Chess Notes

Our latest feature article is Henry Edward Bird.

12262. Check and checkmate

White played 39 Bxh6 Be5+ 40 Bf4 mate.

As discussed in Check and Checkmate, Bogoljubow v Trott, Southsea, 1950 was depicted in the animated film War Is Over!, written and directed by Dave Mullins.

Peter Trott (Paddock Wood, England) has sent us his father’s score of the game:

1 e4 c5 2 Ne2 Nc6 3 Nbc3 d6 4 g3 g6 5 Bg2 Bg7 6 d3 e6 7 Nf4 Nge7 8 O-O O-O 9 Re1 Rb8 10 Nce2 b5 11 c3 Qa5 12 a3 b4 13 Bd2 bxa3 14 Rxa3 Qb6 15 Bc1 Bd7 16 Ra2 Rfc8 17 g4 Na5 18 h3 Nb3 19 Be3 e5 20 Nd5 Nxd5 21 exd5 f5 22 gxf5 Bxf5 23 Ng3 Rf8 24 Kh2 Rb7 25 Rg1 Kh8 26 Ra3 Bd7 27 Ne4 a5 28 Bf3 Be8 29 Rg2 h6 30 Be2 a4 31 Qg1 Nd4 32 cxd4 Qxb2 33 dxc5 Qxa3 34 Nxd6 Rb8 35 Nxe8 Rfxe8 36 Rxg6 Rg8 37 Qg4 e4 38 Qh5 Rge8 39 Bxh6 Be5+ 40 Bf4 mate.

We are also grateful to Peter Trott for this photograph taken shortly after the game started:

See too Efim Bogoljubow.

An earlier photograph courtesy of our correspondent:

From left to right: A.H. Trott, H. Meek, O. Penrose
London Boys’ Championship, January 1947

Addition on 3 January 2026:

Two further photographs of his father from Peter Trott:

The board position occurs a number of times in databases, the earliest game being Richter v Engels, Bad Oeynhausen, 1938.

Regarding this shot taken on Southsea pier (in, we believe, April 1951), Leonard Barden (London) informs us:

‘The man on the right is Donald G. Mackay, and the one in the centre looks like Stephen Hawes.

Trott’s chess career effectively terminated at Beverwijk, 1953, where he finished joint last on 1/11, including a particularly brutal defeat by Donner. After that his name virtually disappeared from competitive chess.’

12263. Alekhine v Lilienthal (C.N. 3348)

From Michael Sharpe (Toronto, Canada):

‘C.N. 3348 discusses the game Alekhine v Lilienthal, Hastings, 1933-34 and its possible significance in encouraging Euwe to challenge Alekhine for the world championship title. The moves of Alekhine’s winning combination in that game are of interest:

Position after 50 Rf6-h6

In his 1969 autobiography, Zhizn shakhmatam, pages 30-32 Lilienthal gives the concluding moves as 50. ... Kf5 51 Rh4! Kg6 52 Rc8 Qxc8 53 h8(Q) Qe6+ 54 Kb1 Qe1+ 55 Kc2 Qe2+ 56 Kc3 Resigns. That continuation also appears in the Hungarian version of his autobiography, Életem, a sakk (page 65), the German translation Schach war mein Leben (pages 45-46) and in the English translation published in 2024, Chess Survivor (pages 48-49).

