Edward Winter
A brief selection of quotes from Draw! (London, 1982) should serve as a reminder of the outstanding writing skills of Wolfgang Heidenfeld (1911-81):
(After a sober analysis of Hamppe-Meitner, Vienna, 1872): ‘The treatment of this game in chess literature suggests how easy it is to be dazzled by its ingenuity, captivated by its charm, until one’s critical faculties are suspended and one believes everything one sees.’ (page 5)
(On the short draw Alekhine-Botvinnik, Nottingham, 1936): ‘On the whole, a grossly overrated game.’ (page 6)
‘Pillsbury, generally regarded as a great attacking master, was^ really the first player to plan his attacks with an eye to the end-game – his games often show profound combinations, not for mating purposes but in order to obtain an advantageous ending.’ (page 14)
(On Charousek and Fähndrich v Halprin and Marco, Vienna, 1897): ‘The most thrilling Muzio Gambit ever played.’ (page 17)
(After a quote from the Munich, 1900 tournament book): ‘I quote this passage with particular pleasure, not only for the sentiments expressed, but also in order to acquaint present-day players with the racy diction of the inimitable Georg Marco. It may give them an idea of how much they lose by notes in the ever-encroaching Informator style, through which the greatest entertainment ever invented is reduced to a series of mathematical symbols.’ (page 21)
(On the seventh match-game, Schlechter-Lasker, Berlin, 1910): ‘It is probably the most profound game ever played in a world championship match.’ At the end of his (wonderful) annotations to the game Heidenfeld concludes: ‘And yet there are people who maintain that Karpov and Korchnoi are stronger than Lasker and Schlechter. They must be joking.’ (pages 26 and 30)
(Tarrasch): ‘In the years after the first war to end all wars he played games of a charm and a depth inconceivable perhaps to the disciplinarian of earlier years ... One does not always perform best when driven by a mission.’ (page 36)
‘Reuben Fine is probably the most underrated player in the history of the game ... Both his sporting results in the thirties and the sheer quality of his games make him one of the outstanding players – possibly the outstanding player – of the period.’ (page 97)
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The first two paragraphs of his Introduction (page 1):
‘Drawn games have a poor press. Far too often the result is reached without a fight: the players do not want to play chess but score half a point.
And yet who can doubt that draws that are both well-fought and free from major error (though chess is so complicated a game that what Suetin calls secondary errors are virtually unavoidable in a real fighting game) constitute the highest form of chess? Where every brilliant attack finds an equally brilliant parry, where each “unexpected” combination is in fact expected and therefore met successfully, we have no victor and no vanquished. But even such nearly flawless games are often little-known merely because they carry the mark of Cain of the unshed blood.’
Heidenfeld’s posthumous Damen sind Luxus (Schwarz-Weiss Verlag) is an enjoyable collection, complete with many interesting photographs, of 70 games featuring an early exchange of queens.
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Wanted: drawn games which were awarded a brilliancy prize. The best-known case is probably Geller v Golombek, Budapest 1952, if only because Black has so often written about it. An earlier example was Mieses v Pillsbury, Vienna Gambit Tournament 1903. Mieses annotated the game on pages 148-150 of the May 1941 BCM, this being his final note:
‘This game was awarded a brilliancy prize with both players sharing it, since the adjudicating Committee expressed the opinion that the ingenuity of the attack, on the one side, and the skill and doggedness of the defence, on the other side, deserved the highest praise. A draw winning a brilliancy prize is quite unique in the history of tournaments.’
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From Ed Tassinari (Scarsdale, NY, USA):
‘A drawn brilliancy that immediately comes to mind is Medina v Torán, Palma de Mallorca, 1968, which is annotated on pages 171-172 of Heidenfeld’s Draw!’
We add that Heidenfeld’s book (page 138) draws attention to another case, Heidenfeld v Pachman, Madrid, 1960. The chairman of the committee appointed to award the special prizes, Román Torán, had stated, ‘A draw has no claim to being considered at all for such an award’, but Heidenfeld counters with three arguments:
a) There was the Vienna 1903 precedent; b) The game chosen at Madrid for the prize ‘was later found to contain a hole as big as a house (in the winner’s play ...)’; c) Torán himself subsequently won such a prize. ‘It is not known that he refused to accept the award on the grounds that a drawn game should not be eligible.’
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Michael Furmston (Shipham, England) adds Rossolimo v Nestler, Venice, 1950 (see pages 39-40 of the November 1950 CHESS).
An endnote on page 262 of Chess Explorations:
Another side to Kostić arises from Heidenfeld’s reference, quoted in C.N. 4, to ‘the usual blarney Kostić used to dish out everywhere to endear himself to his varying audiences’.
The remark is on page 17 of Wolfgang Heidenfeld’s book Lacking the Master Touch (Cape Town, 1970).
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In the light of the recent discussion of Carlsbad, 1911 (e.g. on pages 8-9 of the 6/1999 New in Chess), it is worth recalling the opinion of Wolfgang Heidenfeld, given on page 33 of the January 1971 BCM (in a review of the BCM’s reprint of the tournament book):
‘The reviewer of Carlsbad 1911 is handicapped by the author: in his autobiographical work Goldene Schachzeiten Dr Vidmar calls it “the worst book I have ever written simply because it carried the shabbiest fee I have ever received”. Let me, however, say at the outset that, though not one of the great tournament books (in the class of St Petersburg 1914, New York 1924, Carlsbad 1929, Zurich 1959 or Santa Monica 1966) it is a good deal better than any of the tournament books edited by Bogoljubow, Maróczy and Teichmann, easily the three most boring authors of tournament books, and quite a bit above many other books not fathered by either [sic] of these three prize bores.’
