CHESMAYNE
Midi: Tea for
Two

Philidor Francois Andre
Philidor Playing Blindfold at Parsloe’s
Engraving from the Sporting Magazine, 1794.
1726-1795. Author - leading player of the 18th
century - ahead of his time. His keen
insight was that the mps were an important force in themselves and not just as a compliment to
the MPs. He was a court composer in Versailles and a refugee
from the French Revolution. Skilled at blindfold
chess. His bicentenary was celebrated in 1995. His father was the royal music librarian who
had 20 children by marrying a second wife 50 years his junior! Those interested in finding out more about
Philidor should write to: 53 Abbots Drive, Waltham Abbey, Essex EN9 3HH. England. Phone:
01992 715589.
Francois-Andre Danican
Philidor - 1726-1795

Although Philidor was the greatest chess player of his
time, he professed to be just a musical composer (of which he was great in his
day), because chess was not fully understood by the masses.
He was the first great blindfold chess player, playing
three opponents while blindfolded. He did this three times. In the 18th
century, this almost amounted to witchcraft. He was the first to understand the
value of playing the pawns correctly and hence wrote the first real strategy
book on chess. He invented the Philidor’s Defense:
His musical skills were of the highest order. In his
career, he composed more than 20 operas. At the age of six, he became a member
of the Chapel-Royal choir in Versailles.
This is where he learned chess, as musicians in those days were very
knowledgeable in chess, or at least, more than the average person. He learned
by watching others play. There were other great players that learned chess this
way: Morphy, Capablanca, Karpov, etc.
At the age of 11, his first musical composition was
played before King Louis XV. That is definitely big time stuff. When he was 14,
his voice changed, and he had to leave the Chapel-Royal choir.

At 15, he was tutored in chess by France's
greatest chess player of the day, Sire de Legal. Three years later, he quit
instructing Philidor, because he became stronger than he was. At 18, Philidor
had become the strongest chess player in the world, with no one to tutor him
anymore.
At this time (1744), Philidor played two chess games
blindfolded simultaneously in public in Paris.
He said he learned how to do this when he could not sleep at night and played
chess without sight of a chessboard. This was the first time blindfold play
against two opponents was ever recorded.
Philidor became quite famous with his chess abilities
at this time. He played chess against Voltaire and Rousseau. And, of course, he
creamed them.
At the age of 19, Philidor went to Rotterdam, Holland to present his musical compositions.
But the concerts were cancelled and he was stranded in Holland with no money. He then supported
himself by teaching and playing chess and Polish checkers, especially to
English army officers at The Hague.
At the age of 21, he travelled to London, England
and beat the two best English chess players of the day, Stamma and Sir Janssen,
at Slaughter's coffee house.
Philidor was at the top of the world at this point.
Phillip Stamma was the best English player, and Philidor challenged him to a
ten-game match with an extraordinary set of rules. Philidor insisted that
Stamma play White in all of the games, and that any draw would count as a win
for Stamma. This is either cocky or stupid. Nevertheless, Stamma accepted the
terms (who wouldn't?) and Philidor won 8 games and lost 2, one of the losses
being a drawn game. He also beat Sir Janssen 4 wins and 1 loss.
At 22, Philidor wrote L'analyze des Eschecs (Analysis
of Chess). Some of the early subscriptions were: Lord Sandwich (10 copies),
Duke of Cumberland
(50 copies), English army officers (119 copies). This made Philidor and the
publishers quite wealthy.
At 23, 433 copies of his book were published in London, England.
It was the first chess book translated into Russian, and was one of the
favorite books of Thomas Jefferson. This was the first chess book that
organized the chess openings.
He was invited to the courts of Europe
to play chess in front of the royalties. He played in King Frederick's castle
at Potsdam. He
played for the Duke of Mirepoix. In 1755, he beat the great Legal in a match at
the Café del la Regence in Paris, France.
He spent the next 40 years of his life intermixing
chess and composing music. In 1795, at the age of 68, he died in London, England.
The newspaper obituary read, "On Monday last, Mr. Philidor, the celebrated
chess player, made his last move, into the other world".
Terry Crandall
Francois-Andre Danican Philidor -
1726-1795
Francois-Andre Danican Philidor
was born on September 7, 1726 in Dreux, France. His father Andre (1647-1730) was the keeper
of the music for King Louis XIII of France. In 1725, Andre introduced the public
concert. Andre had 20 children and was
79 when Francois-Andre was born.
Francois was the last child of Andre and the first son of his third
wife. Andre’s third wife was in her
20s.
In
1731 at the age of six, Francois-Andre entered the choir of the Chapel-Royal in
Versailles. As a pageboy in the royal chapel, he studied
music with Andre Campra. Philidor’s
father had died earlier and was living on a royal pension. The young Philidor was recognized as a
musical prodigy among the 80 musicians.
In
1736 at the age of 10, Francois-Andre was exposed to chess by the musicians who
played chess during spells of inactivity.
Cards were forbidden to pass the time, so chess was played. He learned the game by watching the band
members play. He later visited the Cafe
de la Regence in Paris
and spent much of his time playing chess there.
In
1737, at the age of 11, his first music composition, a religious piece, was
played before King Louis XV. He left
the Chapel Royal choir in 1740 when his voice changed. In 1740 he went to Paris where he earned a living by copying
music and giving music lessons.
In 1741
Philidor was being instructed by M. de Kermur, Sire de Legal (1702-1792), the
leading French chess player. Legal
initially gave Philidor RO odds. For
the next three years Kermur taught Philidor until Philidor was too strong for
his teacher.
