4 Ra5 38
a4 Kg7 39 Rc6 Rd5 40 Rc7+ Kxg6 41 Rxa7 Rd1+ 42 Kh2 d5
43 a5 Rc1 44 Rc7 Ra1 45 b4 Ra4 46 c3 d4 47 Rc6 dxc3 48
Rxc3 Rxb4 49 Ra3 Rb7 50 a6 Ra7 51 Ra5 Kf6 52 g4 Ke7 53
Kg3 Kd6 54 Kf4 Kc7 55 Ke5 Kd7 56 g5 Ke7 57 g6 Kf8 58
Kxe6 Ke8 59 g7 Rxg7 60 a7 Rg6+ 61 Kf5 Resigns.
Tarrasch also criticized 46 c3, appending a question
mark.
Below is the position after White’s penultimate move,
60 a7:
Tarrasch called Marshall’s 60...Rg6+ a Racheschach.
It is not a ‘spite
check’ strictu sensu, given that two of
the three possible king moves by White lose.
11998.
A difficult rook ending
On 25 March 2024 Ben Finegold posted on his YouTube
channel a game with a complicated rook ending
submitted by a viewer. Afterwards, starting at 13’17”,
Finegold drolly commented that most games from viewers
had seven blunders by one side and eight by the other.
C.N. 7228 gave two pre-Tartakower (1890 and 1901)
occurrences of the observation that the winner is the
player who makes the last mistake but one, but
information is still sought on when it was first
attached to Tartakower’s name, or to that of other
masters.
In the latter category, Barnie F. Winkelman wrote on
page 205 of Chess Review, September 1935:
‘To Lasker chess was (and remains) a contest, a
personal encounter in which he frequently avoided
the best variations, and sought to give battle on
unfamiliar ground. “The winner of a game of chess”,
he is reported to have said, “is he who makes the
last mistake but one.”’
With terms like ‘is reported to have said’ (and
‘reportedly said’), the floodgates are open for anyone
to write anything.
11999.
Chess Book Chats
As recorded in the Factfinder,
we have referred to Michael Clapham’s website Chess
Book Chats. In the past month it has been
updated with some more first-class articles.
12000.
My System
As shown in Nimzowitsch’s
My System, C.N. 9792 remarked:
Mein System is a rare case of a chess book
also existing in a simplified version, edited by
Heinz Brunthaler (Zeil am Main, 2007).
Now we note that Russell Enterprises, Inc. has just
produced a ‘FastTrack
Edition’ of My System, edited by Alex
Fishbein.
12001.
The Pride and Sorrow of Chess
With the increase in digitized publications it can be
hoped that more nineteenth-century occurrences will be
found of ‘The
Pride and Sorrow of Chess’. At present the
earliest citations that we have given are:
C.N. 4053:
On page 113 of the April 1885 International
Chess Magazine Steinitz wrote:
‘... the fearful misfortune which ultimately
befell “the pride and sorrow of chess”, as Sheriff
Spens justly calls Morphy, can only evoke the
warmest sympathy in every human breast.’
C.N. 6469:
On page 3 of the January 1885 issue of his magazine
Steinitz had mentioned the phrase with a second
definite article but no reference to Spens:
‘The pride and the sorrow of chess, as Morphy has
been called, is gone for ever.’
12002.
A remark by Purdy (C.N.s 10171 & 10182)
Still also being sought: the source of the following
annotation by C.J.S.
Purdy:
‘This is a legal move; it has no other merit.’
12003.
The Club Argentino de Ajedrez (C.N.s 11330, 11341
& 11349)
Some further photographs provided to us by Carlos
León Cranbourne (Buenos Aires):
12004.
Hanging
There is a difference between ‘hanging
pawns’ and ‘pawns hanging’, and we wonder how
far back one can trace the verb ‘to hang’ in the sense
of to leave en prise or to leave a resource
open to the opponent, as in expressions such as White
‘hung a rook’, ‘left his queen hanging’ or, indeed,
‘left a mate in one hanging’.
12005.
Announced mates (C.N. 11973)
We are grateful to Robert John McCrary (Columbia, SC,
USA) for making an initial search for early references
to announced mates. It may seem logical to assume that
correspondence chess gave an impetus to the practice,
to limit postage outlay, but hard facts are still
lacking.
Our correspondent draws attention to page
220 of Volume II of the Chess Player’s
Chronicle, which includes this:
‘M. Chamouillet here announced that he could force
mate in nine moves; and his adversaries, after
examining the position, resigned.’
12006.
Vienna, 1922
From Avital Pilpel (Haifa, Israel):
‘Herbert Halsegger has drawn my attention to
sketches by L.R. Barteau of some of the players in
the Vienna, 1922 tournament, as well as the
President of the Vienna Chess Club, Dr Kondor.
They appeared on half the front page of the Illustriertes
Wiener Extrablatt, 18
November
1922. The information about Kondor is from
page 3 of the same issue, in the chess column.’
12007. Cheating
Prompted by the swirl of unverified and unverifiable
claims about online cheating,
we suggest the following:
Accusations need corroboration. Insinuations need
expurgation.
12008.
The spite check
C.N. 11997 referred to the term ‘spite check’ and the
similar, though not identical, German word Racheschach.
As shown in the The
Spite
Check in Chess, various writers offer various
definitions, but we should like to know of any (close)
equivalents in other languages. Spanish, for instance,
has jaque por despecho.
12009.
The last mistake but one (C.N. 11998)
Christian Sánchez (Rosario, Argentina) points out the
following in an article by Henry Smith Williams about
Samuel
Reshevsky on page
43 of the October 1920 issue of Hearst’s:
‘In the words of Lasker – for many years the
undefeatable champion – the man who wins is the man
who makes the last mistake but one.’
12010.
The Orthodox Defence
Wanted: early occurrences of the word ‘Orthodox’ (in
any language) in connection with the defence 1 d4 d5 2
c4 e6.
12011.
Fischer on Alekhine
Alexander
Alekhine
Miscellanea begins with Fischer’s view in the
article ‘The
Ten
Greatest Masters in History’ on pages 56-61 of Chessworld,
January-February 1964):
Would anyone venture to offer serious support to
Fischer’s contention, ‘strangely, if you’ve seen one
Alekhine game you’ve seen them all’?
12012.
T.A. Krishnamachariar
Further to Two
Indian Chess Figures, Michael McDowell
(Westcliff-on-sea, England) notes that although T.A.
Krishnamachariar seems to have had no obituary in The
Problemist, the following appeared on page 510
of the March 1954 issue:
12013.
Ian Brady, Graham Young and Peter Sutcliffe
From Avital Pilpel (Haifa, Israel):
‘In Chess
and
Murder, you note that “Ian Brady
described playing chess against Graham Young in
Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight”. It is
worth adding that after Brady’s death, an
interview with another British serial killer –
Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper” – stated
that the latter played chess with Brady.
Just as Brady was dismissive of
Young’s chess ability, Sutcliffe was dismissive of
Brady’s, according to an online
Mirror
report dated 27 May 2017.’
12014.
Announced mates (C.N.s 11973 & 12005)
John Townsend (Wokingham, England) writes:
‘Page 23 of William Hartston’s The Kings of
Chess (London, 1985) contains an example of an
announced mate by Philidor. The occasion was an
odds game with Count Brühl at Parsloe’s in London
on 26 January 1789. White was in check, “and
Philidor announced mate in two moves: 28 Qxf5! and
29 Rh8 mate”.
George Walker’s A Selection of Games at
Chess, actually played by Philidor and his
contemporaries (London, 1835) includes the game
on pages 41-42 with the following termination:
“27 K. Kt. P. on. Kt. to K. B. fourth, ch. 28 Q
takes Kt., and Mates next move with R.”
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Chess Games
by Levy and O’Connell (Oxford, 1981) has the score
(page 15) as concluding with “27 g5 Nf5+ 1-0” and
gives the source as “MS H.J. Murray 64, Bodleian
Oxford, ‘Collection of European Games’”.’
See also Announced
Mates.
12015.
Rossolimo’s brilliancies
Michael Petrow (Munich, Germany) notes references to
an alleged self-publication by Nicolas Rossolimo: Rossolimo’s
Brilliancy Prizes (New York, 1970).
It is mentioned in the English-language Wikipedia
entry on Rossolimo, but neither online nor
elsewhere have we found authoritative information
about its existence.
The other chess work referred to in the entry, Les
Échecs au coin du feu (Paris, 1947) with a
Preface by Tartakower, has 28 pages and, courtesy of
the Cleveland Public Library, a number of them are
shown below:
12016.
Alekhine’s gun (C.N.s 7880, 7914, 7972, 8625 &
8860)
Eduardo Bauzá Mercére (New York, NY, USA) provides
the following game:
George Walker – Alexander McDonnell
Occasion?
(Odds of pawn and two moves. Remove Black’s f-pawn.)