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‘The greatest polyhistor in the history of chess’ was W. Heidenfeld’s description of Berger (BCM, August 1970, page 233).
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An excerpt from our feature article Tigran Petrosian (1929-84):
The ‘Petrosian Problem’ had a lengthy airing in the pages of CHESS in 1967-68, with the late Wolfgang Heidenfeld, a formidable debater, leading the prosecution’s case against ‘a king of shreds and patches’.
Few masters have had their birth announced in a chess magazine, but here is a case that comes to mind:
‘Mr Heidenfeld, now living in Dublin, has just been presented by his wife with a son, Mark. World champion, 1998?’
Source: CHESS, 13 June 1968, page 292.
Wolfgang Heidenfeld was a fine, incisive chess writer, and below is an excerpt from a letter he wrote us from Dublin on 22 March 1978:
‘Not only am I at present collaborating with Tim Harding on an opening book for the Batsford series (my first ever, since I hate books on the openings!), but after that I may have, literarily speaking, the chance of a lifetime: the possibility of bringing out a greatly improved and enlarged version and translation of Grosse Remispartien (under the far more attractive title “Battle in the Balance”). This I have always regarded as my magnum opus – spoilt to a large extent by the skimpiness of the publishers (it is the ONLY book I have ever seen in which even the dedication is squeezed onto the first page of text!!). The matter is not 100% yet – but if it comes off, every other chess project is automatically out. The new version would require at least six months’ concentrated work.’
The English edition of Grosse Remispartien was eventually published, under the title Draw!, in 1982, the year after Wolfgang Heidenfeld’s death. Edited by John Nunn, it was of outstanding quality.
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When the above item was reproduced on page 203 of A Chess Omnibus we added this footnote:
The book on draws was a long-term project of Heidenfeld’s. On page 154 of CHESS, 11 February 1956 he wrote: ‘I am at present working on the MS of a book, “Battle in the balance”, a collection of the finest draws of modern chess, from Hamppe-Meitner, 1872 to Schmid-Castaldi, Venice 1953.’
From our feature article on The Batsford Chess Encyclopedia by Nathan Divinsky (London, 1990):
Without a murmur of acknowledgement, Divinsky’s book lifts countless chunks from The Encyclopedia of Chess edited by Harry Golombek (Batsford, 1977). The fact that Divinsky was part of the 13-member team of contributors to that earlier volume hardly entitles him to present under his own name the work (even entire entries or paragraphs) of the other contributors, notably the late Wolfgang Heidenfeld’s technical and illustrative material.
Below is Wolfgang Heidenfeld’s entry on over-protection on page 230 of The Encyclopedia of Chess by Harry Golombek (London, 1977):
We add without comment what Nathan Divinsky gave on page 154 of The Batsford Chess Encyclopedia (London, 1990):
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An extract from our feature article Zugzwang:
A word is normally defined, or at least clearly understood, before it is translated, but with Zugzwang the contrary occurred. In an heretical article ‘That Zugzwang Nonsense!’ on pages 26-27 of the January 1972 BCM Wolfgang Heidenfeld (1911-80) threw a weighty spanner in the works:
‘The opponent’s Zugzwang – the compulsion (as opposed to the right) to make a move – enables a player to win – or draw, as the case may be – a position which he could not otherwise win or draw. If the opponent had the choice of moving or “passing” at his discretion, there would be no win or draw. Once this criterion is lacking there is no Zugzwang. There may be a complete blockade, with one side powerless to make any useful move – but this is no real Zugzwang.’
On this basis Heidenfeld denied that the Sämisch v Nimzowitsch game featured Zugzwang at all. Observing that in the final position it would be more advantageous for White to move (e.g. 26 Bc1 Bxb1 27 Rgf1) than to pass, he suggested that the ‘Immortal Zugzwang Game nonsense’ had resulted from ‘the vanity of Nimzowitsch’. He also disallowed Alekhine v Nimzowitsch, San Remo, 1930 as an example of Zugzwang, notwithstanding Alekhine’s claim in his second Best Games collection. Similar arguments were outlined by Andy Soltis on page 55 of Chess to Enjoy (New York, 1978), and the current hesitancy over the exact meaning of Zugzwang is highlighted by the contrasting entries for the word in the 1984 and 1992 editions of The Oxford Companion to Chess.
‘If this is Golombek’s English, we will eat our hat. It is more like the English of a well-educated foreigner.’
Harry Golombek, Schach-Express, 13 October 1949, page 11
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The remark quoted in C.N. 4970 (‘If this is Golombek’s English, we will eat our hat. It is more like the English of a well-educated foreigner.’) appeared on page 340 of CHESS, 15 July 1964 in a brief review of a book translated and edited by Golombek, Grandmaster of Chess The Early Games of Paul Keres (London, 1964).
We recall too Wolfgang Heidenfeld’s review of World Chess Championship 1957 by H. Golombek (London, 1957) on pages 60-61 of the March 1958 BCM. Whilst praising aspects of the book, Heidenfeld quoted a passage describing the start of the third match-game, where ...
‘... the author uses over 40 words to say exactly nothing. One is almost surprised that he does not record the fact that both players were breathing (you know, by inhaling air). Could any of the stuff he sees fit to describe be of the slightest interest to any chessplayer anywhere in the world?’