In 1744
Philidor played two chess games blindfolded simultaneously in public in Paris. He said he had learned how to do this when
he could not sleep at night and played chess without sight of a board. This was the first time blindfold play
against two opponents was recorded.
This performance was chronicled in the article on chess by the Chevalier
de Jaucourt for the great Encyclopedie of Diderot and D’Alembert in 1751. Philidor played chess with Voltaire and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both persistent but weak chess players.
In
December, 1745, Philidor went to Rotterdam
to assist in presenting concerts with Geminiani and Lanza. The musical tour involved a 13-year old girl
who played the harpsichord. However,
she died during the concert tour.
Later, the concerts were cancelled because of the girl’s death and he
was stranded in the Netherlands
with no money. He supported himself by
teaching and playing chess and Polish draughts (10 by 10 checker board),
especially to English army officers at The
Hague. The English officers suggested that Philidor
could make a living playing chess in England.
In
1747 he went to London
and started playing chess at Slaughter’s coffee-house. There, he beat Phillip Stamma and Sir
Abraham Janssen (1720-1795), two of England’s top chess players, in
chess matches.
Philidor
challanged Stamma to a 10-game match and he stipulated that Stamma was to have
White in all games and that draws were counted victories for Stamma. Philidor won 8 games, lost 1, and drew 1. He also beat Janssen with 4 wins and 1
loss. From that time on, Philidor was
the unofficial champion of the world.
In
1748 Philidor, age 22, returned to Holland
and wrote L’analyse du jeu des Eschecs (Analysis of the Game of Chess). Philidor went out to find subscribers for
the book before it was published to pay for publishing costs. Lord Sandwich subscribed to 10 copies. The Duke of Cumberland subscribed to 50 copies. The English army officers subscribed to 119
copies. The moves were written out as
full sentences.
In
1749, 433 copies of his ‘Analysis of Chess’ were published in London.
Two more reprints occurred in 1749 and an English version followed in
1750. The book was the first chess book
translated into Russian (1824) and was one of the favorite books of Thomas
Jefferson. The book analyzed 4 games
and 10 variations of games. Philidor
favored the BSs Opening and frowned upon the King's Knight Opening as weak. The book has gone through more than 100
editions, 4 in the first year.
Philidor’s
chess book was the first chess book that organized the openings, that explained
the middlegame, the overall strategy of chess, and the importance of PA
formation. In his book he made the
observation that ‘Les pions sont l’ame du jeu’ (the PAs are the life of the
game). This phrase has become “the PAs
are the soul of chess”. His book was
also the first to examine the RO+BS versus RO endgame. It also had some
analysis of 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6, the Philidor’s Defense.
By
1750 Philidor was considered the strongest player in France, England, and the Netherlands. The French Ambassadaor, the Duke of
Mirepoix, invited Philidor for his weekly chess dinners.
In
1751 Philidor left England
for Prussia,
playing before KI Frederick (Frederick
the Great) at Potsdam. He then visited Berlin where he played three blindfold games simultaneously, winning them
all. He then returned to England.
In
November 1754 he returned to France
after being gone for 9 years. He started
composing music again. He did not return
to England
until 1772. He applied unsuccessfully
for the post of court composer at Versailles. A rumor had started that nobody could be a
chess master and compose good music, so his church music was not really his
own. His church music was not accepted
by the French royalty because Philidor added an Italian influence to it, so he
turned to comedy opera.
In 1755 he beat
Legal in a chess match at the Cafe de la Regence.
On February 13, 1760, at age
33, he married Angelique Richer (1736-1809).
He had 5 sons and 2 daughters with her.
In 1761 he composed
the opera ‘Le Marechal ferrant’.
In 1764 he composed
the opera ‘Le Sorcier’.
In 1765 he composed
the opera ‘Tom Jones’ for the theater based on Fielding’s novel. It was his 11th opera that he had
composed since 1759.
In 1771 and 1773 he
made brief trips to London
to play at the Salopian coffee house, Charing Cross,
and the St. James Chess Club. He
returned for seasonal chess lectures in 1775 and 1792.
In
1774 the Parsloe’s chess club on St.
James Street, was formed in London, with a distinguished membership
limited to 100. A fund was raised to
enable Philidor to spend from February to June at the club. Philidor visited the club as resident master
for 20 years. He gave lessons for a crown
each.
In
1777 he published a second edition of his book under the patronage of the London Chess Club at
Parsloe’s. There were 283 subscribers,
including Lord Sandwich. Philidor added
six other games to the original four games that he analyzed. In this book he described the rule for
castling as we know it now. However, there was a footnote: “The old way of
castling in several countries, and which still subsists in some, was to leave
to the player’s disposal, all the interval the KI and the RO, inclusively, to
place there these two pieces”. So, as
recently as 1777, you could put the KI and RO anywhere you wanted on the back
rank. The book was dedicated to the Duke
of Cumberland.
In 1779 he produced
his major choral work, the ‘Carmen saeculare’, while in London.
In 1780 he composed ‘Persee’.
On May 27, 1782, Philidor
played two games blindfolded simultaneously at the Parsloe’s, drawing one (to
Count Bruhl) and losing one (to Mr. Bowdler).
On May 27, 1783 Philidor
played three blindfold games simultaneously, winning two and drawing one. In nine blindfold performances, Philidor won
10, drew 4, and lost 6. In 1783 a new
chess club was established in Paris
under the patronage of Louis XVIII with Philidor invited to teach and play
chess.
In 1785 he composed
‘Themistocle’.