1 e4 … 2 d4 Nc6 3 e5 d5 4 c3 Bf5 5 g4 Be4 6 f3 Bxb1 7
Rxb1 e6 8 Bf4 h5 9 Bd3 hxg4 10 Bg6+ Kd7 11 fxg4 Qh4+
12 Bg3 Qg5 13 Bd3 Nh6 14 Be2 Qe3 15 Kf1 Be7 16 Kg2
Raf8 17 Nh3 Nf7 18 Qd3 Qh6 19 Bf4 Qh4 20 Qg3 Qh7 21
Bd3 g6 22 Rbf1 Bh4 23 Qe3 Be7 24 Rf3 Qg7 25 g5 Rh5 26
Rg3 Qh7 27 Rg4 Bd8 28 Bb5 a6 29 Bxc6+ bxc6 30 Rf1 Be7
31 b4 a5 32 a3 axb4 33 cxb4 Rh8
34 Rf3 Nd8 35 Nf2 Nf7 36 h4 Qg8 37 Bg3 R8h7 38 Nd3
Qh8
39 Nc5+ Bxc5 40 bxc5 Qa8 41 Rf6 Rg7 42 Rgf4 Rhh7 43
Qd3 Nh8 44 Rf8 Qb7 45 Rf3 Ke7 46 R8f6 Rg8 47 Kh3 Qb2
48 Qa6 Qb5 49 Qa7 Qb8 50 Qa5 Nf7 51 Kg4 Qb7 52 Qa4 Ra8
53 Qc2 Nh8 54 Rb3 Qa6 55 Qb2 Rg7 56 Rb8 Rg8 57 Rxg8
Rxg8 58 Rf3 Qc8 59 a4 Qa6 60 Qc2 Ra8 61 Ra3 Rf8 62 Rf3
Ra8 63 Ra3 Rf8 64 Qd3 Qa5 65 Qc3 Qa6 66 Qd3 Qa5 67 Qc3
Qa6 68 Qd3 Qa5 69 Ra1 Qb4 70 a5 Qb2 71 Rb1 Qa2 72 Rf1
Rf5 73 a6 Nf7 74 Rxf5 exf5+ 75 Kh3 Qa1 76 Bf2 Nd8 77
Kg2 Ne6 78 Be3 Qa2+ 79 Kg3 Ng7 80 Kf3 Kd7 81 Bf4 Kc8
82 Bg3 Kb8 83 Qe2 Qxe2+ 84 Kxe2 Ka7 85 Bf4 Kxa6 86 Ke3
Kb5 87 Kd3 Ka4 88 Kc3 Ne6 89 Be3 Ka5 90 Bf2 Ka6 91 Kd3
Kb7 92 Ke3 Kc8 93 Bg3 Kd7 94 Bf2 Ng7 95 Kf4 Ke6 96 Bg3
Kd7 97 Ke3 Kc8 98 Bf4 Kd7 99 Ke2 Ke6 100 Bg3 Kd7 101
Kf3 Nh5 102 Bf2 f4 103 Be1 Ke6 104 Kg4 Ke7 105 Bd2 Ng7
106 Be1 Ne6 107 Bf2 Ke8 108 h5 Kf7 109 h6 Kf8 Drawn.
Our correspondent’s source is pages 88-91 of A
Selection of Games at Chess ... by William
Greenwood Walker (London, 1836).
The set of C.N. items on this theme has now been
brought together in Alekhine’s
Gun.
12017.
Sourcing
Writer A makes a significant discovery in a
100-year-old newspaper and presents the information
with a complete source.
Writer B repeats the information but specifies only
the 100-year-old source, as if he had discovered it
himself.
Such conduct by Writer B is widespread, and a
technical term for it may be sought. Since technical
terms are often -isms, one possibility is
‘intermediate source misattribution’.
12018.
Reversed images
C.N. 7345 (see Chess
and
Insanity) quoted slighting remarks about leading
masters by interviewees in Liz Garbus’s documentary
film (2011) Bobby Fischer Against the World. The
CD cover above is a famous
shot by Harry Benson but in reverse form;
Fischer parted his hair on the left. See, however,
C.N. 7860 (included in Gaffes
by
Chess Publishers and Authors), which mentions a
book by Benson himself, as well as a work on Pillsbury
with a flipped image on its front cover.
As shown by numerous pictures, Morphy too parted his
hair on the left; see our comment on a mirror image in
C.N. 5150. Another mistake occurred on page 53 of Chessworld,
January-February 1964, in a lengthy, richly
illustrated article on Morphy by David Lawson:
Left: published mirror
image – Right: corrected
New in Chess has announced the forthcoming
publication of The
Real
Paul Morphy by Charles Hertan:
Addition on 28 August 2024:
As shown on the above-mentioned New in Chess webpage,
the front cover has been changed:
12019.
The Star of David
From Avital Pilpel (Haifa, Israel):
‘Further to your feature article Letters
and
Numbers
in Chess Problems, sometimes the depiction
is not of a letter or number but an object. In
Sivan 5684 (the Hebrew month equivalent to June
1924), Ha’shachmat – the magazine of the
“Lasker” chess club in Jerusalem – published its
first chess problems (volume one, number three,
page 1). The very first of these problems was
composed specifically for a Palestinian chess
publication. Zionist sentiment is emphasized, and
it is entitled “Star of David” and “dedicated to
the revival of chess in our country” by the
Jewish-Polish problemist Jakob Kopel Speiser.’
12020.
Chess literature
Particularly in the 1980s, C.N. items criticized the
low standard of many chess books and the preponderance
of volumes on openings. Those who, at the time,
dismissed such grievances may profitably reflect on
the situation today. To mention just one example, Quality Chess
(Glasgow) produces a vast array of highly impressive
titles which are poles apart from what the chess
public was expected to tolerate decades ago, such as
the ‘Batsford disposables’ referred to in Fischer’s
Fury.
12021.
References to chess in language courses (C.N.s 8684
& 11023)
Another rare example comes from page 49 of A
First German by L. Stringer, illustrated by
Alfred Jackson (London, 1966):
12022.
Stalwarts
In hurriedly penned ‘obituaries’ of minor chess
figures who have just died (they have ‘passed sadly’
and will be ‘missed sadly’) minor memorialists often
reach for that curious noun/adjective ‘stalwart’.
Never applied to oneself, it hints at an elderly,
unfêted club member, more notable for his presence
than his prowess, who gladly stays behind to tidy up
and rinse the cups. Our use of ‘his’ is intentional;
chess stalwarts are not female.
12023.
Electronic resources
Asked by another C.N. correspondent whether he had
researched all of Staunton’s Illustrated London
News columns, G.H.
Diggle replied in 1987 (see C.N.
1439):
‘Of course I have, and broken my shins on them.’
The days of grappling with bulky annual volumes in
reference libraries have largely gone, home- or
office-based electronic searches having transformed
the task, or joy, of historical investigation. With Google
Books alone much thirst for knowledge, whether
serious or trivial, can be slaked in moments by
entering key words or phrases.
If, for instance, a chess enthusiast wants to know
about players of past centuries slaking their thirst
in coffee houses, and wonders how the term became
derogatory, innumerable citations can be found,
perhaps beginning with Staunton’s remark on page 111
of the London, 1851 tournament book that his second
game against Anderssen ‘would be discreditable to two
third-rate players of a coffee-house’, and culminating
in Fischer’s
dismissal of Emanuel Lasker as ‘a coffee-house
player’ in 1964. The words of Georg Marco will be
found too: he considered that the game Pettersson
v Nimzowitsch, Barmen, 1905 was ‘played in the
worst coffeehouse style’.
In that game, the spectacle of Nimzowitsch replying
to the Ruy López with 3...f5 may spark our interest in
early analysis of that
opening/defence/gambit/counter-gambit (commonly named
after either of two players who died within a couple
of months of each other, C.F. von Jaenisch and A.K.W.
Schliemann).
To take Jaenisch as an example, Google Books
painlessly leads to a run of Le Palamède. In
the December 1847 issue, Jaenisch contributed a
lengthy article (pages 530-560)
on 1 e4 e5, which he termed ‘Le début royal’.
Beginning on page 538
he analyzed the ‘very interesting’ move 3...f5, with
four options for White’s fourth move: d4, exf5, Bxc6
and d3. He explained on page 538 that he was
temporarily holding back from readers of Le
Palamède his suggestion of a winning method for
White, but that December 1847 issue marked the abrupt
end of the periodical’s run.
Again thanks to Google Books it can be seen how
Jaenisch resolved the difficulty. In 1848 an abridged
version of his original article was published in the Chess
Player’s Chronicle (pages 216-221,
248-253
and 274-279).
The
move
3...f5 was examined on pages 220-221 and 248-249. In
the 1849 volume (pages 362-366)
Jaenisch provided a further article, incorporating the
analysis intended for Le Palamède. (See too
pages 313-315
and 344-345
of the Deutsche Schachzeitung, 1848.)
Leaving aside the awkward question of whether
somebody nowadays writing a book on 3...f5 is likely
to take account of Jaenisch’s detailed articles, we
conclude these random musings with a curiosity
highlighted by him on page 363
of the 1849 Chess Player’s Chronicle, where he
gave a line which ...
‘... exhibits in the theory of regular openings the
unique example of a triple pawn’.
Analysis after
11...bxc6
Jaenisch’s analysis continued this line to move 27.
12024.
Cramling v Pérez
Jon Ludvig Hammer is one of the best commentators on
YouTube and Twitch, blending lucidity with dry whimsy.
During his live commentary on the seventh-round
women’s match between Sweden and Paraguay at the
Budapest Olympiad on 18 September 2024, he discussed
this position (Pia Cramling v Jennifer Pérez),
starting at about 4:03:30 in the transmission:
White has played 46
Rb7-c7, and Black resigned.
Instead of surrendering, why not produce some
fireworks with 46...Qa6 47 Rxd7+ Kh8 48 Qh6
(threatening mate on the move) 48...Qxf1+ 49 Kxf1 Rc1
mate?
Hammer gave the answer: 49...Rc1 is not mate.
12025.
Mate in 90 moves (C.N.s 10035 & 10061)
C.N. 10061 (see also How
Many
Moves Ahead?) showed page 266 of the 1 December
1947 [sic] issue of Chess World, from
an article by Lajos Steiner:
In the Bakay composition, Lindsay Ridland (Edinburgh)
points out a motif which secures Black a draw: 10…Bb8
11 Rxb8 Kf2 12 Rf8+ Ke1.
12026.
Chess and poker
From page 406 of the September 1979 BCM (Quotes
and Queries item 3986 by Kenneth
Whyld):
‘The mention of Franklin Knowles Young (1857-1931)
reminds me of a bon mot which may be new to
readers. Young wrote several weird chess books which
no doubt deceived military theoreticians into
believing that they understood chess. His fellow
American, Clarence Seaman Howell (1881-1936) wrote
of Young’s “theories of that vague and dreamy and
word-opulent character which abound in art, but are
unwholesome in chess”. This led to a challenge to a
duel over the chess-board. “As to the matter of
stakes”, said Young, “you can put your money in your
pocket. When I play for money I play poker.” Howell
said “I admire your wisdom in preferring to back
your luck rather than your skill.”’
Two points stand out: the satisfying chess-poker quip
and the troubling absence of any source for anything.
For a documented account, page 199 of the November
1901 issue of Checkmate is the first port of
call:
The account of the Pillsbury-Barry controversy was
the sequel to what had appeared on pages 182-183 of
the October 1901 issue of the Canadian magazine:
Acknowledgement for
the Checkmate scans: the Cleveland Public
Library.
Below is the letter from Howell to Young as published
in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 22 September
1901, page 32:
Subsequent editions of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
included these items with the chess and poker
comments:
29 September 1901,
page 20
20 October 1901, page
23
None of this explains why K. Whyld indicated that the
words ‘theories of that vague and dreamy and
word-opulent character which abound in art, but are
unwholesome in chess’ were written by Howell and led
to the challenge.
