Chess NotesEdward WinterC.N. 11763 (15 March 2020) announced: ‘Owing to other commitments, it will be necessary for us to curtail the posting of new C.N. items as from the end of March 2020. Thereafter, additions to the main C.N. page and to feature articles will be possible only occasionally.’ If contacting us by e-mail (ewinter@sunrise.ch), correspondents need to include their name and full postal address. |
|
Note: Many of our books and periodicals are included in the regular eBay auctions of the International Master Bernd Schneider.
The current auction ends today, Monday, 29 May 2023.
Our latest feature article is Falkbeer, Staunton and Löwenthal.
|
|
|
11927. Further Fischer materialJohn Donaldson (Berkeley, CA, USA) draws attention to a website which offers a large number of Fischer-related newspaper articles. He also writes:
The Torre v Fischer game was given in C.N. 8638. 11928. Capablanca on StåhlbergPeter Holmgren (Stockholm) is seeking substantiation of a claim, readily found on the Internet without any source, that Capablanca described Ståhlberg as ‘el león sueco’ (‘the Swedish lion’). 11929. Castling‘Castling is the first step towards a well-ordered life’ is a familiar remark by Tartakower, cited, for instance, in Wolfgang Heidenfeld’s entry on (sourceless) chess aphorisms on page 16 of The Encyclopedia of Chess by Harry Golombek (London, 1977). The castling observation is one of dozens given by Tartakower on pages 551-553 of the Teplitz-Schönau, 1922 tournament book (shown below courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library): ![]() ![]() ![]() Thus page 553 has:
A number of other observations above will be familiar. Concerning ‘Die Fehler sind dazu da, um gemacht zu werden’ (customarily translated as ‘The mistakes are all there, waiting to be made’), we have now slightly amended the Tartakower entry in The Most Famous Chess Quotations, given that the Teplitz-Schönau, 1922 tournament book predated our source (Die Hypermoderne Schachpartie). See too our feature article Castling in Chess. 11930. Lady Edith Margaret Thomas (C.N.s 5690, 9848 & 10680)C.N. 5690 referred to a record of Sir George Thomas’s chessplaying mother, Lady Edith Margaret Thomas (née Foster), having been born circa 1853 at The Bogue, St Elizabeth, Jamaica. Jon D’Souza-Eva (Oxford, England) reports that now the FamilySearch webpage states ‘Birth about 1846, Hanover, German Empire’ and adds that she was christened in Hanover on 25 January 1846. Concerning Lady Thomas, see too the photograph in Chess and Women (C.N. 3281). 11931. N.T. WhitakerFurther to our recent feature article on Norman Tweed Whitaker, John Hilbert (Amherst, NY, USA) has sent us a database of over 40 games which he has traced since the publication in 2000 of his book Shady Side: The Life and Crimes of Norman Tweed Whitaker, Chessmaster. Two specimens: Morton Eschner – Norman Tweed Whitaker 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 a6 4 Ba4 Nf6 5 O-O Be7 6 c3 Nxe4 7 Re1 Nc5 8 Bxc6 dxc6 9 Nxe5 O-O 10 d4 Ne6 11 Nd2 c5 12 Ndf3 cxd4 13 Nxd4 Nxd4 14 cxd4 Be6 15 f4 Qd5 16 Be3 Rad8 17 Rc1 c6 18 a3 Bd6 19 Qc2 f6 20 Nf3 Rfe8 21 Qf2 Bb8 22 Rc5 Qd7 23 Rh5 Ba7 24 Qh4 g6 25 Rh6 Bd5 ![]() 26 f5 Bxf3 27 fxg6 Bxd4 28 Rxh7 Bxe3+ 29 Rxe3 Qd1+ 30 Kf2 Rd2+ 31 Kg3 Rxg2+ 32 Kf4 Rg4+ 33 Qxg4 Qd4+ 34 White resigns. Source: Philadelphia Item, 22 May 1910. P. Driver – Norman Tweed Whitaker 1 d4 d5 2 Nf3 c5 3 e3 e6 4 c4 Nc6 5 Nc3 Nf6 6 Bd2 dxc4 7 Bxc4 a6 8 O-O b5 9 Bb3 c4 10 Bc2 Bb7 11 e4 Be7 12 Bg5 O-O 13 e5 Nd5 14 Bxe7 Qxe7 15 Ne4 Ncb4 16 Nd6 Nxc2 17 Qxc2 Bc6 18 a3 f6 19 Rfe1 fxe5 20 dxe5 Nf4 21 Ne4 Qf7 22 Re3 Qg6 23 Ne1 ![]() 23...Bxe4 24 White resigns. Sources: Philadelphia Public Ledger, 23 April 1911 (courtesy of Neil Brennen) and the Staten Islander, 17 May 1911. 11932. Vladimir NabokovBrian Matthews (New York, NY, USA) brings to our attention a webpage on Vladimir Nabokov and chess. 11933. Petra Leeuwerik and Victor KorchnoiOlimpiu G. Urcan (Singapore) authorizes us to show this photograph that he has acquired: ![]() 11934. The Staunton chessmenFrom John Townsend (Wokingham, England):
11935. Disarray at the 1939 FIDE General Assembly (C.N.s 11915, 11918 & 11925)Our earlier items have referred to a current discussion within FIDE concerning Alexander Rueb’s tenure of the presidency, with links to FIDE Chess Congress 1939: An Investigation by Richard Forster and to his briefer account, entitled Coup or Call of Duty? Commotion at the 1939 FIDE Chess Congress. Pages 40-42 of the February 2023 CHESS feature a further article by Dr Forster, ‘Buenos Aires 1939: The putsch that did not happen’. The three-page article is shown here with the permission of CHESS. ![]() 11936. Luc WinantsThe death has just been announced of Luc Winants, aged 60. A grandmaster with a deep knowledge of chess history, he made many contributions to C.N., with unfailing precision and good humour. Below we reproduce two photographs (SWIFT tournament, 1986), courtesy of Yasser Seirawan (Hilversum, the Netherlands). ![]() ![]() 11937. AlekhineBernd Schneider (Solingen, Germany) recently auctioned a book which had, as its frontispiece, a photograph of Alekhine that seemed new to us. Is any information available about the picture (absent from our copy of the Dutch edition)? ![]() 11938. A complex study (C.N. 1831)John Roycroft (London) wrote as follows in C.N. 1831 (about a position which he gave in the GBR Code):