In 1790 a third
edition of Philidor’s book was published, under the patronage of the London chess club.
In December 1792,
at age 65, he left France
for England,
never to return. His music was banned
from France
after the French Revolution for political reasons. He had to leave his wife and
children behind.
In
1795 he published a third edition of his book, dedicating it to his friend and
patron, Count Bruhl (1736-1809). He
wanted to return to France,
but he was considered an imigre and would have been arrested or executed.
Philidor’s
last blindfold performance was on June 20, 1795 at the London
chess club. He played two games
blindfolded and a third game with sight of the board. One of his opponents was George Atwood (1746-1807),
the mathematician and churchman.
On August 24, 1795, at age 68,
he died in London. The newspaper obituary read, “On Monday
last, Mr. Philidor, the celebrated chess player, made his last move, into the
other world”. He is buried at St. James
Church in London.
Only
68 games from his last years have been recorded, either played blindfolded or
at odds. Philidor was in his 60s when
the games were recorded.
Philidor wrote over
21 operas during his musical career.
In 1835 George
Walker published A Selection of Games at Chess: Actually Played by Philidor and
his Contemporaries. It contains 47 of
Philidor’s games. It is based on the
note-taking of George Atwood.
In 1863 George
Allen published ‘The Life of Philidor, Musician and Chess-Player’.
His bust is carved
into the Opera House in Paris,
where it can still be seen along with his family coat of arms, which has a
chessboard in it.
Jean-Jaques
Rousseau’s Confessions mentions Philidor with reference to music and chess.
Siegbert Tarrasch
The
great chess player Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch was born in Breslau, Germany
on March 5, 1862,
the site of Dr. Lasker’s great two BS sacrifice in 1887 (in Lasker’s first
Masters tournament). He was born with a
club foot, but he noted once that it did not hinder his progress.
Tarrasch was a great scholar, excelling in all
subjects but mathematics. At 15, he
learned the game of chess. He was
mostly astonished that there were books written about chess.
Young Tarrasch devoured in an unsystematic but
efficient way, all of the chess literature available to him. Breslau was
perfect for thi - the immortal Adolph Anderssen had been born in Breslau and taught at one of the universities there. Tarrasch displayed a marked aptitude for
chess from the very start, and became so absorbed in the game that he had
little time left for such trifles such as homework. He made up for the lost time with more
diligent study. He graduated in the study of medicine, and then went to the University of Berlin to complete his studies.
His first attempt in a “Hauptturnier”, to become
chess master (only the winner gets the title of master), failed in 1882. In 1883, however, he won first prize at the
Hauptturnier at Nuremberg
and the title of Master in scintillating style.
By the time Tarrasch sent in his entry for the
International Tournament at Hamburg
in 1885, he had passed all examinations and was a full-fledged physician. Then, and later, he was to know how taxing
it is to combine tournament chess with the practice of another profession. At Hamburg,
Dr. Tarrasch ended up in a 5-way tie with Blackburne, Englisch, Mason and
Weiss, all Internationally known players, ½ point behind the winner
Gunsberg. Both Steinitz and Zukertort
acclaimed the 23-year old player’s chess prowess.
At Frankfort,
1887, he only tied for 5th prize.
But it was a strong tournament.
In 1888 he came in last at Leipzig,
after winning a small tournament at Nuremberg. But things changed in 1889. He came in first at Breslau,
1889; Berlin,
1889; Manchester,
1890; Dresden,
1892; and Leipzig,
1894. He tied a match with the
legendary Tchigorin in 1893.
At this point Tarrasch earned the right to be
reckoned with, and sure enough, received an offer to play Wilhelm Steinitz in a
match for the World Championship.
Tarrasch declined to play because of his medical practice. Steinitz, in dire need of monies, then
queried Dr. Emanuel Lasker, who accepted the World Championship match offer. Dr. Lasker won in 1894, and was Chess World
Champion for 27 years. While Dr. Lasker
was alive, Dr. Tarrasch would be never more than second fiddle, since Dr.
Lasker was his chess superior in every way, and one of the greatest chess
players that ever lived.
At the famous Hastings tournament of 1895, Dr. Tarrasch
came second to the great Pillsbury, and at the great Nuremberg tournament of 1896, Dr. Tarrasch
came second to Dr. Lasker. He won first
prize in the marathon tournament at Vienna
in 1898, but Dr. Lasker didn’t participate.
In 1905, he beat the US
Champion Frank Marshall overwhelmingly in their match, and in 1907, Dr.
Tarrasch won the Ostend
Championship in classy style. In 1914,
he beat his then theoretical archrival Nimzowitch in a famous two BS sacrifice, and went on to be one of the five
original Grandmasters named by Czar Nicholas (Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine,
Tarrasch and Marshall).
From that point on, he basically spent his chess
time writing chess books, some of the most lucid ever written. In his last book, ‘The Game of Chess’, he wrote the following passage…….
“Chess is a form of intellectual
productiveness. Therein lies its
peculiar charm. Intellectual
productiveness is one of the greatest joys - if not the greatest one - of human
existence. It is not everyone who can
write a play, or build a bridge, or even make a good joke. But in chess everyone can, everyone must, be
intellectually productive and so can share in this select delight. I have always a slight feeling of pity for
the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity the man who has
remained ignorant of love. Chess, like
love, like music, has the power to make men happy”.
Terry Crandall
EMANUEL
LASKER - 1868-1941
Lasker
was a great man... Mathematician... Chess World Champion... A great man...
Great.