The BCM item contained no reference to
Emanuel Lasker, yet it was the world champion who
wrote the following in his column on page 6 of the Manchester
Evening News, 13 November 1901:
Tailpiece: the Lasker column was mentioned by John
Roycroft on page 909 of the October
1996 issue of EG:
In an uncharacteristic mistake, the final section,
‘The Retort Courteous’, in the Manchester Evening
News was apparently misinterpreted by EG
as being Lasker’s answers to two correspondents.
12027.
EG
In any list of the greatest chess periodicals, EG,
founded by John Roycroft in 1965, commands a high
position. The run is freely available online.
12028.
Anderssen v Schallopp
Alan Smith (Stockport, England) reports that Chess
Archaeology provides a link to the third volume
(1887) of Brüderschaft. The periodical, edited
by Schallopp and Heyde, published, at intervals from
page 104 onwards, 14 games between Anderssen and
Schallopp, few of which are commonly seen today.
12029. A pawn
An item on page 153 of the July 1912 American
Chess Bulletin will be added to Chess
and
War:
‘An incident of the Boer War
P.A. Hatchard of Albany, NY favors us with the
following touching incident from the Boer war:
Following one of the many engagements that took
place in this war, when the usual rounds were made
to ascertain the number of the killed and wounded,
there was found placed on the knapsack of one of the
former a single chess pawn, the wounded man having
evidently withdrawn it from the box he carried and
placed it in that conspicuous position ere he
succumbed. Many papers at that period commented on
this simple act as being a silent interpreter of the
poor soldier’s thoughts, comparing himself to a
lowly pawn in the great and terrible game of war.’
12030.
Thousand Islands, 1897
This photograph was published on page 129 of the
August 1897 American Chess Magazine:
Larger
version and detail of the front row
We see no caption in the American Chess Magazine,
but as mentioned on page 408 of the first of two
volumes on Pillsbury by Nick Pope (see the end of our
article Harry
Nelson
Pillsbury), those seated nearest to the camera
are Borsodi, Hanham, Pillsbury, Lipschütz, Pieczonka,
Steinitz and Napier.
An Albert
Pieczonka webpage shows another photograph from
the same location.
Page 148 of the August 1897 American Chess
Magazine has the group portrait given in C.N.
5550, and the following is on page 149:
Larger
version
The above images have been provided by the Cleveland
Public Library.
12031.
Letters and numbers
Concerning Letters
and
Numbers in Chess Problems, Michael McDowell
(Westcliff-on-sea, England) writes:
‘The composition on pages 22-23 of A.C. White’s
1909 book Memories of My Chessboard
(Stroud, 1909) remains one of my favourite letter
problems, not least because there are no pieces
used simply to fill in the shape. He was probably
still 16 when he composed it.’
12032.
Auguste d’Orville
Auguste d’Orville (1804-64) was described on page 529
of Le Palamède, December 1847 as ‘le
maître des maîtres en fait de problèmes’, yet he
currently has a Wikipedia entry in only French,
German, Italian and Latvian.
The online availability of Some problems
by Auguste d’Orville by John Beasley
(1940-2024) is drawn to our attention by Michael
McDowell. See under ‘Problems’ in ‘Orthodox Chess’.
12033.
Ordinal numbers
When and where did the practice arise of referring to
world chess champions with ordinal numbers, at least
until the 1993 bifurcation? Kasparov is known as the
13th in the lineage, but did writers in 1972, for
instance, see any reason to describe Spassky and
Fischer as the 10th and 11th?
12034.
Images
If we received a nominal sum every time a scanned
image from chesshistory.com was misappropriated and
viewed on YouTube, Wikipedia, X/Twitter, Facebook,
chess.com, or other websites and outlets, we could
single-handedly offer to fund future world
championship matches.
See Copying.
12035. Samuel
Reshevsky’s birth-date
C.N. 11994 invited readers to imagine themselves as
the editor of a chess quotations anthology faced with
handling a remark attributed, in various wordings, to
both Tarrasch and Tartakower. Now, let readers see
themselves as the editor of a single-volume chess
encyclopaedia and having to decide what date of birth
to give in the entry on Samuel Reshevsky.
The natural course may be to follow Jeremy Gaige’s Chess
Personalia (Jefferson, 1987) and take the
precaution of also checking the privately circulated
1994 edition:
‘26 November 1911’ is in both editions, but the
encyclopaedist may worryingly recall an article by Andrew
Soltis on pages 10-11 of the August 1992 Chess
Life:
From C.N. 1943:
On page 10 of the August 1992 Chess Life
Andy Soltis wrote that Reshevsky had told a number
of chessplayers that he was born in 1909, and not
1911 as commonly believed.
Page 202 of Kings, Commoners and Knaves added
a footnote:
However, in an interview with Hanon Russell in
August 1991, Reshevsky insisted that he had indeed
been born in 1911.
C.N. 11199 reverted to the subject:
... a claim emerged in the early 1990s that Samuel
Reshevsky was born in 1909 and not, as commonly
accepted, in 1911.
The matter is discussed by Bruce Monson in an
article about Reshevsky on pages 46-55 of the 1/2019
New in Chess.
Here, we quote the start of Monson’s investigation of
the birth-date matter (page 51):
‘But in the 1990s other information started
percolating to the surface, no doubt in the wake of
Sammy’s death on 4 April 1992. In the August 1992 Chess
Life Andy Soltis revealed that Reshevsky had
told a number of chessplayers that he was actually
born in 1909 and not in 1911. Unfortunately, Soltis
did not identify these individuals. However, it is
plausible. Reshevsky was known on occasion to
inadvertently spill the beans about other “secrets”
from his past, such as the assertion that he had
never studied chess as a child, which is simply not
true, only to later try to shove the genie back in
the bottle.’
Difficult to summarize, Monson’s article is important
and should be read in full. It contains both
documentation and speculation, marked as such. One
image is a Łódź registration card dated 1919 which
indicates that Samuel Reshevsky was born in 1909 (with
no exact date). Using this and other materials and
inferences, Monson wrote on page 53 of the New in
Chess article:
‘Conclusion: Reshevsky’s birthday should – at the
bare minimum – be adjusted to 26 November 1909. And
in all probability his actual date of birth was 26
May 1909, adding an additional six months to his
age.’
What, then, should our hypothetical encyclopaedist
put in the Reshevsky entry?
Andrew Soltis has a new book out, a chess memoir
entitled Deadline Grandmaster (Jefferson,
2024). Page 246, which can be viewed online, includes
the following:
Some obvious questions:
1. ‘In Chess Life I wrote that Samuel
Reshevsky was born two years before he claimed.’
Where in Chess Life? Certainly not on page
10 of the August 1992 issue, where, as shown above,
Soltis mentioned the 1909 date merely as a
possibility derived from hearsay.
2. ‘I was accused of falsely maligning Reshevsky.’
By whom, where and when?
3. ‘His birth record surfaced more than a decade
later and confirmed I was right.’ Where and when?
And more than a decade later than what?
4. The Deadline Grandmaster text shown
above ends with a superscript 7. This leads to the
‘Chapter Notes’, where, on page 356, note 7 reads
(in full):
‘New in Chess, Issue 1, 1999.’
Why put that? Issue 1, 1999 of New in Chess
has nothing about Reshevsky’s date of birth.
Addition on 2 October 2024:
From Marek Soszynski (Birmingham, England):
‘I believe I was the first to discover and
publish evidence that Reshevsky was born in 1909,
which I presented in my book The Great
Reshevsky: Chess Prodigy and Old Warrior (Forward
Chess, 2018). Bruce Monson briefly references my
findings in his article, and explained to me at
the time that the brevity was due to editorial
cuts by New in Chess. My later book, Rare
and Ruthless Reshevsky (MarekMedia, 2023), does
not revisit the birthdate issue.’
12036.
Harry Golombek at university
In the English-language edition of Wikipedia, the
entry on Harry Golombek currently states, for unclear
reasons, that he studied ‘philology at King’s College,
London’.
Our feature
article on him quotes the following:
- ‘Golombek went from Wilson’s Grammar to London
University, though there is no record of his having
completed his degree.’ (William Hartston);
- ‘Golombek also began, but did not complete, a
general degree at King’s College, London, leaving in
1932.’ (W.D. Rubinstein);
- ‘Golombek enjoyed a superlative gift for conveying
the drama of battles on the chessboard, elevating
chess commentary to the literary level of the
Icelandic epic sagas which he had studied for his
Doctorate.’ (Raymond Keene).
We are grateful to Gemma Hollman (the Senior Archives
Assistant, Libraries & Collections at King’s
College, London), who has searched the student slip
books, the main source for student records, and has
sent us the entry for Harry Golombek:
Larger
version
It states that Golombek was registered for a Bachelor
of Arts degree (Latin, English, French and History)
from 1930 to 1932. He failed both years.
12037. Brad
Darrach v Bobby Fischer
Brad
Darrach and the Dark Side of Bobby Fischer
summarizes the dispute about Darrach’s book Bobby
Fischer vs. the Rest of the World (New York,
1974) on pages 299-300 of the May
1975 Chess Life & Review, a dispute
which concerned three pieces in the New York Times
Book Review:
-
13 October 1974, page 6: a review by D. Keith
Mano of the Brad Darrach and George Steiner books
on the 1972 Spassky v Fischer match;
-
17 November 1974, page 59: a letter to the Editor
from Burt Hochberg, which is reproduced in the May
1975 Chess Life & Review;
-
23 February 1975, pages 41-42: a letter to the
Editor from Brad Darrach in response to Hochberg.
Extracts were reproduced, and disputed, by
Hochberg in the May 1975 Chess Life &
Review.
See also the many references to Darrach indexed in Bobby
Fischer and His World by John Donaldson (Los
Angeles, 2020). These include, on page 493, a brief
comment that Darrach’s above-mentioned letter was ‘the
only public response by Darrach after the book’s
publication’.
Donaldson added:
‘Darrach shows no feelings of remorse in his
lengthy defense to charges by Frank Brady and Burt
Hochberg that he betrayed Bobby’s confidence and put
words in his mouth. Nor does he comment about
breaking his agreement with Fischer.’
It should, however, be noted that such charges did
not appear in the Hochberg letter to which Darrach was
replying.