Heidenfeld stated that there was ‘far too much of this meaningless verbosity throughout the book’ and he also raised an analytical point that is worth noting. Having remarked that the analysis was sometimes ‘very good’, Heidenfeld added that the annotations were ‘quite often extremely superficial’. As an example he referred to page 104 (the 17th match-game):
White (Botvinnik) played 24 Rxc8+, and Golombek wrote:
‘In this phase of the game Botvinnik is scarcely recognizable. Now he meekly surrenders command of the QB-file without gaining the slightest compensation elsewhere. At least he should try for a K-side attack by 24 P-Kt4.’
Heidenfeld commented:
‘The annotator overlooks that the 24th move is virtually forced; that, in other words, Botvinnik is compelled to surrender the queen’s bishop’s file, meekly or otherwise, with or without compensation. For if he plays 24 P-Kt4 as recommended, there follows 24...RxR 25 QxR N-K5! – and with the queen deflected from Q3 and no piece able satisfactorily to protect the knight, White could hardly avoid 26 KtxKt PxKt 27 Kt-Q2 R-QB1 28 Q-Q1 B-Q6 29 B-B1 Q-Kt4, with a completely won position, which would not even offer White the chances he still obtained in the game.
It is absurd to imagine Golombek should not have seen this simple sequence of moves. Unfortunately, in this book, quite unlike his usual self, he seems to be too anxious to comment for the sake of commenting, which is precisely the attitude of mind that produces such superficialities.’
In a letter published on page 105 of the April 1958 BCM P.H. Clarke commented on the position after the 29th move in Heidenfeld’s line:
‘... unfortunately the South African master has not seen that after 29...Q-Kt4? ... White has a simple and obvious reply in 30 KtxP. Had he himself given the position more than a superficial study he might have noticed that 29...R-B7 (or even 29...Q-Q4) was the correct way to continue.’
On page 137 of the May 1958 BCM Heidenfeld acknowledged that he had been careless but stated that his error had not invalidated his criticism: ‘whether the line suggested ends in Q-Kt4? or R-B7! has no bearing on the fact that the original note in Golombek’s book – and unfortunately not this note alone – is carping and unnecessary criticism.’
We see that Smyslov’s own note to move 24 suggests that Rxc8+ was necessary and makes no mention of Golombek’s 24 g4:
‘White concedes the open file, since if 24 Bf1 there could have followed 24...Rxc1 25 Qxc1 Rc8.’
Source: page 296 of Smyslov’s Best Games Volume 1: 1935-1957 by V. Smyslov (Olomouc, 2003).
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From a letter to us from Wolfgang Heidenfeld dated 17 September 1978:
Some observations by Wolfgang Heidenfeld on page 9 of the January 1966 BCM (in D.J. Morgan’s Quotes and Queries column):
‘In connection with the various “best game” lists and their coupling with specific masters, it has occurred to me that there is a slight ambiguity in the meaning of the term “best game”. Take Fischer as an example. The game which Fischer played best may be the magnificent brilliancy against Donald Byrne, which he won at the age of 13; or it may be his win against Gligorić at the Candidates’ tournament, 1959; or again it may be the much-advertised “game of the century” [sic] against Robert Byrne. Yet I would call none of these “Fischer’s best game”, because the opposition did not play well enough. Fischer’s best game – that is the best game in which Fischer was involved – was undoubtedly his first-round draw against Gligorić at the Bled tournament, 1961.’
The draw is game 30 in Fischer’s My 60 Memorable Games. Heidenfeld annotated it on pages 145-146 of his posthumous book Draw! (London, 1982).
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On page 232 of the August 1970 BCM Wolfgang Heidenfeld wrote:
‘... a phrase like “Alekhine’s Best Games” is really ambiguous: it may mean two entirely different things, viz. (a) the games Alekhine played best and (b) the objectively best games in which Alekhine was a participant (in which the standard of the game is achieved by both partners) – thus he need not necessarily have won them. This, in fact, is the basis of my anthology Grosse Remispartien.
In fact, it is little short of ludicrous that Alekhine’s Best Games does not contain his draw against Marshall at New York, 1924, where a most original and new strategic conception by Marshall is met by an amazing tactical finesse of Alekhine’s, the whole (drawn) game being one of the greatest ever played. It is similarly ludicrous that Golombek’s anthology of Réti’s Best Games is without his draw against Alekhine at Vienna, 1922 – which has been christened the Immortal Draw and which even Alekhine does not pass over in his own collection. Similarly some game collections of Tal’s are deprived of the fantastic draw against Aronin at the 24th Soviet championship (Moscow, 1957) – a game of which Keres stated in a much-acclaimed article that one could not do justice to Tal’s achievement in that tournament without coming to grips with it.’
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Below is an extract from C.N. 10251, concerning a discussion on draws and scoring systems in CHESS.
W. Heidenfeld of Johannesburg replied on pages 153-154 of CHESS, 11 February 1956:
‘In your “drab draws” correspondence C.J.S. Purdy writes: “Admittedly, many draws are genuine, and it is a drawback that all would be equally penalized. But not as great an evil as arranged draws, which give some players extra rest days.” It is hard to believe that your correspondent is serious in his suggestion that draws of whatever nature should be “penalized”, seeing that chess – like cricket – is a game that allows for a very wide drawing margin; a game that regards players as equal who are merely “approximately equal” and that does not insist that differences of split seconds or fractions of inches in performance are to be rewarded by plus and minus signs. In athletics “draws” are few and far between; in tennis they do not exist at all; and it would have been simple enough to have chess decided on similar lines.