However, in their book Alexander Alekhine’s Chess Games, 1902-1946 (1998), pages 482-483, Skinner and Verhoeven give the conclusion as 50...Kf4 (rather than 50...Kf5), followed by 51 Rc8 Qxc8 52 Rh4+ Kg5 53 h8(Q) Qe6+ 54 Kb1 Qe1+ 55 Kc2 Qe2+ 56 Kc3 Resigns. Their book provides a number of sources for the game, including The Times, 30 December 1933 (quoted in Britbase) and Tarrasch’s Schachzeitung, 15 January 1934, pages 119-123. Additional sources which I have located: F. Reinfeld (Chess Review, January-February 1934, pages 13-14; Deutsche Schachzeitung, January 1934, pages 21-22 (notes by M. Blümich); BCM, February 1934, pages 84-85 (notes by J.H. Blake); L’Echiquier, February 1934, pages 396-397, as well as several Hungarian sources: Budapesti Sakkujság, 15 February 1934, page 10, and Magyar Sakkvilág, February 1934, page 44. Budapesti Sakkujság was a magazine to which Lilienthal contributed at least one annotated game in 1934 (1 May 1934 issue, pages 92-93). Endre Steiner annotated the Alekhine v Lilienthal game in the chess column in Magyar Hirlap, 21 January 1934, page 28. All these sources give the moves indicated by Skinner and Verhoeven, i.e. 50...Kf4 (rather than 50...Kf5), followed by 51 Rc8 Qxc8 52 Rh4+ Kg5 53 h8(Q) Qe6+ 54 Kb1 Qe1+ 55 Kc2 Qe2+ 56 Kc3 Resigns.

Alekhine’s attacking line beginning with 51 Rc8 was flawed, as Lilienthal could have drawn, after 51...Qxc8 52 Rh4+, with 52 ... Kf3!, whereas 52...Kg5 as played in the game loses. I am not sure when the drawing resource of 52...Kf3 was first published – none of the above sources has that variation in the notes – but page 418 of the 2002 book Alexander Alekhine II Games 1923-1934 gives the variation 52...Kf3 53 h8(Q) Qe6+ 54 Kb1 Qe1+ 55 Kc2 Qf2+ 56 Kc3 Qc5+ 57 Kd2 Qf2+ 58 Kd3 Qe3+ as drawing.’

12264. Assiac/Heinrich Fraenkel

From the ‘William Hickey’ column on page 6 of the Daily Express, 1 May 1935:

12265. Morphy cartoons in Le Charivari

Jean Fontaine (Montreal, Canada) refers to page 170 of the New York edition of F.M. Edge’s 1859 book on Morphy:

Page 152 of the London edition is almost identical.

Mr Fontaine comments:

‘Gallica’s digitized archives of Le Charivari cover the months of Morphy’s first stay in Paris. I have found five Morphy-related cartoons by the French caricaturist Cham (a pseudonym of Charles Amédée de Noé, 1818-79), including both pictures described by Edge:

1 November 1858, page 3

14 November 1858, page 3

21 November 1858, page 3

28 November 1858, page 3

16 January 1859, page 3

What Edge calls “cuts” seem to be lithographs. Cham apparently had only a vague idea of Morphy’s looks, name (misspelled Morphi and Murphy) and fast play (the mandatory joke about chess being a slow game). His humour sometimes involves French wordplay, exploiting the double meaning of “échecs”, “dame” and “battu”.’

12266. 1960

Ross Jackson (Raumati South, New Zealand) sends the following (Punch, 3 February 1960) from his collection:

The cartoon, by Norman Mainsbridge (1911-93), is being added to From Former Times (Chess).

12267. Milan Vidmar

Thomas Herbst (Nuremberg, Germany) recommends publication of an English edition of the chess autobiography Goldene Schachzeiten by Milan Vidmar (Berlin, 1961). Pages 242-243 are shown in C.N. 8293.

It is a longstanding need (mentioned in our 1999 article Wanted), and an enterprising publisher might even combine the German volume with Vidmar’s Pol stoletja ob šahovnici (Ljubljana, 1951).

12268. Skittles and speed

Earliest Occurrences of Chess Terms includes an entry for ‘Skittles’, together with ‘Skittling’; an addition regarding the latter is an article on page 87 of the Westminster Chess Club Papers, November 1868.

In a letter on page 3 of the Daily News, 30 May 1894 Samuel Tinsley wrote:

‘There is, as every experienced chessist knows, all the difference in the world between what is known as off-hand play or “skittles” and chess. Multitudes can enjoy the set-’em-up-and-knock-’em-down game; not everyone can play games that will in the main bear after analyses, and afford intellectual pleasure to the student as years go by; and certainly no-one can play good chess at less than the now well recognized 15 or 20 moves an hour.’