We add here some significant passages in Darrach’s
letter (sent from Madison, CT, USA) in the New
York Times Book Review which were not quoted in
Chess Life & Review:
-
‘The world of chess is like the Chinese court in
the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. The
Emperor, Bobby Fischer, wanders about in a strange
condition but nobody dares to say what everybody
can see. In private, chess people tell grotesque
or funny stories about their encounters with Mr
Fischer; in public, they butter him up. “We don’t
dare to offend Bobby”, one chess official told me.
“He might quit the game, and chess without Bobby
would be about as popular as tiddlywinks.”’
-
‘I take it Mr Hochberg thinks the subhumanity is
overstressed in the book. I can only say it was
overstressed in the man I wrote about.’
-
‘But Mr Hochberg will say I imply interpretations
and judgements of Mr Fischer in my choice of
incidents. I can only say I tried to let the
events speak for themselves. If I have anywhere
redressed reality, it is only to omit dozens of
scenes which, in aggregate, would have made Mr
Fischer seem weird beyond belief – as in fact he
sometimes was.’
-
‘During the 13 months before the Reykjavik match,
on assignments from Life Magazine, I
visited Bobby, on the average, twice a week,
usually for five or six hours at a stretch;
sometimes I saw him every day for eight or ten
days in a row; when I did not see him we spoke by
telephone sometimes five or six times a week. I
saw him in New York, in Buenos Aires, at his
training camp in the Catskills. I saw him in a
hundred moods and circumstances – happily scoffing
up platefuls of Chinese food, terrified in the
back seat of a small plane, red-eyed with rage as
he kicked a photographer in the shins, laughing as
he romped with a collie in the open pampas,
guffawing at Red Skelton on TV in a New York hotel
room, casually playing fast chess in an East Side
steak house as he tunneled into a two-inch thick
New York Cut, lying limp with a bad cold in a
stuffy little cell at Grossinger’s.
In Iceland, as the book makes clear, I saw him
every day and often most of the night for more
than two months.’
-
‘If my “viewpoint is severely limited” I’d like
to see the man who could stick with Mr Fischer
long enough to develop a broader one.’
-
‘Mr Hochberg is apparently interested in what the
match revealed about Mr Fischer’s chess; I am more
interested in what the match revealed about Mr
Fischer.
It revealed, among other things, such murderous
force that I find myself smiling at Mr Hochberg’s
attempts to protect Mr Fischer from my book. The
only thing Mr Fischer needs to be protected from
is Mr Fischer. Drifting in fantasies, chased by
terrors, rigidified by pride, impelled to
self-destruction, he will be very lucky if he can
survive his own character long enough to defend
his title against Anatoly Karpov. If he can beat
that truly formidable young Russian, we may begin
to believe he belongs with the supreme masters,
Steinitz and Lasker and Botvinnik, who attained
the pinnacle and held it. If he welshes on the
match he will be remembered as a half-mad maverick
who could produce great games and even great
years, but lacked the will and the principle to
sustain a great career.’
12038. Davide
Nastasio (C.N. 11979)
Below is one of the examples of copying
recorded in C.N. 11979:
The ChessBase
contributor
Davide Nastasio has been lifting a huge number
of C.N. photographs (about 80 in the past week
alone), without credit, acknowledgement or
authorization, for his personal X/Twitter page.
Despite that item, posted on 28 January 2024, Mr
Nastasio has refused to stop his misappropriation.
Indeed, on a single recent day, 30 September 2024, he
put online over 20 of our images.
Addition on 22 October 2024:
ChessBase has informed us that Davide Nastasio is now
a former ChessBase author.
12039. Verendel
It is always a pleasure to acknowledge chess
publishers with high production standards. A newcomer
is Verendel
Publishing:
12040.
Lady Jane Carew
One of the quotes under the heading ‘Longevity’ in
C.N. 4789 was from page 479 of the December 1901 BCM:
‘Death of Centenarian Lady Chessplayer. – The Liverpool
Daily
Post of 15 November records the death of Jane
Lady Carew, at the age of 104. The deceased lady was
the grandmother of the present Lord Carew. She was
married the year after Waterloo, and had been a
widow nearly 50 years. Her active memory included
the whole of the reigns of George IV, William IV and
Victoria, the period during which George III could
not control the affairs of Great Britain and, of
course, the opening of the present era. ... Until
she had passed her 100th birthday she played a
capital game of chess ...’
From John Townsend (Wokingham, England):
‘“It is said that the oldest Chess-player
in the world is Dowager Lady Carew, who was born
in 1798.”
This uncorroborated statement appeared on page
684 of Digest: Review of Reviews
Incorporating The Literary Digest, in 1901, the
year of her death. Various writers mention that
Lady Jane Carew was a strong chessplayer. One
complimentary description appeared in the Cheltenham
Examiner (20 November 1901, page 6):
“In middle age she was, for a lady, an
exceptionally strong player.”
A local newspaper, the Waterford Standard
(16 November 1901, page 3), was a little more
restrained, referring to her as “formerly a chess
player of more than average strength”.
In an article in the Dublin Evening Herald
(16 November 1901, page 9) J.A. Porterfield Rynd
mentioned Lady Carew’s recollections on the
subject of slow play:
“During the last 50 years of her life she had
seen in force the sand-glass and clock mechanism
for regulating the speed of moving; and for the
antecedent period the old lady had many quaint
stories recounting the immoderate slowness of
ancient moving. From the case of a man who, in
desperate condition consumed hours and days over a
single move, and, when asked why he didn’t move,
replied: “Because I should lose” – to the case of
St Amant tiring out Staunton (the English
slow-coach), she seemed to remember almost every
notable instance of excessive slowness. She had,
of course, met examples of the opposite kind like
that of our still lamented Mr Thos. P. Mason whose
average time for a game was under five minutes.”
The source of Lady Carew’s information is not
known. Staunton’s second, Lieutenant Harry Wilson,
claimed to have measured the length of the
players’ cogitations and found St Amant the
slower. (See, for example, Wilson’s letter to the
Chess Player’s Chronicle, volume 5, 1845,
pages 148-149.) It is unusual to read of St Amant
“tiring out Staunton”, especially since the latter
won the match by no small margin. One wonders if
she or the author may have confused St Amant with
Elijah
Williams, the “Bristol sloth” who, according
to one report, “wore out Staunton”.
Lady Jane Carew made her own special
contribution to longevity by living in three
centuries. According to G.E. Cokayne’s The
Complete Peerage, 1910-1959, which is widely
regarded as the most accurate of the peerage
works, and certainly the most voluminous (13
volumes in 14), she was born during the month of
December 1798 and died on 12 November 1901. Thus,
she attained the advanced age of 102, and not 103
or 104, as are sometimes incorrectly claimed. Yet
a record of her baptism or birth in a parish
register remains to be discovered.
Jane Catherine Cliffe came of military stock on
both sides, being the daughter of Major Anthony
Cliffe, of Ross, and Frances Deane, the daughter
of Colonel Joseph Deane; they had been married on
16 December 1795. After her death, the Adelaide
Observer of 16 November 1901 (page 26) reported
as follows:
“During the insurrection in Ireland in 1798, the
year of Lady Carew’s birth, her father, Mjr
Cliffe, remained to take his part in quelling it,
while his wife and father fled to England –
Haverfordwest – where the baby was born.”
An Australian writer may perhaps be excused for
placing Haverfordwest (Wales) in England, and the
statement is otherwise correct. Although Holyhead
is given as her birthplace in some sources,
Haverfordwest is confirmed as her native place by
a letter accompanying Biographical notes on
Lady Jane Carew (1798-1901) made by C. Davies
Gilbert, of Trelissick, her grandson, 1901. Both
items are deposited at the Cornwall Record Office
(ref. DG/148/1 & 2).
Her married name became Carew when she tied the
knot with Robert Shapland Carew, son of Robert
Shapland Carew and Anne Pigott, on 16 November
1816 and, after her husband was elevated to the
peerage as first Baron Carew on 13 June 1834, she
was styled Baroness Carew. They had four children
together, including the second Baron Carew, Robert
Shapland Carew. She became the Dowager Lady Carew
after her husband’s death in 1856.
For many decades, including most of her
widowhood, she resided at Woodstown, in the county
of Waterford. This was particularly close to
Dunmore, in the Bay of Waterford, which, in an
article about chess in Ireland, Howard Staunton
had identified as “ ... the only spot where real
Chess could be met with ...” (Chess Player’s
Chronicle, volume 4, 1844, page 147), and, even
though she was not mentioned by name, it seems
likely that this circle of players was familiar to
her. However, Staunton added that, after the
departure of Captain Evans, the circle “fell to
pieces and was dispersed”. An important product of
the school was Sir John Blunden, who became one of
the strongest amateur players in Ireland. Charles
French Smith, opponent and contemporary of H.E.
Bird, was born at Waterford, circa 1828,
according to the 1851 census.
The Dublin Evening Mail of 13 November
1901 (page 2) indicates that another focus of her
attention was local education, “to which she was a
liberal contributor, several schools in her
neighbourhood being maintained by her assistance”.
On 15 January 1898 the Wicklow People
(page 5) noted that, although she had been
confined to her room for some years past, she was
in excellent health, read small print without the
aid of spectacles, and played “a game of chess
every evening before going to bed”.
A writer in Notes and Queries (Series 9,
volume X, 2 August 1902, page 92) included the
following note on Carew pronunciation:
“I asked the Hon. Mrs P. B. (daughter of the late
centenarian Lady Jane Carew ... who did not dance
at the Waterloo ball, and whose parents fled to
Haverfordwest, not Holyhead, as the newspapers
stated) how she pronounced her family name, and
she rendered it rather a trisyllable, in accord
with the ancient spelling in the public records –
Cariou, temp. Hen. II; Karrieu, temp.
Ric. I.; Carrio, temp. John; and Karreu, temp.
Ed. I.”
I would like to acknowledge with thanks the help
received from Brian Denman, of Sussex, England,
who kindly pointed out to me the existence of
several of the newspaper articles and Biographical
notes on Lady Jane Carew (1798-1901).’
12041. The
initiative
Donald Whitlock (Solihull, England) raises the
subject of the initiative in chess, and we seek early
appearances of the term, with a quest for the best
definition.
‘The player who completes his development first is
said to have the initiative, because he is thus able
to start making blunders while his opponent is still
occupied in bringing out his men’ is a remark given in
C.N. 1858 from page 14 of “Among These Mates”
by Chielamangus
(Sydney, 1939).