It is clearly illogical not to object to one player trying to draw, but to object to both players trying to draw – if the draw serves the purpose of both. Playing in a tournament, your object is not to win the game – any game – but to win the tournament; and where playing for a win at all cost does not conform to this aim, even the temptation to do so must be firmly resisted. In fact, the ability to resist this temptation is part of a successful player’s technique. Some of the most glorious strokes of cricket may have to remain unplayed – some of the most imaginative games of chess to remain unconceived – because the player has the will to win ... the match or the tournament. In other words, it is exactly the will to win that may dictate to you the necessity of drawing an individual game. Players who do not possess this will to win may indulge their fancy at leisure – but they hardly deserve to get an extra bonus for it.
Leaving aside the special case of the “drab” draw, I believe that masters and annotators have a lot to answer for the [sic] general contempt of “drawn games”. It does not suit their book to annotate such games – because obviously it is far more difficult to assess a good fighting draw correctly than it is to come to definite conclusions regarding the merits of a won and lost game. In the latter, the fact that one side lost is in itself a clear indication of some inferior moves somewhere or another. But in a drawn game – did White stand to win? Did Black? Or was what Lasker called the Remisbreite never exceeded all through the game?
Looking at draws without passion or emotion, one must surely realize that they are the best chess games of all. The best draws must be better games than the best wins – neither side made a mistake sufficiently serious to enable the other, even with best play, to swing the balance in his favour. Yet how many anthologies of famous games have such draws? Games like Alekhine v Réti, Vienna, 1922 or Alekhine v Marshall, New York, 1924? At best very short games of this nature, like the famous draw between Pillsbury and Halprin at Munich, 1900, or the equally famous first encounter between Botvinnik and Alekhine at Nottingham, 1936, are “tolerated”.
If, in such games, the defender had been a little less alert, had lost his way, no matter how slightly, just once, they would rank among the very best specimens of fighting chess. And because the defence was perfect they don’t? Is this the famed chess players’ logic?
I am at present working on the MS of a book “Battle in the balance”, a collection of the finest draws of modern chess, from Hamppe v Meitner, 1872 to Schmid v Castaldi, Venice, 1953. During these 80 years some 50 to 60 practically perfect games of chess were played –and the great majority of them are almost completely unknown.’
See Chess Draws.
Timothy J. Bogan (Chicago, IL, USA) recommends Lacking the Master Touch by Wolfgang Heidenfeld (Cape Town, 1970) and adds that ‘an anthology of his contributions to various chess magazines would be very welcome’.
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The frontispiece:
Wolfgang Heidenfeld
It is hoped that a publisher will re-issue Lacking the Master Touch by Wolfgang Heidenfeld (Cape Town, 1970). It received an elegant, perceptive review from W.H. Cozens on pages 101-102 of the March 1972 BCM:
‘His personality comes out in his selection of games. He is a fighter. He gives us no brevities against pushover opposition, but hard-fought wins, some hard-fought draws and a few hard-fought losses. The spread of the games – 50 to cover a playing career of 40 years – is a guarantee of their quality; not that they are all deadly serious. One at least (Roele, 1954) is comical: the dénouement must be seen to be believed.
... The notes are ample, the 50 games occupying 100 double-column pages. Heidenfeld writes with a disarming openness, admitting his indecisions, his difficulties, his wrong judgements; never claiming to know all the answers. His notes show “how difficult chess is – not how easy it can be made to look”.’
The book has Heidenfeld’s wins over Euwe and Najdorf, and the draws include Game 44, against Larsen (Havana, 1966). Below is the first page of his annotations:
Regarding the photograph reference in Heidenfeld’s introduction to the game, K.F. Kirby told the story against himself on page 72 of the May 1984 South African Chessplayer after annotating his game against Botvinnik:
‘Photographs of almost all the games were daily offered for sale by the Israeli photographers, and I lost no time in ordering half a dozen copies of Kirby v Botvinnik. It was Mike Pines who rather brought me down to earth when, with his mischievous smile, he said he wondered how many copies Botvinnik had ordered.’
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From W.H. Cozens’ review of Lacking the Master Touch by Wolfgang Heidenfeld (Cape Town, 1970) C.N. 8300 quoted a remark about the ‘comical’ 1954 game Heidenfeld v Roele: ‘the dénouement must be seen to be believed.’
1 e4 e5 2 Nc3 Nf6 3 f4 d5 4 fxe5 Nxe4 5 d3 Nxc3 6 bxc3 Be7 7 Nf3 O-O 8 Be2 c5 9 d4 Nc6 10 O-O f6 11 Bf4 g5 12 exf6 gxf4 13 fxe7 Qxe7 14 Bd3 c4 15 Re1 Qa3 16 Bxh7+ Kxh7 17 Ng5+ Kg6 18 Ne6 Bxe6 19 Rxe6+ Kf5 20 Rh6 Qxc3 21 Qh5+ Ke4 22 Rd1 Rae8 23 Qg6+ Ke3 24 Rh3+ f3 25 Rxf3+ Ke2 26 Rxc3 Kxd1 27 h4 Nxd4 28 Kh2 Ne2 29 Rf3 d4 30 h5 Rxf3 31 gxf3 Re3
32 Qf5 d3 33 cxd3 c3 34 Qc5 Rxf3 35 h6 Rf6 36 Qg5 Rf2+ 37 Kh3 Nf4+ 38 Kg4 Rg2+ 39 Kf5 Rxg5+ 40 Kxg5
40...c2 41 h7 c1(Q) 42 h8(Q) Nxd3+ 43 White resigns.
Heidenfeld’s concluding note on page 29 of Games & Puzzles, February 1977, after recording his resignation:
‘And then? We both laughed!’
