Edward Winter
From page 9 of Capablanca move by move by Cyrus Lakdawala (London, 2012):
‘Capa easily possessed the most natural talent but was also, unfortunately, the laziest world champion, who couldn’t be bothered to log heavy study hours.’
The extent of the Cuban’s laziness is, of course, a legitimate subject for discussion, but so too is the output of a chess writer who cannot be bothered to log light study minutes.
On pages 240-244 Lakdawala annotates ‘J.R. Capablanca – Allies, Consultation game, Bradford 1919’ and writes on page 240:
‘Question: Who were the allies in this game?
Answer: England, the United States and France? I have no idea who they were. Probably a few master-strength players from the region.’
Pages 101-102 of our book on Capablanca discussed his visit to Bradford in 1919, and gave the game in question, with full particulars (including the allies’ names: J.W. Perkins, E. Shackleton and J.W. Morton):
Incidentally, page 268 of Capablanca in the United Kingdom (1911-1920) by V. Fiala (Olomouc, 2006) compounded the error in The Unknown Capablanca by inserting a note from page 93 of the Hooper and Brandreth book into the wrong Bradford game, thereby inviting the reader to note Capablanca’s ‘late castling’ in a game in which he castled at move six.
In the ‘Bibliography’ on page 6 of Capablanca move by move Lakdawala includes our monograph on the Cuban, yet he appears unaware of anything in it. For instance, he goes astray on page 17 by stating that a famous victory by Capablanca with the French Defence (Havana, 1902) was won against ‘J. Corzo y Prinzipe’ (sic – y Príncipe), whereas pages 9-10 of our book demonstrated that White was his brother, Enrique Corzo. On the first page of his Introduction Lakdawala gives the forename of Capa’s father as ‘Jorge’ instead of José María, a mistake which may or may not have been copied from a book referred to in C.N. 6642, José Raúl Capablanca by I. and V. Linder (Milford, 2010). He also believes (page 136) that Capablanca won New York, 1927 3½ points ahead of Alekhine.
Little more will be said about Capablanca move by move, although a comment on page 8 may be quoted:
‘So difficult was Capa to beat that he went ten years without losing a tournament game, from the St Petersburg tournament of 1914 to New York 1924, where he finally lost a game to Réti. (It was believed the only reason for that defeat was loss of composure when Capa’s rumoured mistress walked into the tournament hall while Capa’s wife – and the press! – also attended!)’
In reality, of course, Capablanca lost a tournament game at New York, 1916 (to Chajes). As regards the ‘rumoured mistress’ tittle-tattle (which deviates from the Carlsbad, 1929 versions discussed in C.N. 4712), what kind of writer and publisher would even contemplate printing such a thing?
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Source: page 137 of Dynamic Chess by R.N. Coles (London, 1956). In the 1966 Dover edition, the passage is on page 135.
C.N. 2105 (see page 155 of Kings, Commoners and Knaves) asked where, if anywhere, Capablanca wrote the ‘full of holes’ remark. Reiterating the question (which remains unanswered today), C.N. 3961 added a passage by Reuben Fine that we had found on page 3 of The Chess Correspondent, May-June 1942:
From page 18 of Capablanca: A Primer of Checkmate by Frisco Del Rosario (Newton Highlands, 2010):
Finally, an extract from pages 40-41 of Capablanca move by move by Cyrus Lakdawala (London, 2012), in a discussion on 1 d4 f5 2 e4:
In short, Lakdawala credits Del Rosario for material which the latter lifted from C.N. 3961, and Lakdawala’s insertion of the ‘full of holes’ remark in the story of a Mexican pupil is a plain fabrication, as is his claim that Capablanca called 2 Ne2 ‘perhaps a refutation’.
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Before Cyrus Lakdawala’s Capablanca move by move is returned to the shelf, a passage from page 316 may be noted:
Faulty punctuation apart, a more scrupulous publisher than Everyman Chess would have made Mr Lakdawala either verify the matter or delete the paragraph. Readers deserve better than talk of an article ‘titled something like’ and ‘a quote which went something like’.
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For more details of the Larsen matter, see the remainder of C.N. 10345 and our feature article Bobby Fischer Miscellanea.
From C.N. 9511:
On page 9 of Carlsen move by move (London, 2014) the vastly over-published Cyrus Lakdawala even quoted Wikipedia on matters of opinion:
‘Wikipedia says of Carlsen’s opening play: “He does not focus on opening preparation as much as other top players, and plays a variety of openings, making it harder for opponents to prepare against him.”’
The first paragraph of C.N. 10341:
All too often, it seems, authors of the ‘move by move’ books (Everyman Chess) have been recruited for their availability rather than suitability – most notably, the unshakeably available Cyrus Lakdawala – but Réti move by move by Thomas Engqvist (London, 2017) is one of the better volumes in the series and, in principle, Engqvist was a reasonable choice for such a book.
In the bibliography on the imprint page of Capablanca the Great Minimalist – Volume I: 1901-1918 by Cyrus Lakdawala (published by Elk and Ruby in 2025) the first four books are:
The Unknown Capablanca was published in 1975, not 1973. José Raúl Capablanca A Chess Biography by Miguel Sánchez was published by McFarland & Company, Inc. in 2015, not 1978. Our ‘McFarland Publishers’ book was published in 1989 and (paperback edition) in 2011, not 2006.
There is nothing arcane about such information; see Books about Capablanca and Alekhine.
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