With that out of the way, we add that in a lecture
at the Club de Comunicaciones de Prado in Cuba on 25
May 1932 Capablanca said:
‘In general, when developing his game White should
aim to maintain the initiative, for the initiative
is White’s only advantage in having the first move.
It should not be abandoned unless compensation is
obtained. This compensation may be a pawn, the
smallest material gain, or it may be an extremely
strong position which safeguards the game against
the opponent’s attack, however strong. In other
cases White must maintain the initiative, which
means maintain the attack. Black, for his part,
must, so to term it, restrict himself to marking
time, trying to take the initiative in his turn. The
outcome of the game depends on it because the player
who calls the tune has all the advantages and,
except if he makes a mistake, all the winning
chances.’
‘Initiative’ is the same word in English, French and
German, which should assist in finding early
occurrences. From page 45 of Kieseritzky’s book Cinquante
parties jouées au Cercle des Echecs et au Café de la
Régence (Paris, 1846):
‘Les Noirs commencent l’attaque, parce que les
Blancs n’ont pas pris l’initiative.’
12042.
Capablanca’s Endgame Technique
In a welcome initiative, New in Chess is
ensuring that potential buyers of Capablanca’s
Endgame Technique by Alex Colovic will not
expect historical accuracy. Two helpful measures have
been to post online not only the Preface,
with its many elementary errors (including two on page
9 with ‘He died on 7 March 1942 at the age of 54’),
but also a self-sabotaging podcast
interview.
12043.
Figurehead romanticism
Much writing on chess history is wishful thinking or
name-dropping, but careful authors sidestep the trap
of what we propose to call ‘figurehead romanticism’.
This includes, for example, claims or assumptions that
most of the contents of Lasker’s Chess Magazine
and Capablanca-Magazine were written by Lasker
and Capablanca themselves. (The case of the International
Chess Magazine is different, since Steinitz
specified that it was largely a solo enterprise.)
A similar practice was mentioned in C.N. 8827:
attributing a book by Tartakower and du Mont to
Tartakower only. When there is assisted authorship
(such as Kasparov books involving Donald Trelford or
Mig Greengard, both of whom receive a ‘with’ credit),
some writers need no second bidding to prefer without;
they mention Kasparov alone. We can see a case for
that in brief bibliographies, but not in reviews or
discussions of the book.
12044. Miron
James Hazeltine
Further to the mention of Brevity and Brilliancy
in Chess by M.J. Hazeltine (New York, 1866) in
our feature article on Charles
Henry Stanley, the Cleveland Public Library has
provided the following from one of its copies of the
book:
12045.
John William Showalter (C.N. 4484)
We are also grateful to the Cleveland Public Library
for the obituary of Jackson Whipps Showalter’s
brother, John William, on page 312 of the January 1899
American Chess Magazine:
12046.
Jackson Whipps Showalter
C.N.s 5706, 6972, 11074 and 11719 have discussed,
inconclusively, J.W. Showalter’s year of birth. From
C.N. 5706 (posted on 9 August 2008):
Kevin Marchese (Canal Winchester, OH, USA) informs
us that he is writing a book on Jackson Whipps
Showalter, with the assistance of some of the
master’s relatives, and that the work will show that
Showalter was born on 5 February 1859 (and not 5
February 1860, as previously believed). His exact
place of birth still requires investigation.
Nothing much more has been made available to C.N.,
and it is unclear why the English-language Wikipedia
article on Showalter and his World
Chess Hall of Fame page state unequivocally and
without evidence that he was born in 1859. The entry
for Showalter in Jeremy Gaige’s 1994 edition of Chess
Personalia is reproduced in C.N. 11719. It
states that Showalter was born in Minerva, KY on 5
February 1860.
We have now received the following from John Townsend
(Wokingham, England):
‘When Jackson Whipps Showalter died on 5
February 1935 in Scott County, Kentucky, a death
certificate was issued, an image of which can be
viewed on familysearch.org, whose help is
acknowledged with thanks. The date of birth on the
certificate, in Mason County, Kentucky, was
entered as 5 February 1860. He was a farmer, aged
75, and the cause of death was “Carcinoma of
Rectum”. His parents were named as Freeman
Showalter (born in Pennsylvania) and Margaret R.
Whipps (born in Mason County, Kentucky).
In the United States Census of 1900, in Scott
County, Kentucky, he is named as J.W. Showalter.
Misidentification is impossible because he is
described as a “chess player”, born in Kentucky.
The 1900 census specified the month and year of
birth: February 1860. His approximate age was
stated to be 40. His father, B.F. Showalter, was
still alive then, aged 89, born in Pennsylvania,
and his father was born in Virginia.
These two primary sources from official documents
are consistent.
Other censuses give only the approximate age, and
allowance should be made for a year or two either
side. Showalter has not been found in the 1860 or
1890 censuses. The following table summarizes the
age information traced in the various census
returns:
1860: Not found
1870: Age 11
1880: Age21
1890: Not found
1900: Born February 1860, age 40
1910: Age 50
1920: Age 60
1930: Age 71.
Regarding Kentucky births, information on
ancestry.com, whose help is also acknowledged with
thanks, suggests that two sons of the
chessplayer’s father and mother were born at
Bracken, Kentucky. Neither can be identified as
Jackson Whipps Showalter – at least, not at this
stage. One is “A.J. Showalter”, while the other
child is not named, both having been born alive.
The dates of these appear on ancestry.com as
February 1859 and February 1858 respectively.
However, the years do not seem to be visible as
part of the birth-dates, familysearch.org giving
February 1860 and February 1859 for the same two
births. On ancestry.com I found lists of the years
and counties covered, including those for Bracken:
Bracken: 1854-59, 1861, 1875-76, etc.
Mason: 1855-59, 1861, 1874, etc.
This suggests that there is a gap in the record
indexes for 1860, the most likely year of birth of
Jackson Whipps Showalter (according to the two
primary sources discussed above).
A secondary source, the Chess Budget, 11
November 1925, pages 44-45, was quoted in C.N.
11719 as supporting the birth-date of 5 February
1860.
In conclusion, there is strong evidence that
Jackson Whipps Showalter was born on 5 February
1860. If there is a case for 5 February 1859, let
us see the details of the evidence.’
See also the feature article Jackson
Whipps Showalter, posted on 19 October 2024.
12047.
Grimshaw v Steinitz
ChessBase has a custom of undiscerningly reproducing,
with agreement, articles from the UK magazine CHESS,
the latest
case being a piece by Neil Hickman (CHESS,
October 2024, pages 38-40). Much of it reads like an
uncredited boiling-down of our feature article Grimshaw
v
Steinitz.
12048.
Raymond Keene
On 13 October 2024 we posted this quiz question in Cuttings:
What percentage of the body of Raymond Keene’s
contribution to ‘TheArticle’ on 13 October 2024 is
more or less a chunk copied from his 29 May 2021
piece?
The answer is 57%.
That case of sui-copying stands in Cuttings alongside
instances of plagiarism:
On 1 June 2024 we pointed out on the feedback
form on the website of ‘TheArticle’ that
Raymond Keene’s article
on
Rhoda A. Bowles ‘copies a huge amount of text
from someone else’s article
of
five years ago. The copying even includes
‘each others houses’ instead of ‘each other’s
houses’.’
Despite that ransacking by Mr Keene of a chess.com
article and appropriation from other online sources,
the BCM considered the Rhoda A. Bowles article
worthy of nine pages and front-cover status in its
July 2024 issue:
The nine pages are shown below, with red diagonal
lines added by us to mark those parts, all uncredited,
that anyone could readily copy-paste from other
people’s work available online. We have not marked the
last two pages, which quote texts by Jacqueline Eales
and Susan Polgar.
The pages are shown here in a small format, in order
to protect the copyright of Raymond Keene, OBE,
Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.
12049. Brad
Darrach v Bobby Fischer (C.N. 12037)
John Donaldson (Berkeley, CA, USA) has sent us a copy
of a telegram from Brad Darrach to Bobby Fischer:
Larger
version
‘Robert J. Fischer
Hotel Loftleidir
Reykjavik, Iceland
Dear Bobby,
I want to thank you for the series of exclusive
interviews I have had with you, and, through your
good offices, with your team members, during the
past several months.
As we have discussed, I affirm my agreement that I
will not use this material for a book or for any
magazine article without first obtaining your
written approval. Of course, my present series of
articles for Life Magazine is exempted from the need
for this prior approval.
I look forward to a long and close relationship
with you.
Sincerely,
Brad Darrach’
The text was given on page 492 of our correspondent’s
book Bobby Fischer and His World (Los Angeles,
2020), introduced as follows:
‘Darrach’s duplicity is documented in a telegram
sent during the match.’
Wanted: confirmation of the exact date on which
Darrach sent it.
Addition on 2 November 2024:
It seems likely to us that the telegram was sent on 4
September 1972, a tentative conclusion also reached by
Rudy Bloemhard (Apeldoorn, the Netherlands):
See too Brad
Darrach and the Dark Side of Bobby Fischer.
12050.
W.H. Cozens
C.N. 11208 described W.H.
Cozens as ‘one of the greatest of all chess book
reviewers’, and, by way of example, a glimpse is given
here of his contribution on pages 204-205 of the May
1973 BCM, where he examined Attack and
Defence in Modern Chess Tactics by Pachman and Schönheit
der Kombination by Golz and Keres.
‘Here are two books concerned with the real meat of
chess – the middle game’, he began, and then briefly
traced the background of each work, including the
following:
‘But the reader will be wanting to know how much is
Golz and how much Keres. The answer is that about
90% is Kurt Richter! He died three years ago but the
style remains unmistakable; his fans (who are many
and by no means confined to Germany) will be
delighted to have this last unexpected collection of
his work. Golz has lovingly put together a mass of
material and arranged it in a loose sequence to form
a highly un-systematic course in chess
tactics. Keres’ contribution is a 12-page
appreciative essay on Richter – his specialities in
the openings, his achievements over the board and
his style of annotation.’
Cozens then compared Pachman and Richter:
‘Pachman is a pedagogue – one of the greatest: he
understands chess. Richter is an enthusiast: he
loves chess. Pachman marshals his material and
teaches us point by point. Richter merely revels in
it. He rambles: one thing reminds him of another and
then another, each more remarkable than the one
before.’