An analytical point on the same page of Games & Puzzles indicates a further publication:
Heidenfeld had written similarly on page 35 of Lacking the Master Touch:
The game was not published by the Deutsche Schachzeitung in 1954. It was annotated by Heidenfeld on pages 44-45 of the February 1961 issue (with 32 h6 recommended), but no subsequent analytical correction from a reader has been traced.
More information is sought regarding Heidenfeld’s remark on page 33 of Lacking the Master Touch that his loss to Roele ‘was awarded the prize for the most amusing game in a competition run by Harry Golombek in the Observer’.
The game was discussed on pages 94-97 of Chess Curiosities by Tim Krabbé (London, 1985), but here too there is an unexpected hitch for the researcher, as the section concludes:
‘(Notes mainly by Heidenfeld in the British Chess Magazine.)’
We have not noted the game in the BCM of any year.
On the analytical front, see too an article by Allan Beardsworth.
Introducing the score in Games & Puzzles, Heidenfeld wrote:
‘My most entertaining game of chess ... was played in the course of a short training match against the Dutch player C.H. Roele at Amsterdam in 1954. Roele was a strong player but never got anywhere in Dutch chess because, I believe, of some dubious politics at the time of the Nazi occupation – I do not know the details.’
Heidenfeld also gave the occasion as ‘a small training match at Amsterdam 1954’ on page 33 of Lacking the Master Touch. More details were in the introduction to the game on page 34 of his book Chess Springbok (Cape Town, 1955):
‘C.H. Roele is a strong Dutch player who, though not playing much in his home country, has successfully competed in several French tournaments. Although he beat me by 2½-1½, I have no complaint, seeing that the following crazy game made the whole difference between winning and losing the match. I cannot help feeling that much stronger players would have misjudged the position in the same way as I did.’
Wolfgang Heidenfeld
Games & Puzzles, February
1977, page 28
In all four sources referred to (Chess Springbok, the Deutsche Schachzeitung, Lacking the Master Touch and Games & Puzzles) Heidenfeld stated that the game was played in Amsterdam. So did Tim Krabbé on page 94 of Chess Curiosities, but in an online article ‘Migrating to the South’ he amended Amsterdam to Utrecht on the basis of information received from a reader in 2004:
‘An interesting communication by the South African chessplayer Christoff Mans adds some details to this game. It was the fourth and last game of a match (played in Utrecht, not Amsterdam as I first had it), won by Roele with 2½-1½. In the April 1954 issue of The South African Chessplayer Heidenfeld described it as “a hair-raising game in which I had won the hostile queen by a very long combination in the course of which my opponent's king had to travel all over the board – and then could not reconcile myself to the fact that it was he and not I who had winning chances. I do not grudge my opponent his win: the fun alone was worth the money.”’
However, the change from Amsterdam to Utrecht seems to be based on a misinterpretation of the article, which is reproduced below in full, courtesy of the Royal Dutch Library in The Hague:
The reference to Utrecht in the last paragraph of page 165 concerns, primarily, the double-round match between Holland and West Germany (witnessed by Heidenfeld, who wrote a report on pages 109-110 of the April 1954 BCM) and, secondarily, his two-game match against E. Spanjaard (a ‘side-show’ to the international match, he wrote on page 28 of Chess Springbok). As Heidenfeld consistently gave Utrecht as the venue for his match against Spanjaard and Amsterdam in the case of Roele, it is unlikely that the passage in the South African Chessplayer meant to imply that the match against Roele took place in Utrecht.
In Lacking the Master Touch Heidenfeld v Roele preceded Spanjaard v Heidenfeld, but Chess Springbok had this sequence: Heidenfeld v Spanjaard (Utrecht, March 1954), Spanjaard v Heidenfeld (Utrecht, March 1954), Heidenfeld v Roele (Amsterdam, March 1954).
Despite the remark on pages 165-166 of the April 1954 South African Chessplayer, there was no follow-up coverage of Heidenfeld v Roele, although pages 177-180 of the May 1954 issue had an article by Euwe which discussed Heidenfeld’s visit to Holland and annotated his victory with the black pieces against Spanjaard. The former world champion included this general assessment of Heidenfeld:
‘He could not be a grandmaster with so little serious practice. There are gaps in his theoretical knowledge and in his endgame routine, and these have cost him many a full and half point. But beyond those shortcomings one can discern the gifted player with a daring combinative style.’
As regards Roele, on page 94 of Chess Curiosities Tim Krabbé wrote:
‘Around 1960, he disappeared without a trace.’
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On pages 70-71 of the February 1972 BCM Wolfgang Heidenfeld reviewed the magazine’s reprint of the Coburg, 1904 tournament book edited by P. Schellenberg, C. Schlechter and G. Marco. The annotations of Marco (‘as famed an analyst as a stylist’) were singled out for praise and the review concluded:
‘Such books are refreshing – and indeed very necessary – at a time when the erstwhile art of chess annotation has been reduced to an almost computerized routine, with mechanized symbols replacing the individual approach. The mass production era, with its demand on the reader’s time and the writer’s space, may make such mechanization inevitable – those of us who still enjoy a “well-spoken game of chess” will nevertheless deplore this development. It is to them that Coburg, 1904 will mean more than the record of a not very distinguished tournament.’