He was born on Christmas Eve, December 24th, 1868,
in Brandenburg, Germany. One of my favorite music pieces is Johannes
Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg
Concertos.
Emanuel’s older brother, Berthold Lasker, taught
Emanuel chess at the age of 11. In 1889
in Breslau, at the age of 21, Emanuel won the
German title of Master of Chess. But,
most important, it was he that introduced the two-BS sacrifice. This
is the earliest example of that great chess strategy!
Only Five years later, in 1894, Lasker
challenged Steinitz for the World Chess Championship. Lasker won!
He was to remain the World Chess Champion until 1921. The great chess player Steinitz who had been
World Champion for 28 years was famous for his introduction of strategy to
chess. Lasker is most famous for seeing
that chess is a struggle between two minds.
In practicing that theorem he smashed Steinitz, Pillsbury and
Tchigorin.
But before that, Lasker had terrific
results. In 1890 in Berlin, he defeated Curt von Bardeleben and
Jacques Mieses in a match and he and his brother tied for first place in a
tournament as well.
Lasker then visited the United States
in 1893 where he won the New York
International. He defeated the American
Champion, Jackson Showalter, with 6 wins, 1 draw, and 2 losses. And in
1894 Dr. Lasker realized his desire to challenge Wilhelm Steinitz for the World
Championship in New York. Lasker won with 10 wins, 4 draws, and 5
losses. Emanuel Lasker had become the
second World Chess Champion at age 25.
Lasker contracted Typhoid fever and was still
recovering in 1895 when he took third place in Hastings, England behind Pillsbury and Tchigorin.
The German version of his book, ‘Common
Sense in Chess’ was published in 1896 and the English version was
published in 1897. The book was based
on a series of lectures that Lasker had previously given in London.
In January, 1896, Lasker won a tournament in St. Petersburg, Russia, ahead of Steinitz,
Pillsbury and Tchigorin. Also, in 1896,
he won at Nuremberg
with 12 wins, 3 draws, and 3 losses.
That same year there was a rematch between Lasker and Steinitz for the
World Championship in Moscow. Lasker retained his title with 10 wins, 5
draws, and 2 losses.
In 1902 Dr. Lasker received his PhD in
Mathematics from Erlangen
University. His mentor
was the famous great mathematician, Hilbert. Lasker’s
research centered on geometrical calculus and ideal numbers used in algebra and
remains relevant to this day. There is
a theorem in the theory of vector spaces that is still known by his name. This theorem deals with prime numbers.
Lasker was not only good friends with Dr. Albert Einstein, but in the 1930’s
they shared an apartment and exchanged ideas during their frequent walks. Dr. Einstein spoke of Lasker: “Emanuel
Lasker was undoubtedly one of the most interesting people I came to know in my
later life”. About this time he was
seriously and totally devoted to breeding pigeons for
the Berlin
Pigeon Fair.
At the London
tournament of 1899, Lasker finished four points ahead of the rest of the field
with 18 wins, 7 draws, and only 1 loss to Blackburne. In 1900 Lasker won the Paris tournament with 14 wins, 1 draw and 1
loss. The next tournament Dr. Lasker
played in was the Cambridge Springs Tournament in 1904. Dr. Lasker tied for second with David
Janowski. Frank Marshall came in first
place. In 1906, Dr. Lasker played in
the 19th New York
State Chess
Championship. He won first place; of
course he won first place.
In 1908, Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch challenged Lasker
for the ‘Chess World Title’. Lasker was
convinced that Tarrasch had hypnotic powers and therefore wanted to play the
match from a different room. Lasker
again prevailed with 8 wins, 5 draws, and 3 losses.
In 1909 Lasker tied with Akiba Rubinstein at St. Petersburg, winning
3, drawing 5, and losing 2. That same
year Lasker was given 7,000 francs to play two exhibition matches against David
Janowski. Lasker won one and drew one.
Lasker was again challenged to defend his title
in 1910 against the great Carl Schlecter in Vienna and Berlin.
Lasker tied the match by winning the 10th and final
game. Schlecter would have become World
Champion if he had drawn the 10th game but Lasker retained his title
with one win, 8 draws, and one loss. Lasker received 1,000 marks for each game
played. Later that same year, Lasker defeated David Janowski in a match in Berlin. Dr. Lasker won
with 8 wins and 3 draws.
In 1911 Lasker married Martha Kohn. They stayed
together until Martha’s death in 1939.
Dr. Lasker’s next great tournament was at St.
Petersburg, Russia, 1914. This was a
great tournament. Lasker came in first
place, ahead of Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch, and Marshall.
Then
World War I started…….
Lasker had plans to play Akiba Rubinstein for
the ‘Chess World Title’. Capablanca
planned to play the winner.
In 1918, after World War 1, Lasker played a
chess tournament in Berlin
in 1918, and came in first place.
In 1920, he resigned his world title to
Capablanca with a letter written to him in Spanish. No one in history has ever done this
before. This shows what a great
gentleman Dr. Lasker was. In 1921, in Havana, Cuba,
he played Capablanca who won four games and drew ten games and became the new
World Champion.
In 1924, at the great New York International Tournament, of course
Dr. Lasker came in first, Capablanca came in second, Dr. Alehkine came in
third.
In 1927, Dr. Lasker returned to Berlin and learned
Bridge and GO. He became an
International player and ‘Life Master of Bridge’. He was the team leader of the German team at
the Bridge Olympics. Because Dr. Lasker
and his wife were Jewish, they fled to England in 1933 after their
property was confiscated by the Germans.
They lived for a short time in the USSR and finally settled in New York in 1937.