And, from the next paragraph:
‘In short, Pachman is primarily a teacher who, like
all good teachers, is sometimes entertaining;
whereas Richter is essentially an entertainer who,
almost incidentally, contrives to be very
instructive.’
After further information about the books’ content
and layout, Cozens concluded:
‘If the present reviewer has given the impression
that he prefers Richter he pleads guilty: but
hastens to add that the choice must be a very
personal one, depending on why you play chess
anyway. Because you are good at it? Because you want
to be better at it? Or just because you are
hopelessly in love with it?’
12051.
ISM
The term ‘intermediate source misattribution’ was
proposed in C.N. 12017 for the practice whereby
‘Writer A makes a significant discovery in a
100-year-old newspaper and presents the information
with a complete source; Writer B repeats the
information but specifies only the 100-year-old
source, as if he had discovered it himself’.
An example from a dissertation
(see also C.N. 9294) for the University of California,
Santa Cruz, by Michael A. Hudson, Storming
Fortresses: a Political History of Chess in the
Soviet Union, 1917-1948:
As the academic approvers pored over page 162 (shown
below), they were perhaps impressed that the breadth
and depth of Michael A. Hudson’s research into chess
in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1948 even led him to
an obscure Cuban publication from the mid-1920s and
that, to help them pore more easily, he had even
favoured them with an English version:
Alert academic approvers might have realized that, in
reality, everything was within effortless clicking
distance for Michael A. Hudson at Capablanca
on
Moscow, 1925. Our own English translation, first
published in 1985, is adopted by him word for word,
without any acknowledgement or other mention.
They might also have caught Michael A. Hudson’s use
of the term ‘newspaper’ to describe the Revista
Bimestre Cubana when, as the title itself
indicates, it was a magazine published every two
months.
12052. Ne5
against the French Defence
1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Nd7 5 Nf3 Ngf6 6
Nxf6+ Nxf6:
This opening occurred in Capablanca v Blanco, Havana,
1913, and White played 7 Ne5.
On page 26 of his tournament book, published the same
year, Capablanca described the knight move as new and
strong:
‘Nuevo, pero a mi juicio un golpe contundente
para el negro que se ve imposibilitado de
desarrollar su juego.’
In Chess Fundamentals (London, 1921) the
Cuban wrote of 7 Ne5:
‘This move was first shown to me by the talented
Venezuelan amateur, M. Ayala. The object is to
prevent the development of Black’s queen’s bishop
via QKt2, after P-QKt3, which is Black’s usual
development in this variation. Generally it is bad
to move the same piece twice in an opening before
the other pieces are out, and the violation of that
principle is the only objection that can be made to
this move, which otherwise has everything to
recommend it.’
Information is sought on Ayala. Page 193 of the 2015
McFarland edition of Miguel A. Sánchez’s work on
Capablanca has an unsourced, unindexed reference to ‘a
lesser known player such as the Venezuelan Martin
Ayala’, who was named among those who ‘told the Cuban
about new variations’.
Databases show that 7 Ne5 had been played before the
Capablanca v Blanco game, and by Capablanca himself in
a simultaneous game against R.H. Ramsey in
Philadelphia on 6 January 1910:
1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Nd7 5 Nf3 Ngf6 6
Nxf6+ Nxf6 7 Ne5 Bd6 8 f4 O-O 9 Be3 Nd5 10 Bd2 c5 11
c3 cxd4 12 cxd4 b6 13 Bd3 Bb7 14 O-O Nf6 15 Bc3 Rc8 16
Qe2 Qe7 17 f5 Bd5 18 fxe6 fxe6 19 Rae1 Bb4 20 Qe3 Bxa2
21 Qh3 g6 22 Bxg6 Bxc3 23 bxc3 hxg6 24 Nxg6 Qg7 25
Nxf8 Rxf8 26 Rf3 Qh7 27 Qg3+ Qg7 28 Qe5 Nd7 29 Qxg7+
Kxg7 30 Rxf8 Nxf8 31 Ra1 Bc4 32 Rxa7+ Kg6 33 Kf2 Nh7
34 Ke3 Nf6 35 Kf4 Nd5+ 36 Ke5 Nxc3 37 g4 b5 38 h4 b4
39 Rc7 Bd5 40 Kf4 b3 41 h5+ Kh6 42 g5+ Kxh5 43 g6 b2
44 g7 b1(Q) 45 White resigns.
The game was published in James Elverson’s chess
column on page 7 of the magazine section of the Philadelphia
Inquirer of 23 January 1910:
Larger
version
On Decoration Day, at the end of May 1909, 7 Ne5 was
played in the board-one game between A.S. Meyer and
A.K. Robinson in the match in Philadelphia between the
Manhattan and Franklin chess clubs (American Chess
Bulletin, July 1909, page 153).
Alekhine referred to Capablanca and Ne5 on page 203
of Gran Ajedrez (Madrid, 1947):
‘La jugada de Capablanca, 8 C5R, que ha estado
de moda durante un cuarto de siglo, puede
refutarse con 8...D4D! (el descubrimiento de
Spielmann). Pero el blanco no necesita hacer tan
exagerados esfuerzos para mantener la presión.
Además de la jugada del texto, podría jugar 8 P3A,
evitando por el momento la siguiente maniobra del
negro.’
See also page 59 of 107 Great Chess Battles
by A. Alekhine (Oxford, 1980). He was annotating the
game Yanofsky v Dulanto from the 1939 International
Team Tournament in Buenos Aires, but his reference to
Capablanca and Spielmann was made in a position that
occurred after 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 Bg5 dxe4 5
Nxe4 Nbd7 6 Nf3 Be7 7 Nxf6+ Nxf6 ...
... and had not arisen in the Capablanca v Blanco
game, which, as shown earlier, reached this position:
Yanofsky v Dulanto had the additional moves 4 Bg5 and
6...Be7.
Regarding the value of 8 Ne5 and 7 Ne5 in the
respective positions, Richard Forster (Winterthur,
Switzerland) writes:
‘With bishops on g5/e7: 8 Ne5 is only very
rarely seen and does not score well. The reply
8...Qd5 is the third or fourth choice of the
computer. It was seen in two out of 26 games in my
Megabase and should be good enough to equalize.
With bishops on c1/f8: 7 Ne5 is not the most
popular but scores rather well (as do other moves)
and has been used by Nepomniachtchi in 2023 and
2024. The reply 7...Qd5 is seldom played and is
not among the computer’s top choices. It indicates
that 8 Be2 gives White an advantage.’
As regards Spielmann’s connection with ...Qd5 in the
French Defence, below is the first part of Euwe’s
annotations to Spielmann v Petrov, Margate, 1938,
published on pages 311-313 of CHESS, 14 May
1938:
From page 313:
Larger
version
The scans from CHESS have been provided by
the Cleveland Public Library.
Addition on 26 October 2024:
Euwe stated in CHESS that at Margate (April
1938) Spielmann rejected 7 Ne5 on account of 7...Qd5,
but Leonard Barden (London) points out to us that in
June 1938 Spielmann did play 7 Ne5, against Sir George
Thomas in the Noordwijk tournament. The game began 1
e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Nd7 5 Nf3 Ngf6 6 Nxf6+
Nxf6 7 Ne5 Be7.
It was in the ninth round on 21 June 1938, as shown
by, for instance, pages 34-35 of the Schaakwereld
book on Noordwijk, 1938, published that year, and
pages 76 and 79 of the (1971) volume in the Lachaga
series.
12053.
Exchange and trade
The French Defence is one of many openings with an
‘Exchange Variation’, and although the ungraceful term
‘Trade Variation’ may not catch on, ‘trade’ as a noun
or verb is well established. Non-American
traditionalists may instinctively avoid using ‘to
trade pawns’ or ‘a rook trade’, perhaps even
nostalgically recalling a note on page 63 of the
February 1989 BCM in a game between Deep
Thought and Walter Browne, where White played 19 Bh6:
‘Irresolution; presumably the idea was that Black
would be forced to “trade” bishops at c6, to use a
term Walter Browne and many US players like to use.’
After 19...Re8 20 Bd2 Na5 21 Ba4 Qd5 the BCM
commented chipperly:
‘No trade of my beautiful bishop, thank you!’
Browne annotated his win on page 24 of the March 1989
Chess Life.
The only chess-related citation for ‘to trade’ in the
online Oxford
English Dictionary is inaccurate:
Early cases of winning or losing ‘the exchange’ were
discussed in C.N.s 7208, 7211 and 7226. Below is the
entry in the online Oxford English Dictionary:
From page 230 of The Game of Chess by S.
Tarrasch (London, 1935):
‘But by exchanging the weaker knight for the
stronger bishop, Black has gained a slight material
or dynamic advantage. He has, as I often jokingly
express it, won the “minor exchange”.’
The original text on pages 325-326 of Das
Schachspiel (Berlin, 1931):
‘Aber Schwarz hat durch den Tausch des
schwächeren Springers gegen den stärkeren Läufer
einen kleinen materiellen oder wenigstens
dynamischen Vorteil erlangt, er hat, wie ich mich
scherzhaft auszudrücken pflege, die “kleine
Qualität” gewonnen.’
The English edition, by G.E. Smith and T.G. Bone, did
well to choose the word ‘minor’.
As regards French, ‘la petite qualité’ was
used by Tartakower on page 77 of Bréviaire des
échecs (Paris, 1934), in a sentence easy to
misconstrue:
‘Bien que théoriquement un Fou et un Cavalier
soient de force égale, il y a des connaisseurs qui
insistent sur la longue portée du Fou et
prétendent qu'il représente en comparaison avec un
Cavalier “la petite qualité”.’
The translator of the English edition, A Breviary
of Chess (London, 1937), was J. du Mont, and
page 54 accurately gave:
‘Theoretically a knight is equal to a bishop; but
some experts maintain that, owing to its longer
range, to possess a bishop against a knight is to
have won the “minor exchange”.’
12054.
Sacrifices
Browsing in the online Oxford English Dictionary,
we came to the noun ‘sac’, with this as the entry’s
oldest citation:
‘A careful study of the position after the “sac”
shows that White will win the opponent’s queen in
return.’
That was on page 249 of the November 1965 Chess
Life, the writer being Erich W. Marchand. For
the verb, Google
Books provides an old example, from page 104 of
the June 1901 Checkmate. In the annotations to
a Greco Counter-Gambit game between Stout and
Mlotkowski in Philadelphia, ‘in the Mercantile Library
cup tournament now in progress’, this position arose:
After 14 Nxf6+ Qxf6 the note reads:
‘Sacking pawn for development.’