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As mentioned in C.N. 9017, Modern Chess Miniatures (London, 1960 and New York, 1977) was co-written by Wolfgang Heidenfeld and Leonard Barden. In C.N. 10361 Mr Barden informed us:
‘Wolfgang Heidenfeld, who was my co-author in a book of miniatures and whom I played at least twice in tournaments, was originally German but had lived for many years in South Africa, and he had elements from both countries in his speech. He occasionally used words which echoed other German English-speakers, while his accent and tone were slightly lilting and high-pitched, like other South African players I knew, such as Kenneth Kirby.’
On page 399 of the September 1978 BCM W.H. Cozens remarked that The Encyclopaedia of Chess by Anne Sunnucks (London and New York, 1970) was ‘loaded with what we must now call female chauvinism’, and on the following page he pointed out that since the entry for ‘Hastings Christmas Chess Congress’ contained crosstables printed one to a page, that single entry occupied one-thirteenth of the whole book.
When it first appeared, the Encyclopaedia was witheringly criticized by Wolfgang Heidenfeld in letters published on page 233 of the August 1970 BCM and on pages 80-81 of the February 1971 issue. The second letter was in reply to comments by Anne Sunnucks on page 358 of the December 1970 BCM. The specific complaints in Heidenfeld’s first letter included the allocation of only eight lines to Stoltz and four to Richter, ‘but 21 lines are wasted on Miss Sunnucks herself and 25 (!) on a “player” of the strength of Lisa Lane’. (In fact, Lisa Lane’s entry was much longer even than that: 43 lines. On the next page Bent Larsen received 24 lines.)
Heidenfeld’s first letter concluded:
‘This hotch-potch volume reveals not only a lack of judgment to distinguish between what is important and what is not; it has been compiled without even a proper knowledge of chess history, for some of the above omissions cannot be justified on any grounds of selectivity. Unfortunately, good will and great industry are not sufficient for an undertaking of this kind; one needs solid knowledge and mature judgment as well.’
In his second letter Heidenfeld observed:
‘There is, in fact, an enormous over-emphasis on British chess, on the one hand, and on women’s chess on the other – to the detriment of subjects which any moderately informed person knows to be far more important in the chess world.’
CHESS was, at first, more lenient on the Encyclopaedia, and the brief initial notice on page 288 of the 12 May 1970 issue read strangely:
‘The publisher’s claim “More ambitious than both its Russian and French counterparts” does not stand up to scrutiny. The compiler’s inexperience shows up, above all, in an almost comical lack of balance. But the book provides pleasant browsing for many an evening and, its faults rectified, will probably be in print a century hence.’
From page 27 of the 21 August 1970 CHESS:
‘We fear many other defects are coming to light. Three times more space given to the Women’s World Championship than to the World Championship itself; more about Lisa Lane than Spassky; about chess in Romania 13 pages [sic – three pages]; about France or Germany nil; about Sam Loyd, nil; the entire coverage of some themes lifted from out-of-date books. With drastic repairs the Encyclopaedia will yet become a great reference work.’
Some repairs were made in the second edition (London and New York, 1976), but it received little attention.
(9280)
Regarding Heidenfeld’s criticisms in CHESS of Grandmasters of Chess by Harold C. Schonberg (Philadelphia and New York, 1973), see Chess with Violence.
C.N. 825 (see Chess Jottings) pointed out that CHESS did not record Heidenfeld’s death in 1981.
Part of C.N. 9531, concerning the 1972 Spassky v Fischer match:
Letter-writers know that submissions in colourful language (‘despatch her to Terra [sic] del Fuego’) are more likely to reach the presses. To that end, ‘lock them up and throw away the key’ and ‘hanging is too good for them’ have always been serviceable entreaties. Then as now, a measured analysis of pros and cons is less likely to attract an editor’s eye than a spree of fustian ignorance. Now but not then, the Internet allows anyone to by-pass whatever barriers, however low, editors put in place for participation in a discussion. There are pros and cons there too.
Chess magazines in 1972 were relatively restrained in their strictures on Fischer’s conduct and, with so much chess play to cover, little space was available for disquisitions by the unknown. As the Reykjavik frenzy receded, however, so-called debates came back into fashion. Criticizing ‘free speech in action’ may not be regarded as good form, but Wolfgang Heidenfeld had no such inhibitions on page 257 of CHESS, June 1973, in a letter headed ‘Rabbits and Nonsense’:
‘Your correspondence about simultaneous display etiquette is becoming boring, especially as most of the views represented are those of rabbits who do not even know the rules.’
Heidenfeld died long before the Internet age. What he would have written about vox populi today is neither difficult nor unpleasant to imagine.
An observation by Wolfgang Heidenfeld on page 16 of Lacking the Master Touch (Cape Town, 1970):
‘Young players usually see the be-all and end-all of chess in sacrifices (the same, incidentally, applies to some that are not so young. I well remember how, the first time I ever took part in a simultaneous display – against Bogoljubow – a white-haired old geezer went round the room, asking solicitously at every board: “Has the master sacrificed yet?”)’
(10052)
Busts! by Wolfgang Heidenfeld (Sutton Coldfield, 1947) measures only 12cm x 9cm and has 17 pages of text, but anything by Heidenfeld is worth reading. Some general comments from pages 3-4:
‘Chess is difficult enough at its simplest, and anybody, be he the greatest master, may fail to notice a hidden resource to a subtle and involved combination often extending over many moves. I entirely agree with players of the Tartakower or Kurt Richter school of thought, who maintain that a sacrifice – in Spielmann’s terminology a “real” as opposed to a “temporary” sacrifice – cannot simply be classed as incorrect if it induces the opponent to go wrong 90 times out of a hundred – even if subsequent analysis should be able to establish its objective unsoundness. For the practice of tournament play – and it is with such games, not with correspondence chess combinations, that I am concerned – the refutable combination need not be inferior to the abstractly correct combination. One may even go a step further. There may be cases where the 90% combination is preferable to the 100% one – when the latter combination would tax your own resources to such an extent that only a miracle could save you from losing your way under the time-limit. What is the good of the most brilliant and correct conception which yields, say, a sound pawn, when afterwards you are too exhausted to give sufficient attention to the resulting endgame and may lose, not only your hard-earned pawn, but perhaps the game? Chess is a fight, not a science, and men are men and not machines.’