Dr. Lasker came in 5th in Zurich in
1934, 3rd in Moscow in 1935, 6th in Moscow in 1936, and 7th
in Nottingham in 1936. After moving to Manhattan, New York in 1937,
Lasker began teaching chess and bridge and writing philosophical articles
including, Struggle, Understanding of the World, The Philosophy of the Unattainable
and The Community of the Future.
Dr. Emanuel Lasker died in Manhattan on January 11, 1941. Dr. Lasker’s
winning percentage is the highest of any World Champion: 66%. He won 52, drew 44 and lost 16 games and
scored 74 points in 112 games. He defended
his chess World Championship title seven times in the 26 years he was World
Champion. His calculated peak ELO
rating is 2720. In his stellar career
he played in ten international tournaments; he came in first [place] eight
times, 2nd once and 3rd once.
Terry Crandall
Harry Nelson Pillsbury
To me, the most
interesting chess player was the American, Harry Nelson Pillsbury
(1872-1906). He only lived 34 years,
which means that although he lived two years longer than musical composer Franz
Schubert, he lived one year less than Wolfgang Mozart.
Pillsbury grew up in Philadelphia and
made a name for himself at the Franklin Chess Club. (By the way, the first chess book published
in Russia was in the 18th century, it was Benjamin Franklin’s “The
Morals of Chess”).
He was born in Somerville,
Massachusetts, on Dec 5, 1872, but didn’t learn the chess moves until
Thanksgiving Day 1888, when he was 16.
Only two years later, in 1890, while
he was not quite 18, Pillsbury played a series of Evans Gambits with the
veteran Baltimore expert, H.N. Stone, one of the inventors of the Stone-Ware
defense in the Evans, and smashed him 5-2.
The point is that within two years of learning how chess was played, he
played an enormous opponent, and historical chess figure, and crushed him at
his own opening.
In April 1892, the World Champion
Wilhelm Steinitz, paid a visit to Boston, and played a three game match against
Pillsbury, now the strongest player in America.
Steinitz gave him PA and Move odds.
Pillsbury won 2-1.
There were somewhat lackluster
results in the next few years, but in 1894, he championed the Brooklyn Chess
Club to victory in the Metropolitan tournament in New York, and, as Paul Morphy
38 years before, he had wealthy admirers that financed his trip over the
Atlantic to play the greatest in the Old World.
In this case, it was the great
tournament in Hastings, England, 1895.
He was only 22 years old. The
great World Champion, and favorite, Dr. Lasker was there, the ex-champion Wilhem
Steinitz was there, and the champions from England, France, Russia and Italy
were all there for him to meet. He won
the tournament, brilliantly.
During this time in Russia, Pillsbury contracted the syphilis
disease.
His
play was spotty from here on through his life.
In 1896 he played so-so at Nuremberg, but rejoiced when he beat Lasker,
Steinitz and Tchigorin in successive rounds. His problem was that he prepared
for those three, and beat them, but lost to most of the weaker players. His score gave him a tie for III/IV with Dr.
Tarrasch, still not bad. Lasker won the
tournament.
Pillsbury returned to America and was (get this) challenged by the
American Champion Showalter. Showalter
knew that Pillsbury, with his European record, made his own American
championship title superfluous. They
engaged in a chess match, and Pillsbury won.
Showalter remained American Champion, however, because Pillsbury insisted
that he didn’t want the title. So I now
quote Pillsbury from the “New Englander” at the time: “I was not seeking the
match, and even if I should win I shall leave Showalter in possession of the
title; I am not in search of any title but one”. He still had aspirations for a match with
Dr. Lasker.
Showalter had huge backers, and a rematch (for 3 months) was set in New
York in 1898. Pillsbury won seven games
to Showalter’s three. This was an official
championship match, so Pillsbury was officially American Champion, even though
he resented having that title.
From 1890 to 1900 Pillsbury worked the automaton Ajeeb in Coney Island,
New York. In 1900 he went on a seven
month nation-wide tour in which he gave over 150 exhibitions and travelled
40,000 miles.
Pillsbury then went back to Europe, because that was where the best
players were. He did pretty well in all
of the tournaments he played in, but Dr. Lasker consistently came in first.
Although his disease was debilitating him, he was always so awesome, that
even the World Champion was always scared of him.
(In 1896, Lasker beat Pillsbury in a Ruy
Lopez, with a tremendous RO sacrifice. See the game. In 1904, the last year that he played
active chess, Pillsbury beat Lasker, with the same opening, but with a
different 7th move at Cambridge
Springs, PA, USA. He waited eight years to do that. It is one of the most classic chess games to
date. It is also one of the greatest
retaliations on record. Dr. Lasker, who
was always so precise, was completely taken off guard.
Pillsbury died in July 1906, of syphilis at the age of 34. He was considered one of the top ten checker
players in the country, and definitely the best chess player.
One more note: Pillsbury, during his age, was the best blindfold chess
player in the world. His highest limit
was 21 opponents. But what makes him so
interesting to me, (although his career was great), was what he could do in one
evening. This is what raises Pillsbury
to an immortal level.
Pillsbury would give simultaneous exhibitions playing ten chess players
and ten checker players, while playing whist.
But read on…….
Once, right before performing this feat, he was given a list to memorize
by 2 university professors: Antiphlogistine, periosteum, takadiastase, plasmon,
ambrosia, Threlkeld, strepococcus, straphylococcus, micrococcus, plasmodium,
Mississippi, Freiheit, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, athletics, no war, Etchenberg,
American, Russian, philosophy, Piet Potgelter’s Rost, Salamagundi,
Oomisellecootsi, Bangmanvate, Schlechter’s Nek, Manzinyama, theosophy,
catechism, and Madjesoomalops.