Acknowledgement for
the scan: Cleveland Public Library
In C.N. 415 W.H.
Cozens wrote:
‘The verb to sac is with us; the
participle sacing still gives one a jolt.’
That was in 1983. As also shown in Chess
and the English Language, C.N. 1694 quoted from
page 66 of Playing to Win by James Plaskett
(London, 1988):
‘For the next half-dozen moves a cardinal
consideration is the efficacy of possible
“sacs-back” on d5.’
12055. To fidate
The online OED’s entry for the term ‘to
fidate’ suggests the influence of H.J.R.
Murray over the chess content:
‘Fidated’ has an entry in the 1984 and 1992 editions
of the Oxford Companion to Chess and is being
added to Unusual
Chess Words.
12056.
Horrwitz, Horwitz, Harrwitz, Horowitz ...?
Our latest feature article is Raking
Bishops.
12057. Ayala
(C.N. 12052)
Regarding the player named Ayala mentioned by
Capablanca in Chess Fundamentals, Eduardo
Bauzá Mercére (New York, NY, USA) notes page 42 of the
February 1909 American Chess Bulletin:
Acknowledgement for
the above images: Cleveland Public Library
Mr Bauzá Mercére has also provided the following
cuttings about Martín Ayala:
Brooklyn Daily
Eagle, 27 January 1909, page 9
Brooklyn Daily
Eagle, 31 January 1909, section 2, page 6
Brooklyn Daily
Eagle, 4 February 1909, page 11
12058.
First problem
Michael McDowell (Westcliff-on-sea, England) draws
attention to his article on pages 418-419 of The
Problemist, July 2008, in which he referred to
the statement in American
Chess-Nuts by E.B. Cook, W.R. Henry and
C.A. Gilberg (New York, 1868) that a composition by C.H.
Stanley (a self-mate in four) was the first
chess problem printed in America (see also page v). It
appeared in the first chess column, in Spirit of
the Times dated 1
March 1845.
From American
Chess-Nuts, page 365
12059. G.H.D. Gossip
On 29 October 2024 our feature
article on Gossip was augmented by John Townsend
with a note on Gossip’s death and on the spelling of
one of his forenames (Hatfield or Hatfeild?). The
‘normal’ spelling (i.e. ie) was seen until the
mid-1980s, when evidence grew in favour of ‘Hatfeild’.
However, Mr Townsend’s note shows a mixed picture, and
at present the safest full form may be ‘George
Hatfeild/Hatfield Dingley Gossip’.
A detail of Gossip from the photograph (New York,
1893) shown in C.N. 9462:
12060. Media
coverage
Having previously asked readers to imagine themselves
as the editor of a chess quotations book (C.N. 11994)
and of a single-volume chess encyclopaedia (C.N.
12035), we now invite them to assume the role of a
mainstream journalist commissioned to produce a chess
article on recent allegations of online cheating.
Where to look for the essentials? Where to find output
in which opinions, biased or not, do not leap-frog
over facts?
The journalist may dive in at some random point
proposed by Google, only to find barely comprehensible
arguments deployed with links to barely comprehensible
X/Twitter posts or YouTube videos, as various parties
and partisans compete with declarations,
interrogations, accusations and insinuations. But
where are a placid, objectively formulated overview
and chronology of how any given point was reached? In
brief, where is the journalism?
This is not new. Nearly a decade ago, Nigel
Short wrote in New
in Chess about the differences between
male and female chessplayers, and an outcry ensued,
unhurriedly. If a journalist today seeks a reminder of
the case, where to go? Should Google prove unhelpful,
it may seem sensible to turn to a ‘standard’ source
such as the Wikipedia
entry on Short, but that fails too. It has 70
words on the affair and three endnotes, all three
being links to ‘outcry’ articles by non-specialist
writers in three UK newspapers, the Independent,
the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph;
all three articles, as it happens, were dated 20 April
2015. The New in Chess piece had been
published about a month previously.
Wikipedia does not relate what Short had written in New
in Chess, even though the full
text was reproduced by ChessBase not long after
the tumult began, and is still there. Nor does
Wikipedia display awareness of Short’s follow-up
article in New in Chess, which was, in part, a
reply to the assertions in the three UK newspapers.
The media had gorged themselves and, in terms of
actual arguments, the second New in Chess
article was, so to speak, even more ignored than the
first one. Vive l’indifférence.
That was the shallow treatment of a controversy in
2015, and one looks in vain, even today, for a plain,
factual account of it. How will the media of 2024 be
judged in future years for their handling of the
present cheating cacophony? Who will emerge with
honour for showing care over facts and respect for
fair play? Who will work hard to clarify the issues
for the public’s benefit? And when will the process
start?
Addition on 14 November 2024:
An example of how the public record may be skewed is
provided by the reaction, or lack thereof, to Nigel
Short’s follow-up article (‘A Beautiful Minefield’) on
pages 36-37 of the 4/2015 New in Chess, where
he wrote, for instance:
‘On 20 April an article appeared in The Daily
Telegraph entitled “Nigel Short: Girls Just
Don’t Have the Brains to Play Chess”. Never mind the
fact I didn’t say that, it was a catchy headline to
set me up as a misogynist pantomime villain. In
extraordinary rapid succession came a whole series
of similar articles, in The Guardian, The
Times, The Independent, many with
totally fabricated quotes and grotesque distortions
– such as the Daily Mail’s “Women aren’t
smart enough to play chess because the game requires
logical thinking, says British Grandmaster”, despite
me having said nothing at all about logic.’
C.N. 9344 quoted that rebuttal, but where else can it
be found on the Internet? We see only one place, at
the English Chess Forum, where, on 18 December 2020,
Short reproduced the full
text of ‘A Beautiful Minefield’.
12061. The
Carlsbad pawn formation
Much information is available online about early
specimens of the Carlsbad pawn formation (e.g.
Pillsbury-Showalter, fifth match-game, 1898, and three
games played at Carlsbad, 1923: Grünfeld v Bernstein,
Teichmann v Bogoljubow and Maróczy v Spielmann), but
when was that pawn structure first identified with the
name ‘Carlsbad’? A glib answer would be ‘shortly after
Carlsbad, 1923 or later on in the writings of
Nimzowitsch or Kmoch’, but citations are lacking.
From page 9 of Middlegame Strategy with the
Carlsbad Pawn Structure by Robert Leininger
(Dallas, 1997):
And from page 14:
Acknowledgement for
the above images: Cleveland Public Library
Wanted: more details about the origins of the term
‘Carlsbad pawn formation’, whether in the Soviet
Union/Russia or elsewhere.
12062.
The minority attack
Many games with the Carlsbad pawn formation lead to a
‘minority attack’, another term whose origins are of
interest.
A basic explanation of the concept is on page 64 of Lessons
in
Chess Strategy by W.H. Cozens (London, 1968):
‘The power of the queen’s-side majority was first
fully realized by Steinitz, who must be considered
the father of scientific chess. And since the
contact of two unequal pawn masses normally leads to
the formation of a passed pawn from the larger mass,
he held that it must be bad strategy to advance a
minority against a majority – it would only hasten
the creation of a hostile passed pawn. This
eminently logical reasoning was accepted by his
contemporaries and disciples with the unquestioning
deference accorded to the logic of Aristotle in
pre-Galileo times.
But the young players of the early twentieth
century were a sceptical generation, who queried
every dogma and demolished more than one. One of
their heresies was to advance boldly with a
queen’s-side minority against a majority.
Admittedly, the result might be a passed pawn for
the enemy, but whereas the passed pawn he would get
if you waited for him to come at you would be a
powerful candidate for promotion, the one he got out
of your minority attack, they argued, would be
backward, probably isolated, and an excellent target
for rook attack on the open files – in fact, more of
a liability than an asset.’
The term ‘minority attack’ became familiar in the
late 1930s, and page 247 of the June 1939 BCM
had a notable comment in its report on round seven
(comprising five games) of that year’s Margate
tournament:
‘This was a field day for the minority attack in
the Queen’s Gambit. The three grand masters all
played it and they all won. Flohr was rather lucky
in that Miss Menchik with an equal game overlapped
the time limit. The other two games were won on
their merits.’
Those games were Keres v Najdorf and Capablanca v
Golombek.
12063.
Wikipedia
From Alan Slomson (Leeds, England):
‘In relation to your comments in C.N. 12060
about the inadequate Wikipedia entry about Nigel
Short, it is worth noting that “Wikipedia is
a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by
volunteers around the world and hosted by the
Wikimedia Foundation” as it describes itself.
Anyone can edit Wikipedia entries. If the
accuracy of Wikipedia is a matter of concern, it
is up to the community of chess historians to
improve entries relating to chess history when
they are felt to be inaccurate or inadequate.’
As regards the English-language entries on chess,
there is a Wikipedia
project
page.
Prompted by Mr Slomson’s remarks, we have prepared a
new feature article, Wikipedia
and
Chess.
12064.
Alekhine and property (C.N. 2605)
A remark by Euwe in an interview (CHESS,
September 1981, page 199):
‘Alekhine may have hoped the Germans would win
because he owned several houses in Leningrad. As
things went, he lost everything …’
Information about the Leningrad matter will be
appreciated.
12065. A
challenge
Which master was challenged to play a game as Black
against 1 e4 e5 2 Ke2?
Simon Alapin (Deutsches
Wochenschach, 7 January 1894)
The answer is Simon Alapin, in 1892, the challenger
being Max Lange. No such game was played, but they did
agree to contest one correspondence game, with Alapin
required to play 1 e4 e5 2 Ne2.
Page 299 of Deutsches Wochenschach, 21 August
1892 had carried a letter from Alapin extolling 2 Ne2
and claiming that it should be named after him. Max
Lange made unfavourable mention of this in a long
article about chess theory on pages 257-264 of the
September 1892 Deutsche Schachzeitung. On page
262 he suggested that 2 Ne2 deserved no more
theoretical attention than 2 Ke2, which also blocks
the king’s bishop and the queen.