(10084)
The remark in C.N. 10475 about winning a won game reminds us of an excellent passage on pages 2-3 of Chess Springbok by Wolfgang Heidenfeld (Cape Town, 1955), an annotated collection of 25 games:
(10480)
In the penultimate paragraph of the Introduction to Chess Springbok (page 3) Wolfgang Heidenfeld wrote that the book aimed to be ‘a chatty and amusing diary of failure’. Some gleanings:
The full game-score: 1 c4 f5 2 d4 Nf6 3 g3 e6 4 Bg2 Bb4+ 5 Bd2 Qe7 6 e3 O-O 7 Ne2 Bxd2+ 8 Nxd2 d6 9 Qc2 e5 10 dxe5 dxe5 11 e4 Nc6 12 O-O fxe4 13 Nxe4 Bf5 14 N2c3 Nd4 15 Qd1 c6 16 f4 Rad8 17 Nxf6+ Qxf6 18 Qh5 Nc2 19 Rad1 Ne3 20 Rxd8 Qxd8 21 Rf2 Ng4 22 Re2 Qd4+ 23 Kf1 exf4 24 Bf3 fxg3 25 Kg2 gxh2 26 White resigns.
1 Nf3 Nf6 2 g3 g6 3 Bg2 Bg7 4 O-O O-O 5 d4 d6 6 c4 Nbd7 7 Nc3 e5 8 e3 c6 9 Qc2 Re8 10 Rd1 Qc7 11 b3 Nf8 12 Ba3 exd4 13 Nxd4 Bg4 14 f3
14...Rad8 15 fxg4 Nxg4 16 Rd3 Nxe3 17 Qd2 Qa5 18 Bb2 Ng4 19 Ne4 Qb6 20 Kh1 d5 21 cxd5 Rxd5 22 Qf4
22...Rxd4 23 Rf1 f5 24 Bxd4 Bxd4 25 h3 Ne6 26 Qf3 Ne5 27 Nf6+ Kf7 28 Nd5 cxd5 29 Qxd5 Nxd3 ‘and White resigned after a few “shadow” moves’. The game was also annotated by Heidenfeld on pages 36-38 of Lacking the Master Touch (Cape Town, 1970).
The four pages of plates include this photograph:
(10481)
A number of items (C.N. 9606, for instance) have mentioned the dismal stock caption about X and Y ‘sharing (or enjoying) a joke’. Variations on the theme are always welcome, and below is a picture from opposite page 20 of Chess Springbok by Wolfgang Heidenfeld (Cape Town, 1955):
(10598)
‘Are you playing for a win?’ is a common question, and a Google Books search (without, even, the need to specify ‘chess’) provides a number of examples of the replies offered.
Another one, ‘If you let me’, was reported by Wolfgang Heidenfeld on page 25 of Chess Springbok (Cape Town, 1955) concerning the position at move 43 in his game as White against Donner at Cheltenham, 1953:
(10653)
A further quote from Wolfgang Heidenfeld’s 1955 book Chess Springbok (page 27):
‘Of all the countries I have visited outside the Iron Curtain, Holland is by far the most chess-conscious. Players of all classes and standards take their chess seriously and are always ready for more. A visiting chess master will find no difficulty in either having a small weekend tournament arranged for him, in the course of which he may meet three or four Dutch masters, or encountering individual opponents of master strength in match games.’
After recalling major chess events held in the Netherlands over the previous two decades, Heidenfeld wrote:
‘How puny in comparison is the record of Great Britain, not to mention such countries as Belgium and France where Cinderella, not Caissa, is the patron saint of chess.’
(10654)
The first section of our feature article Chess and Politics (The Bordell Case):
‘Your memory is regrettably short. Have you never heard of the Bordell case in the fifties when the Hastings organizers – on the mere suspicion that the Soviets would object to a representative from Spain – did not allow the Spaniard to compete in the Hastings Premier?’
So wrote Wolfgang Heidenfeld to B.H. Wood on page 370 of CHESS, September 1974.
Pages 334-335 of the August 1974 issue had carried an open letter from Ludĕk Pachman complaining, inter alia, that he had been debarred for political reasons from participating in a recent tournament in Germany:
‘Spassky and Polugayevsky, the Soviet grandmasters, came to Solingen on 6 July for the international tournament of my club. They announced that their Federation had instructed them to return immediately if I took part in the tournament. ... I was excluded by my club.’
At the end of the open letter one of several comments by B.H. Wood, the Editor of CHESS, was:
‘Frankly, we cannot imagine any British or US organizer giving in to such blackmail from the Soviet Chess Federation.’
Heidenfeld reacted as follows (in a letter whose first part had criticized a recent book, Grandmasters of Chess by Harold C. Schonberg):
From page 546 of the December 1938 BCM, in T.R. Dawson’s ‘Endings’ column:
That BCM issue was misdated ‘November 1938’ in its masthead (page 529).
