Edward Winter
An ultra-familiar chess quote is ‘When I am White I win because I am White. When I am Black I win because I am Bogoljubow.’ Wanted: early sightings of the phrase (e.g. during the master’s lifetime).
Efim Bogoljubow, Tijdschrift van den Nederlandschen Schaakbond, August-September 1933, page 222
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A letter published on page 129 of the May 1951 Chess Review:
C.N. 5063 asked for early sightings of the famous saying ‘When I am White I win because I am White. When I am Black I win because I am Bogoljubow’. The earliest that we can propose is on page 14 of the March 1947 Chess Review, in an article by Reuben Fine:
‘Because winning is so pleasant people are always ready to tell you how they lost but can rarely explain how they won. Many follow Bogoljubow’s well-known principle: “When I’m White I win because I’m White; when I’m Black I win because I’m Bogoljubow.”’
The article was reproduced on pages 76-80 of Fine’s book The World’s a Chessboard (Philadelphia, 1948).
From page 136 of The Adventure of Chess by Edward Lasker (New York, 1950):
‘More self-confident mortals are rarely encountered anywhere. A story, which has become a classic in chess circles, told of the Russian master, Efim Bogoljubow, bears amusing testimony to this fact. When an admirer asked him whether he preferred the white or the black pieces, he replied: “I have no preference. When I play White, I win because I have the first move. When I play Black, I win because I am Bogoljubow.”’
Some writers seem averse to mentioning Bogoljubow without relating the story, dressed up as the established truth. From page 252 of Capablanca move by move by Cyrus Lakdawala (London, 2012):
‘Bogo mistakenly plays for his now non-existent future attack. I read accounts of Bogoljubow’s legendary optimism. Like most super-GMs, Bogo was an unassuming and modest man, once making the claim: “When I am White, I win because I am White. When I am Black, I win because I am Bogoljubow!”’
As Jean-Pierre Rhéaume (Montreal, Canada) notes, the remark was attributed to Chigorin in the extract from pages 137-139 of the September-October 1967 Chess World shown in C.N. 9645:
‘There is something grandly memorable about Chigorin’s “When I am White I win because I am White, when I am Black I win because I am Chigorin”.’
We can add an earlier instance, from an article by Paul Hugo Little about Berlin, 1897 on pages 229-230 of the November 1939 Chess Review:
‘... Chigorin’s genius was so great that he could handicap himself in the opening and still win. He used to say, “When I am White, I must win because I am White; when I am Black, I must win because I am Chigorin.”’
On page 215 of William Steinitz, Chess Champion (Jefferson, 1993) Kurt Landsberger wrote, on the basis of nothing better than a second-hand 1961 source in German translated from Czech:
‘As he said, “When I am white, I win because I have white, but when I am black, I win because I am Chigorin”.’
Landsberger added this casual footnote:
‘The remark has also been attributed to other players.’
No names were supplied – not even Bogoljubow’s.
Impact of Genius by R.E. Fauber (Seattle, 1992) had only this about Chigorin (page 85):
‘When Chigorin had White, he played 1 e4 confident that he had a little bit the better game. When he had Black, he answered 1 e4 with e5 certain that he had at least equality.’
We can point out corroboration in Tarrasch’s essay on Chigorin towards the end of his book Die moderne Schachpartie (various editions, and page numbers vary). From page 415 of the Leipzig, 1924 edition:
The famous saying was included in the Bogoljubow section of Fauber’s Impact of Genius (page 212):
‘He had a simple view of chess theory: “When I am White, I win because I have the first move; and when I am Black I win because I am Bogoljubow.”’
It cannot be demonstrated whether Chigorin and/or Bogoljubow and/or any other master ‘once said’, or ‘often said’, or ‘used to say’, or ‘would say’, the phrase trustingly served up by so many chess writers. We can, though, offer a citation which not only stands as the earliest occurrence of the saying found so far but also involves both masters. It appeared on page 8 of Games Played in the World’s Championship Match by F.D. Yates and W. Winter (London, 1930), in a biographical note about Bogoljubow:
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From page 33 of the December 1944 Chess Review, in an article by I.A. Horowitz:
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Stefan Müllenbruck (Trier, Germany) sends a column relevant to two topics discussed in C.N.: the player who claimed never to have beaten a healthy opponent (pages 322-323 of Kings, Commoners and Knaves and C.N. 4189) and the ‘When I am White, ... when I am Black ...’ remark (C.N.s 5063, 9647 and 10407). Both observations were ascribed to Emanuel Lasker in a column by ‘Philidor’ (C.H.O’D. Alexander) on page 866 of The Spectator, 22 June 1956:
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Efim Bogoljubow, Mikhail Chigorin, Emanuel Lasker
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