It was not until the 7 January 1894 issue of Deutsches
Wochenschach that Alapin related, on pages 4-10,
what had happened during the interval of more than a
year. Around the time of the September 1892 article,
Max Lange had challenged him to a correspondence game
in which he would take Black against Alapin’s 1 e4 e5
2 Ne2 and also proposed playing a game in which he, as
White, would begin 1 e4 e5 2 Ke2 against Alapin, in
order to ‘balance the chances’.
Alapin agreed only to the 1 e4 e5 2 Ne2 game, and
stated that in the circumstances it became a matter of
life or death. In addition to the exact dates when the
game began and ended (see below), Alapin even
published the reflection time: 37 days for White and
149 for Black, the remainder being postal time. Alapin
then annotated the game, over six pages.
Simon Alapin – Max Lange
Correspondence, 23 September 1892 – 5 September 1893
Alapin’s Opening
1 e4 e5 2 Ne2 Nc6 3 d4 Qh4 4 d5 Bc5 5 Ng3 Nce7 6 Nd2
Qf6 7 f3 Qh4 8 Nb3 Bb6 9 d6 Nc6 10 c4 cxd6 11 Qxd6 Nf6
12 Kd1 Nh5 13 Nf5 Qd8 14 g4 g6 15 Ne3 Qf6 16 Qxf6
Nxf6 17 c5 Bd8 18 Nc4
18...d5 19 Nd6+ Ke7 20 g5 Nd7 21 exd5 Nb4 22 Bc4 Nxc5
23 Nxc5 Kxd6 24 Ne4+ Ke7 25 Bd2 a5 26 a3 Na6 27 d6+
Kf8 28 Bc3 h6 29 Bxe5 Rh7 30 Nf6 Bxf6 31 gxf6 Bd7 32
Rc1 Nb8 33 Bb5 Nc6 34 Re1 Rh8 35 Bxc6 Bxc6
36 Rxc6 bxc6 37 d7 Rd8 38 Bd6+ Kg8 39 Re7 g5 40 Kc2
Kh7 41 Kc3 Kg6 42 Kc4 Kxf6 43 Kc5 h5 44 Kxc6 Resigns.
The game was shown, from an undated scrapbook of
Walter Penn Shipley’s, in C.N. 771 (see page 49 of Chess
Explorations) with this concluding remark by
Showalter in the New York Recorder:
‘It would be difficult indeed to laud too highly
the masterly style in which Herr Alapin conducted
his attack in this game, the more especially as
applied to the latter half of it. Truly,
correspondence chess is the best chess, after all.’
The date of Showalter’s column was 28 January 1894.
We show none of the nineteenth-century material here,
given that it is available online (e.g. via Google
Books or Chess
Archaeology).
12066. Brad
Darrach v Bobby Fischer (C.N. 12049)
Many virtually identical (agency) obituaries of Brad
Darrach appeared in the US press, such as the
following on page 8 of the Daily Times
(Salisbury, MD) on 7 November 1997:
However brief, references to chess in the mainstream
media traditionally have a factual mistake or two. In
the penultimate paragraph above, 1976 should read
1974.
One broadcast by Darrach, on WELI 960, can be noted
from that year, as listed on page 75 of the Bridgeport
Post, 26 December 1974:
John Donaldson (Berkeley, CA, USA) informs us that he
is continuing to investigate Brad Darrach’s Bobby
Fischer
vs. the Rest of the World (New York,
1974), and at this stage we quote the following from
him:
‘The New York bookseller Fred Wilson, active
since the 1970s, has mentioned to me that the book
never sold particularly well among the chess
community. He believes that it was marketed to the
casual player who had taken up the game during the
Fischer boom of the early 1970s. Anthony Saidy has
told me that what most stood out to him after
reading the book was Darrach’s habit of including
himself in conversations where he was not present.
Frank Brady has made the same observation. On the
basis of how he and his family were portrayed,
Saidy estimates that approximately 20% of the book
was fabricated.’
We add some jottings of our own. Although published
in mid-1974, the book was not mentioned in Chess
Life & Review (apart from the January 1975
advertisement shown in our feature article) until the
May 1975 issue, in which Fischer’s removal as world
champion also happened to be reported. The book was
listed as being on (direct) sale to USCF members only
once, in the August 1975 issue (with a members’
discount of 70 cents). Fischer’s lawsuit was announced
in the October magazine, and there are no sightings of
the name Brad Darrach in Chess Life & Review
in 1976.
It is of interest to note some of the attention that
Bobby Fischer vs. the Rest of the World
received in newspapers of the time.
In October 1974 an Associated Press report (sometimes
attributed to Dan Berger, and with apparent input from
Darrach) was published in dozens of US newspapers. On
newspapers.com
many appearances can be found by searching for this
paragraph:
‘Fischer is the second American ever to hold the
title, which must be contested every three years.
The first was Alexander Alekhin in 1937.’
Few lengthy reviews have been found, but a notable
critic of the book was R.E. Fauber (1936-2013). On
page 41/9 of the Sacramento Bee, 23 March 1975
he observed:
‘Darrach is one of your usual kind of slick
journalist types who were pampered in English 1a
while in college. He happily quotes Fischer’s
description of him as a “pretty awful” chessplayer.
His ignorance of chess spills over onto every page
of the book.
... If you like books about fearful hysterics and
do not play chess well, you will love Darrach’s.’
If Darrach’s ignorance of chess ‘spills over onto
every page of the book’, a few examples might be
expected, but Fauber preferred generalities, as in the
concluding paragraph:
‘In fairness to Darrach, he was up close for most
of the drama of the Fischer-Spassky match, which he
chronicles in the book. He seems a careful reporter,
but his consummate ignorance of what competitive
chess is about disqualifies the tone and connotative
value of the book. If you must read it, get it at
the library.’
Fauber returned to the book on page 23 of the 22 June
1975 edition of the same newspaper, writing ‘Then
there is the even more execrable product of rank and
reeking amateurs such as Brad Darrach’s Bobby
Fischer vs the Rest of the World’ and calling it
‘that hysterical essay’.
A lengthier article on Darrach’s work, by Juan
Rodriguez (1948-2024) on page 34 of the Montreal
Star, 29 March 1975, took a very different view:
the book was ‘absorbing – and hilarious’. The
concluding paragraph by Rodriguez (‘the Montreal
Star’s rock music critic’):
‘Even if you’ve never heard of Bobby Fischer, this
book will make you laugh for hours.’
The review gave the publisher as McCraw-Hill Ryerson,
and not Stein and Day.
The longest review that we have found is by Martin
Johnston (1947-90) on page 13 of the ‘Weekend
magazine and book reviews’ section of the Sydney
Morning Herald, 15 February 1975. Some extracts:
‘There is a small and curiously interesting class
of books whose authors give the impression of being,
on the one hand, the only people qualified to write
on a particular subject and, on the other, quite
incapable of doing so. This book is one of them.
While I quake at the thought of Mr Darrach (whose
apprenticeship was ten years as film reviewer for Time,
which to me speaks for itself) writing on anything,
I have to admit that the very qualities that make
this book so unpleasant may well be those best
qualifying the author for admittance to the
confidence of the monstrous genius Fischer.
Fischer, as even non-players are generally aware,
is not a lovable man. We tend, of course, to make
allowances for genius in the spirit of Auden’s elegy
on Yeats: “You were silly like us; your gift
survived it all.” To describe Fischer’s oddities of
character as merely “silly” seems, by contrast,
risibly inadequate.’
‘... What Darrach does, much more than Fischer’s
affable biographer Frank Brady, is to bring the
reader brutally face to face with the private figure
– lonely, insecure, arrogant, an almost inarticulate
genius with the culture of a gum-chewing bovver boy
and the social feelings of a warthog – behind the
public antics.’
‘He [Darrach] provides lurid snaps of Fischer in
paranoid terror of Soviet Machiavellianism; Fischer
as inconsiderate lout; Fischer as idiot savant
– anything, indeed rather than try to capture what
Fischer is and why.’
‘... Darrach can’t write, except the nauseating hip
prolixities of the New Journalese.’
‘...Darrach’s book (despite one additional
deficiency – an apparent inability to distinguish
between fact, speculation and gossip) is unavoidably
fascinating, because of its subject, and Darrach’s
proximity to him; but it hardly deserves to be.’
‘... So why buy Darrach? Well, out of place though
his smug trendiness is in this company [the previous
paragraph praised other writers, singling out
Purdy], he is the only one to show us Fischer with
the defences down, as one grotesque to another. I
hate recommending it but I have to: if you like
Bosch or Grünewald, you’ll love this.’
The final quote on the back cover of Bobby
Fischer vs. the Rest of the World was ‘We owe a
debt to Darrach’. That was from an article by Burt
Prelutsky (1940-2021) on page 16 of the ‘Calendar’
section of the 5 January 1975 edition of the Los
Angeles Times:
‘Asked what impressions he retains of his three
months in Reykjavik, Darrach says, “It was like
being in the trenches. For weeks on end, I averaged
no more than an hour’s sleep a night. I was up all
day, reporting the event for Life, and then
Bobby would insist on keeping me awake all night,
talking. I was strained to the breaking point, and
ended the summer on the verge of a nervous
breakdown. My muscles never totally recovered from
the ordeal. It wasn’t just the physical abuse,
though. Being with Bobby is like being with a robot
on some dumb TV show, pretending to conduct rational
dialogues. He is a totally frozen person. The only
time you could make him happy and get a spontaneous
reaction from him was if you told him about a
disaster. Tell him about an earthquake or a plane
crash or an outbreak of the plague, and he couldn’t
help smiling. Psychologically, as his sister says,
he’s a three-year-old child; he’s a mess. He is a
man consumed with hatred. He speaks of destroying
his opponents with brute force. To win is never
enough, he also must humiliate. Chess, at Fischer’s
or Spassky’s level, is aggression at the outermost
extreme.”
I asked Darrach whether he had ever dared challenge
Fischer. “We’ve played a few times. And although I
am what Bobby refers to with contempt as a weaky and
he obviously wasn’t going all out, they were brutal
experiences. His concentration is so total that it
hits you in waves of force. After a while you can
hardly breathe.”
We owe a debt to Darrach. Like such fearless
correspondents as Richard Harding Davis and Sir
Henry Stanley, he has ventured forth to where only
the bold, the brave and the loony would dare set
foot. He has not written a book about chess or even
just a book about chessplayers, exactly. What
Darrach did, like a latter-day Ernie Pyle, was to
file blood-stained dispatches from Reykjavik, the
unlikely site of World War II½.’
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