![]() White to move and draw (?) Now, we add that the van der Heijden database shows that the study was by Carl Behting, published in 1903 in Shakhmatnoe Obozrenie and the Deutsche Schachzeitung, and that it is cooked by 3...Kxb3. Courtesy of Sergey Voronkov and Vladislav Novikov (Moscow), below is the relevant part of page 130 of the Russian magazine (April 1903 issue): ![]() The diagram on the left is the oldest composition by Ossip Bernstein in the van der Heijden database. 11939. Simultaneous exhibitions by Staunton and MorphyWhat 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. 11940. Spanish websiteLuis Méndez (Gijón, Spain) draws attention to his website ‘Comentarios de Ajedrez’. Our correspondent is the co-author of a book mentioned in C.N. 11383, The Gijón International Chess Tournaments, 1944–1965 (Jefferson, 2019). 11941. Questions about Fischer’s My 60 Memorable GamesChristopher Holmes (Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France) raises a number of points regarding Fischer’s My 60 Memorable Games, originally published in 1969 by Simon & Schuster in the United States and by Faber and Faber in the United Kingdom, followed by two Batsford editions (1995 and 2008). Quite apart from the unclear copyright position concerning those English-language editions, our correspondent wonders how a potential translator or publisher of the book in another language could set about clearing the rights, through Fischer’s estate. Is the identity of the appropriate contact person known? ![]() Our above-mentioned feature article described the 1972 French edition by Parviz M. Abolgassemi as ‘flavourless and inaccurate’, but it is hard to imagine how a perfect new edition of Fischer’s book could be produced in any language. Which English-language version should be the basis for any translation? How, if at all, should errata be incorporated? Has anybody ever produced an exhaustive list of corrections (on the basis of what was published in 1969)? What attention, if any, should be given to the multitude of alleged analytical improvements in My 61 Memorable Games? 11942. Mikhail TalOlimpiu G. Urcan (Singapore) provides this portrait of Mikhail Tal, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph archive: ![]() 11943. Elaine SaundersMr Urcan also offers this addition, from the Keystone archive, to our feature article The Chess Prodigy Elaine Saunders: ![]() 11944. Blanco and LaskerC.N.s 3471 and 3475 (see Chess Cartoons and Caricatures) have shown a caricature of Emanuel Lasker by Rafael Blanco. Now, Yandy Rojas Barrios (Cárdenas, Cuba) supplies a better-quality version, from page 125 of El Fígaro, 4 March 1906: ![]() 11945. Charles Thomas StanleyFrom John Townsend (Wokingham, England):
11946. The first Spanish chess championLuis Méndez Castedo and Pedro Méndez Castedo (Gijón, Spain) draw our attention to a biography of Manuel Golmayo de la Torriente which they have just published. Sample pages are shown here with the co-authors’ permission: ![]() ![]() ![]() 11947. Lasker and Capablanca in their final yearsJohannes Wiegand (Washington DC, USA) asks about possible contact between Lasker and Capablanca in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and the nature of their relationship towards the end of their lives, when both were living in New York. Currently, we can quote only one account of their having met. On page 120 of the third volume (Berlin, 2022) of the Lasker trilogy Richard Forster wrote:
The source of this information is a Lasker diary (see pages 114-115 of the book, which Richard Forster co-edited with Michael Negele and Raj Tischbierek). Richard Forster has shown us the full entry by Martha Lasker concerning her husband’s meeting with Capablanca in 1940. About 260 words long, it includes this remark about the Cuban:
11948. Early 1920s photograph![]() This picture was given by us in a Chess Mysteries article at ChessBase.com on 20 November 2007 with this brief information:
Now, Philip Jurgens (Ottawa, Canada) asks whether anything further has come to light. Unfortunately not, to our knowledge. 11949. An Alekhine pageFlorin Dănănău (Bucharest) supplies the following, page 4 of Ilustrațiunea Română, January 1936: ![]() 11950. Tony MilesCourtesy of the Daily Telegraph archive, Olimpiu G. Urcan (Singapore) provides this shot of Tony Miles: ![]() A stamp on the reverse gives the date 26 February 1976, and it is stated that the picture was taken at Heathrow Airport, as Miles arrived from Dubna. |
Copyright: Edward Winter. All rights reserved.