After a few minutes he was able to recite the list forward and
backward. He was able to recall the
list forward and backward the following day. An amazing man.
-----Terry Crandall
Akiba
Kivelovic Rubinstein (1882-1961)
Akiba Rubinstein was born December
12, 1882 in Stawisk, Poland. He first
learned chess in school where he played his classmates. He gave up theological studies for a
professional chess career in 1903 when he placed 5th at a tournament
in Kiev.
As you study his many historical
achievements, keep in mind that Akiba Rubinstein had a nervous disorder known
as anthropophobia (fear of people and society) for his entire life. His poor mental health was clearly an
extremely difficult disability for him to contend with and caused him enormous
suffering throughout his life. But, in
spite of his disability, Akiba Rubinstein was able to compete brilliantly for
many years with the best chess players in the world and his games are
studied and treasured to this day.
Rubinstein was a powerful force to
contend with between 1907 and 1912. In
1910 when Schlecter challenged Lasker for the World Champion title, many
considered Rubinstein to be the best chess player in the world. In those days the challenger to the World
Champion was required to raise the money and finance the match. The World
Champion alone would decide which challenger to play and this was largely based
on the funding available. Rubinstein
never had a chance to play for the Chess World Championship but he is
considered the strongest player who did not have the opportunity to compete for
the title.
Rubinstein was increasingly troubled
by his mental illness and in 1911 he complained of a fly that continually
disrupted his concentration during tournaments. When asked if he was all right he said, “Oh
I’m fine, I just need to see a doctor about this fly”. Also during this time it was difficult to
visit Rubinstein in his home. His wife warned many potential visitors, “Do not
stay long, for if you do stay too long he will leave by way of the
window”.
Watson:
“You are afraid of something?”
Holmes: “Well I am - I think you know
me well enough Watson, to understand that I am by no means a nervous man. At
the same time, it is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize
danger when it is close upon you. I
must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house
presently by scrambling over your back garden wall”.
The Final Problem
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
In 1912 Rubinstein achieved an
amazing feat; he won five consecutive international tournaments. This had never been done before in the
history of chess! Fifty years later Bent
Larsen won five tournaments in a row, however it took him three years to
achieve this while Rubinstein won at San Sebastian, Pistyan, Breslau, Warsaw
and Vilna all in the same year.
In 1914 Nicholas II, the Czar of
Russia, organized a tournament in St.
Petersburg and invited all the greatest players in the world. The top five finishers would be given the
title “Grandmaster”. Tragically,
Rubinstein failed to qualify in the top five.
After World War I, Rubinstein
continued to play in tournaments with moderate success but he did not revisit
his former high level of play until he won the Vienna tournament in 1922, ahead
of Alexander Alekhine and Richard
Reti.
After 1932, Rubinstein never competed
in chess tournaments again, although he was invited to do so. His lifelong struggle with his mental health
worsened and he spent time in a sanitarium. However, there was a bright side to
this because it is possible that this protected him from the Germans during
World War II and he was left alone.
Two of his most famous games were
played against Emanuel
Lasker and Jose
Capablanca in tournaments that the latter two eventually won. In both games he made exactly the same move,
to win, RC1 [R-QB1]. What are the odds
of this happening?!
Among the chess players who deserve
our highest reverence, Akiba Rubinstein stands out as a unique contributor to
chess. His noble career and life of
great suffering stands as a beacon of light to all who study the game of chess
as well as those who study life itself.
-----Terry Crandall
Famous
Rubinstein Games
Rubinstein's
Immortal Game, Lodz, Poland in 1907
This is one of the great classics.
Rubinstein, playing a formidable opponent, sacrifices his QU then a RO, then
totally crushes him.
Rubinstein
vs. Dr. Lasker (World Champion), St. Petersburg, Russia, 1909
Except for the famous game that Pillsbury won from Dr. Lasker in 1904, this was
Lasker’s worst defeat in his career.
Rubinstein
vs. Jose Capablanca (future World Champion), San Sebastian, Spain, 1911
This was Capablanca’s only loss in the tournament. Incredibly, Rubinstein used the same move
RC1 (R-QB1) that he used against Dr. Lasker in 1909 to win against Capablanca.
Rubinstein
vs. Dr. Alekhine (future World Champion), Karlsbad, 1911.
The
first time he played Alekhine he beat him.
The very
first time Rubinstein played Dr. Lasker, Capablanca and Dr. Alekhine he
demolished them. That’s three World Chess Champions he beat the first time he
played them. Obviously it was the fly
on Rubinstein’s forehead that intimidated them.
Rubinstein
Tournament Results
Return
to the biography
“The passed PA is a criminal, who
should be kept under lock and key. Mild
measures, such as police surveillance, are not sufficient. The passed PA has a
lust to expand”.
Aron Niemzowitsch
Aron Niemzowitsch was a great chess
player. His invention of the
‘Hypermodern Chess Theory’ revolutionized chess. Shortly after, Reti, Breyer
and Tartakover all joined in. His chess
ideas changed forever how chess is played at the highest levels. Now, even the highest rated Chess
Grandmasters in the world use Niemzowitsch’s chess ideas found in his book, ‘My System’. ‘My
System’ is written in a poetic and dramatic style that can even be
enjoyed by non-chess players.