Tinsley’s letter was in a series of four published by the Daily News (London) in 1894 on the subject of fast chess:

29 May 1894, page 2

30 May 1894, page 3

31 May 1894, page 7

Bird’s first letter was also published in the Evening Standard, 29 May 1894, page 6.

See too pages 8-9 of Hans Renette’s monograph on Bird (Jefferson, 2016), which gave the first letter and mentioned the second and third ones.

The title ‘Senior Chess Master’ had been used in connection with a Bird letter on page 3 of the Morning Post, 4 September 1893 about draws and stalemate:

The heading of a brief notice on page 32 of the St James’s Budget, 17 April 1908:

12269. Errol Flynn

Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn

From page 5B of the Sunday Sun (San Diego), 29 August 1937:

In many other newspaper paragraphs on the topic that year, Errol Flynn was called ‘Anglo-Irish’, a twofold error.

Chess and Hollywood has so many references to his reputed interest in chess that we have just produced a separate feature article, Errol Flynn and Chess.

12270. The Encyclopaedia of Chess by Anne Sunnucks

The conclusion of B.H. Wood’s column about the first edition of Sunnucks’ encyclopaedia on page 42 of the Illustrated London News, 30 May 1970:

‘Of course there is scope here for divergencies of opinion and you may well disagree with me. Perhaps the Women’s World Championship really does deserve more than three times as much space as the World Championship itself. Perhaps Lisa Lane merits more space than Spassky or Smyslov ..!

Yet Miss Sunnucks has assured herself of immortality, for her Encyclopaedia will undoubtedly be in print, its inadequacies rectified and its faults eliminated, a century hence, by then the accepted standard work of reference on the subject. This thought may console her for some of the criticism this first edition will receive.’

Wood wrote similarly in his first reaction to the book on page 288 of CHESS, 12 May 1970, as quoted in C.N. 9280:

‘... the book provides pleasant browsing for many an evening and, its faults rectified, will probably be in print a century hence.’

The prediction was wisely omitted from his column on page 11 of the Daily Telegraph, 18 March 1978, which gave an overview of chess encyclopaedias. The highest praise was awarded to Shakhmatny Slovar (Moscow, 1964). Anne Sunnucks’ The Encyclopaedia of Chess (a ‘grandiose title’) was deemed ‘a worthy though uneven production’ which was ‘only partially revised’ in 1976:

‘Her extraordinary achievement of allocating the women’s world championship more than twice as much space as the world championship itself remains unaltered though these two sections follow consecutively so that the imbalance could have been rectified.’

Turning to the most recent (1978) single-volume reference work, Wood commented:

‘To give his book the same title: The Encyclopaedia of Chess (Batsford, 1977) ... struck me as confusing and a little unkind on Harry Golombek’s part.’

The titles of Sunnucks’ Encyclopaedia and Golombek’s Encyclopedia differed by one letter, both spellings being acceptable in British English.

The Daily Telegraph column also mentioned the Dictionnaire des échecs (Le Lionnais and Maget), the Dizionario enciclopedico degli scacchi (Chicco and Porreca) and An illustrated Dictionary of Chess (Brace); six in all, ‘with a seventh by Paul Langfield on the way’. (That one never materialized, but see C.N.s 23 and 74 in The Chess Chamber of Horrors.) Wood made errors in the title and date of the Russian volume and in the date of the Italian one.

From the final paragraph of his 1978 article:

‘It is strange how all the authors have started from scratch. You would expect them to consult their predecessors, each building on the work that has gone before. This would not be plagiarism, but just natural efficiency. Instead, they more or less ignore each other. The result is big gaps and even steps backward.’

‘Building on’ is not the term to convey what Nathan Divinsky did to Golombek’s book in 1990.

See also our recent feature article Wolfgang Heidenfeld, as well as Chess and Women.