Edward Winter
Mate in one move
This problem by Simon Alapin was published on page 88 of the March-April 1916 Wiener Schachzeitung, together with two easier mate-in-one positions (based respectively on the familiar tricks of the en passant rule and nine black pawns.
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See Chess Jottings. Page 3 of Kings, Commoners and Knaves also gave solution.
‘Losing a game that should have been won makes a difference of two points.’
Source: S. Alapin, La Stratégie, March 1905, page 77.
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We have been unable to find game-scores which fit in with the following report, taken from page 315 of the Chess Amateur, July 1908:
‘Referring to “hallucinations that occur in match and tournament play”, Mr Bruno Siegheim mentions in the Johannesburg Sunday Times that in one of the games of the Blackburne-Steinitz match, a check which could have won a rook was left on for several moves. The possibility was seen by everyone present in the room except the two players. Mr Siegheim adds that a still more curious incident occurred at Breslau, in an Alapin-Blackburne game. Mr Blackburne checkmated his opponent, but assuming that Herr Alapin would see the mate, Mr Blackburne did not announce it. Herr Alapin looked at the position intently, trying to find a move, and the spectators smiled and whispered. At the end of five minutes Mr Blackburne relieved his opponent’s anxiety by informing him that he had been checkmated.’
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Black to move
Play went 1...Rb2 2 Rd1 Qa8 3 Qe4 Rb8 4 Rb1 c2 5 Rxb8+ Qxb8 6 a7 Qc8 7 a8(Q) c1(Q) 8 Qe8+ and mate next move.
This position was given on page 130 of Taktika Moderního Šachu by L. Pachman (Prague, 1962), with a caption no more informative than ‘Alapin – H.’. However, we note that the same conclusion is on page 365 of the September 1904 issue of the Belgian magazine Revue d’échecs, with the following information: “Fin d’une partie jouée entre un fort joueur de Butler, M. H.A. Stauffer (Blancs) et un amateur de Boston (Noirs)”. The magazine’s source was the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
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The position after 8 Qe8+:
The full game-score remains elusive, but Olimpiu G. Urcan (Singapore) has found the following on page 7 of the 8 May 1904 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
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Simon Alapin
Ever anxious to steal a march, we offer Kingpin’s first game dated 2000:
1 d4 d5 2 c4 c6 3 Nc3 e5 4 dxe5 d4 5 Ne4 Qa5+ 6 Nd2 Nd7 7 Nf3 Nxe5 8 Nxe5 Qxe5 9 Nf3 Bb4+ 10 Bd2 Qd6 11 Nxd4 Qxd4 12 Bxb4 Qxb2 13 Rb1 Qxa2 14 Rc1 c5 15 Bc3 Nf6 16 Qd6 Qa3 17 Rc2 Be6 18 f3 Rd8 19 Qg3 Qb3 20 Rc1 Qa3 21 Rc2 Qb3 22 Rc1 Qa3 23 Rc2 Qb3 Drawn.
Source: Deutsches Wochenschach, 29 August 1909, pages 300-301.
(Kingpin, 1999)
As mentioned in a footnote on page 81 of A Chess Omnibus, the game was published in the German magazine with notes by its inventor, Alapin.
From page 10 of the second edition of Curso científico de ajedrez by R. Réti (Madrid, 1986):
‘El maestro ruso Alapin recomendaba al principiante cambiar las piezas cuanto antes.’ [The Russian master Alapin recommended that the beginner should exchange pieces as soon as possible.]
Where did Alapin give such advice?
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As regards the word ‘hypermodern’, below are passages from pages 253 and 265 of the August-September 1913 Wiener Schachzeitung (respectively the magazine’s introduction to an article by Alapin and the relevant part of that article):
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As mentioned in Earliest Occurrences of Chess Terms, page 265 of the August-September 1913 Wiener Schachzeitung had the following in an article by S. Alapin entitled ‘Neue Gendanken über modernes und unmodernes Schach’:
‘Die von Niemzowitsch als angeblich “modern” bezeichnete Holländische Verteidigung 1 d4 f5 “gilt” gerade in “moderner” Zeit als durch 2 e4! fe 3 Sc3 Sf6 4 Lg5 c6 6 f3! widerlegt. Wenn Niemzowitsch hiemit nicht einverstanden ist, so hätte er seine diesbezügliche, also “hypermoderne” Anschauung variantenmäßig begründen sollen?’
The word ‘hypermodern” also appeared in the Editor’s preface to the article, on page 253.
Simon Alapin
Chess Personalia by Jeremy Gaige (unpublished 1994 edition)
Georges Bertola (Bussigny-près-Lausanne, Switzerland) comments that whereas notable sources give S. Alapin’s place of birth as Vilnius there are also statements that he was born in St Petersburg. Instances of the latter version are on page 8 of the Dizionario enciclopedico degli scacchi by A. Chicco and G. Porreca (Milan, 1971) and page 206 of Traité-manuel des échecs by H. Delaire (Paris, 1911).
We note that St Petersburg was specified in the ten-line obituary of Alapin in the October 1923 BCM, page 374, on page 333 of Schachjahrbuch 1923 by L. Bachmann (Ansbach, 1924) and in a number of other publications of the time.
Going his own way, Byrne J. Horton referred to ‘the Czechoslovakian chessmaster S. Alapin’ on page 2 of his Dictionary of Modern Chess (New York, 1959).
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Since when, and on what basis, has Alapin’s place of birth been given as Vilnius? In old sources we continue to find St Petersburg, a further example being page 84 of Schach-Jahrbuch für 1892/93 by Johann Berger (Leipzig, 1893).
Simon Alapin
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Simon Alapin
Martin Weissenberg (Savyon, Israel) provides the earliest published claim found so far that Alapin was born in Vilnius, and not St Petersburg:
Source: page 182 of Shakhmatny slovar edited by L.I. Abramov (Moscow, 1964).
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A contribution from Olimpiu G. Urcan (Singapore) concerns the so-called ‘Fort Knox Variation’ (1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Bd7). Who gave it that name, and when?
The above feature on page 471 of the November 1899 BCM has also been submitted by Mr Urcan, and we add Alapin’s original article (with the correct spelling Mandelbaum) on page 117 of Der Schachfreund, October 1899:
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From the first volume (1898-99) of Alapin’s periodical Der Schachfreund (frontispiece):
The high-resolution scan is shown here courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library, which has also authorized us to reproduce this photograph from its archives:
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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).
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From Where Did They Live?:
Alapin, S.: Märzgasse 22, Heidelberg, Germany (Ranneforths Schach-Kalender, 1915, page 55).
See also:
Nimzowitsch v Alapin
The So-called Fahrni-Alapin Pawn Ending.
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Copyright Edward Winter. All rights reserved.