The main strategies that Niemzowitsch
came up with are (1) instead of occupying the critical center squares with
pawns and/or pieces, to attack them from far away with knights or fianchettoed
bishops, (2) to blockade isolated pawns with knights (3) Over-protection. These
three ideas were so radical at the time that only a few chess players took them
seriously. But after seeing Niemzowitsch win tournament after tournament, chess
players took notice. I have included a few of his famous contributions,
including the Nimzoindian
Defense, the Nimzo-Larsen Attack and the Nimzovich Defense.
There were two people that hated
Niemzowitsch most, however. Dr.
Tarrasch hated him because Aron, who considered Tarrasch the leader of the
‘Classical School of Chess’, constantly berated him in his writings. In 1914 at St. Petersburg (where Tarrasch
became one of the initial five Grandmasters), Tarrasch beat Niemzowitsch with a
two-BS sacrifice à la Lasker
. The other that hated
Niemzowitsch was Alekhine. Alekhine was
a funny figure in that he was more than classical, maybe even hypermodern
himself. But when they played, Alekhine
ALMOST ALWAYS won. There are books that
I have read that state sadness that Niemzowitsch never got a World Champion
Match with Alekhine before his death in 1935, but I tell you, he would have
lost anyway.
As is true of most chess players,
Niemzowitsch had his eccentricities.
He would enter a tournament room, go to the corner and stand on his head
until his game started. He even managed
to break his leg while playing chess when his leg became entangled in the leg
of his chair. His business card read:
A. Niemzowitsch, Candidate for the World Championship of Chess and Crown Prince
of the Chess World.
I want to
quote from W. H Watts, November 1936…….
“After the lamented death of the
Master, Aron Niemzowitsch, I was almost persuaded to drop the idea of
publishing an English translation of his Praxis (‘My System’), but a well-known
player of the highest rank assured me that a very great advance in the strength
of English players would follow its publication here. This remark made such a great impression on
my mind that eventually I resolved to make some investigation for myself. My knowledge of German was limited to a few
words and phrases and just a smattering of chess terms, so that nothing short
of a translation would be of much use.
When this became available I examined the work carefully and was
immediately convinced of the correctness of the prophecy: there is nothing like
it in the whole of chess literature. No other author or player has so
scientifically reduced chess playing to the application of a number of clearly
defined principles and rules. Compared
with this, chess playing has heretofore been without system - just a haphazard
exhibition of natural aptitude or skill or the want of it. Chess players were born, not made, but now
that era is finished; Niemzowitsch has systematised chess play”.
Niemzowitsch’s most famous game was
against Samisch, and is called the Immortal
Zugzwang Game (courtesy of David Hayes). Zugzwang is when the
opponent has to make a move, and every move loses. It is the greatest coup in chess. It is a German word and is pronounced
“Tsutsvonk”. Niemzowitsch’s finest
victory came in Karlsbad in 1929 ahead of Capablanca,
Spielmann, Rubinstein, Vidmar
and Euwe.
Niemzowitsch’s Tournament Record
(courtesy of Phil Hughes).
-----Terry Crandall
JOSÉ RAOUL CAPABLANCA Y GRAUPERA was
born in 1888 and died in 1942. When
Capablanca was four years old, he learned the moves of chess by watching his
father play. The way we know this is
because he once giggled during a game that his father was playing with a
friend. When asked why he giggled, the
young boy replied “because you moved your KT to an incorrect square”.
Capablanca’s father immediately started to take José to the Central Chess Club of
Cuba in Havana, where they had to stack books on the chair so he could reach
the chess board. When he was 11, he
became Chess Champion of Cuba, beating Juan Corzo, in 1900.
Capablanca refused to study chess and
he never read chess books or studied chess openings. Unbelievably, he became the World Champion
in spite of this. He therefore was
obviously the greatest natural chess player that ever lived.
In 1905 at the age of 17 he entered
the Columbia University and visited the Manhattan Chess Club and beat its
champion. In 1906 the World Chess
Champion, Dr. Lasker, played a simultaneous exhibition there and José won his
individual lightning game against him.
In 1908, Capablanca went on a tour of
the USA for the first time and broke all records both by results and the speed
of his simultaneous play. He played 168
games in ten consecutive sessions before losing his first game. Altogether, his score was 703 wins, 19
draws, and 12 losses.
Then, in 1909, Capablanca totally
freaked out the chess world. (And me, and I wasn’t even born yet!). He played the American Champion Frank
Marshall, and won 8-1, with 14 draws.
The San Sebastian Tournament of 1911
was historic for two reasons. (1) Only
at the final hour was Jose Capablanca invited to the tournament; this was his
first International Chess Tournament. (2) Nimzowitch complained that such a
weak player as Capablanca should not have been invited. Capablanca not only beat Nimzowitch in the
first round, but won the tournament!
This made Capablanca the most serious contender to challenge Lasker’s
world title.
In 1913 Capablanca obtained a post in
the Cuban Foreign Office with the title of “Ambassador Extraordinary
Plenipotentiary General From The Government Of Cuba To The World At
Large”. This title was bestowed to him
for the sole purpose of allowing José Raoul to travel the world and participate
in chess tournaments. But sadly, after
his divorce from his first wife, her family had him demoted to the post of
“Commercial Attaché”.
To illustrate his powers, he once had
the mayor of Havana clear a tournament room so that no one would see him resign
a game against Frank Marshall in 1913.
He even once refused to pose with a beautiful film star saying, “Why
should I give her
publicity?”.
Although Dr. Lasker won the great St.