The solution to the composition, from page 22 of the January 1939 edition:
(10725)
When the topic of double castling arises, the game commonly referred to is W. Heidenfeld v N. Kerins, Dublin, 1973. On page 70 of Chess Curiosities (London, 1985) Tim Krabbé quoted from a report by P. Cassidy on page 236 of the June 1973 BCM (which stated that the game had been played ‘in this year’s Armstrong Cup’) but could not present the game-score. It was published on page 76 of the February 1988 BCM when J. Walsh submitted it to K. Whyld’s Quotes and Queries column. The source was vague: ‘from a recent issue of the Irish Chess Journal’. The full score:
1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Be3 Nf6 4 e5 Nfd7 5 f4 c5 6 c3 Nc6 7 Nf3 Qb6 8 Qd2 c4 9 Be2 Na5
10 O-O f5 11 Ng5 Be7 12 g4 Bxg5 13 fxg5 Nf8 14 gxf5 exf5 15 Bf3 Be6 16 Qg2 O-O-O 17 Na3 Ng6 18 Qd2 f4 19 Bf2 Bh3 20 Rfb1 Bf5 21 Nc2 h6 22 gxh6 Rxh6 23 Nb4 Qe6 24 Qe2 Ne7 25 b3 Qg6+ 26 Kf1 Bxb1 27 bxc4 dxc4 28 Qb2 Bd3+ 29 Ke1 Be4 30 Qe2 Bxf3 31 Qxf3 Rxh2 32 d5 Qf5
33 O-O-O Rh3 34 Qe2 Rxc3+ 35 Kb2 Rh3 36 d6 Nec6 37 Nxc6 Nxc6 38 e6 Qe5+ 39 Qxe5 Nxe5 40 d7+ Nxd7 41 White resigns.
(11037)
David McAlister (Stirling, Scotland) provides page 10 of the first issue (November-December 1987) of the Irish Chess Journal:
(11041)
See Castling in Chess.
From an entry by Wolfgang Heidenfeld on page 148 of The Encyclopedia of Chess edited by Harry Golombek (London, 1977):
For ease of reference, the score as given in the Encyclopedia and, for instance, on page 47 of Chess Review, February 1958: 1 d4 f5 2 g3 Nf6 3 Bg2 g6 4 Bg5 Bg7 5 Nc3 Nc6 6 Qd2 d6 7 h4 e6 8 O-O-O h6 9 Bf4 Bd7 10 e4 fxe4 11 Nxe4 Nd5 12 Ne2 Qe7 13 c4 Nb6 14 c5 dxc5 15 Bxc7 O-O 16 Bd6 Qf7 17 Bxf8 Rxf8 18 dxc5 Nd5 19 f4 Rd8 20 N2c3 Ndb4 21 Nd6 Qf8 22 Nxb7 Nd4 23 Nxd8 Bb5 24 Nxe6 Bd3 25 Bd5 Qf5 26 Nxd4+ Qxd5 27 Nc2 Bxc3 28 bxc3 Qxa2 29 cxb4 Resigns. Some sources have a slightly different order for the opening moves.
Information will be welcomed on where Lauterbach wrote about the game and whether his term was, as may be expected, ‘Die Unsterbliche Verlustpartie’. Heidenfeld mentioned Śliwa v Bronstein on page 271 of the September 1965 BCM, calling it the ‘immortal loss’.
(11259)
C.N. 11259 referred to Wolfgang Heidenfeld’s description of Śliwa v Bronstein, Gotha, 1957 as the ‘immortal loss’. In the same source (page 271 of the September 1965 BCM) Heidenfeld called Bronstein v Keres, Göteborg, 1955 ‘probably the most profound game ever’. Minić v Tolush, Oberhausen, 1961 was ‘the most fantastic defensive win’. He also praised the ‘beautifully played’ game Mikėnas v Lebedev, Tbilisi, 1941.
(11269)
A comment by Wolfgang Heidenfeld in a review of Lehrbuch der Schachtheorie by A. Suetin (East Berlin, 1973) on pages 511-512 of the December 1973 BCM:
‘The famous USSR grandmaster recognizes that nobody can possibly know everything today and has drawn on the collaboration of masters Abramov, Friedstein and Schazkes ...
In general one cannot help gaining the impression that the authors rely far too much on material from the Soviet orbit, neglecting anything played or published elsewhere. At a rough estimate 90% or so of the game references are from the output of “Eastern” players. If this were merely the result of easy accessibility, it might pass muster, but one feels that it is rather a matter of deliberate policy. This is revealed by the system of opening nomenclature.’
Among the examples given by Heidenfeld:
His concluding paragraph:
‘I think it is time for somebody to speak out against the deliberate and systematic falsification of chess history by some Soviet writers. We cannot do anything about what they are doing within their own orbit, but we can certainly try to stop our own young players – without a thorough knowledge of historical contexts and developments – from imbibing such falsehoods. Those who know better can smile at the displays of Soviet chauvinism, but there are tens of thousands who do not know. Their case must not go by default.’
Unusually, the review was followed by a note by the BCM Editor (Brian Reilly):
‘For “Falsehoods”, above, some might read “poisonous rubbish”, others “inaccuracies”. W. Heidenfeld would, we know, go for the former! ... We feel that our young players are not quite as vulnerable as Mr Heidenfeld supposes and that they already know that Popov (USSR) has invented everything, that Smith (Anglo-Sax) is pretty near behind, that Dumont (France) was a wiz[z]ard yet to be surpassed and that every country teaches and relates history in its own very nationalistic way ... One day Great Britain may be strong enough to play the Rest of the World; let us wait and see what “falsehoods” we shall be able to print ...’ [Ellipses in the original.]
(11467)
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