Petersburg tournament of 1914, Capablanca came second, and was therefore, one
of the five initial Chess Grandmasters named by Czar Nicholas. In the eight years between 1916 to 1924 the
first game that Capablanca lost was to Richard
Reti at the great New York International Tournament of 1924. The loss to Reti was a game that went around
the world. This eight-year feat is the
greatest of the greatest. This is the
immortal of the immortal.
Two interesting events occurred
during the Great Moscow Tournament in 1925.
In a simultaneous exhibition, Capablanca won every game except he drew
against a bespectacled twelve year old boy who he told after the game, “One day
you will be champion”. That boy was
Mikhail Botvinnik. Botvinnik not only
beat Capablanca at AVRO thirteen years later, but eventually did become World
Champion. At one point during the
tournament, Capablanca’s beautiful wife entered the tournament hall and he was
apparently so enamored that he left his KT en prise. He lost the KT and the game.
In 1927 the non-studying chess
genius, Capablanca, lost his world championship title to the ever-studying
chess genius Dr. Alekhine. With a
record breaking 25 draws, Alekhine won 6-4.
It is the longest world championship match in the history of chess.
The sad thing is that in those days
the world champion had a say-so about who he would play against for the
title. Although Capablanca was the
obviously entitled challenger to the world championship, Alekhine refused to
accept his challenge and instead played Bogoljubov and Euwe for the title. This was totally 100% absolutely
unfair. (I am pounding the table with
my fist right now!)
Capablanca lost only 36 games out of
567 in his whole career. He did not lose a single game from 1916 to 1924. Capablanca never had a chess set at
home. He died while analyzing a chess
game in the Manhattan Chess Club. That
is probably the way he wanted to go.
General Batista, President of Cuba, took personal charge of the funeral
arrangements.
-----Terry Crandall
Richard Reti
Of all the great hypermodern chess
founders, the most interesting is Richard Reti. Although born a Hungarian in 1889, he later
was deemed a Czechoslovakian after World War I when they moved the country
boundaries around. But he always felt
himself to be Viennese, since he went to college in Vienna. So he was a 3-country man.
The four famous hypermodern chess
founders are Breyer, Reti, Nimzowitch, and Tartakower.
Reti was both a mathematician and a
chess player. He once explained that
mathematics was of a purely speculative character, while the over the board
struggle in chess, where he could force his opponent to acknowledge the truth
of his chess ideas, was more alive.
This is what makes him most interesting.
In his early years, 1907-1911, he was
a good but not great player. It was in
1918 that he burst on to the international scene. In 1918, he won at Kaschau, with Vidmar,
Breyer, Asztalos, Havasi and Mieses in that tournament. He shared 1st prize at Budapest
in the same year, was 1st at Rotterdam, Amsterdam in 1919 and Vienna
in 1920, and above all, he won 1st prize at the great international
tournament of Gothenburg in 1920.
Reti then spent the time to write ‘Die neun Ideen im Schachspiel’. A year later, an English edition appeared
called ‘Modern Ideas In Chess’,
which all chess players own today.
In 1922 he returned to active
international play and was equal 1st at Teplitz-Schonau; in 1923 he
was twice 2nd at two important tournaments - at Mahrisch-Ostrau and
Vienna.
When 1924 came around, the great
World Champion Jose Capablanca hadn’t lost a single game in ten years!! In the great 1924 New York tournament, where
Capablanca, Dr. Lasker (the eventual winner), and Dr. Alekhine took part, it
was Reti that drew first blood against Capablanca, in A
Game That Went Around The World.
Reti was the first person that beat Capablanca in ten years!! Later in the tournament, totally shaken and
obviously feeling mortal, Capablanca lost to the great Dr. Lasker.
After this tournament, Reti went to
South America and set a World Blindfold Exhibition record of 29 games. He won 20 and lost only 2 (drawing 7). Reti was a great blindfold player, and so
was Dr. Alekhine (whose record he broke that day). Dr. Tartakower relates an amusing incident
with reference to this: at London, 1922, Dr. Alekhine and Reti were indulging
in some blindfold analysis and had apparently come to a full stop of
disagreement on a position. Whereupon
the great Alekhine said: “Since we are, of course, the two best blindfold
players in the world, I think it would be better if we had recourse to a
chessboard and men”.
Reti didn’t play too well for a few
years, but he came back to be a great star in 1927. He was 2ndat Bad Homburg and he
scored well in the International Team Tournament that year on top board for
Czechoslovakia.
In 1928 he obtained 1st at
Vienna and Giessen, and equal 1stat Brno, and a 2ndat
Dortmund. Clearly, he was world class.
His last tournament was in January
1929 in Stockholm, Sweden. He came in 1st
against Lundin, Stoltz and Stahlberg.
After his great masterpiece, Masters of the Chess Board was
prepared for publishing, he died of scarlet fever on June 6th, 1929
in Prague, at the age of forty.
Spielmann’s obituary of him in ‘L’Echiquier’ for 1929 said: “Perhaps
his strength did not reside so much in the discovery of a new move or of a
tactical finesse hitherto unknown as in a new strategy. Very frequently and only after a few moves,
I would find myself settling down against him with a lost position without
knowing exactly how it could possibly have happened”.
-----Terry Crandall
Sawielly Grigoriewitsch Tartakower (1887-1956)
Chess Grandmaster, Sawielly
Grigoriewitsch was one of the founders of the Hypermodern School of Chess,
along with Richard Reti, Julius Breyer, Aron Niemzowitch, et al. He was a writer, poet, romanticist, gambler
and patriot. Tartakower received a
Doctor of Law degree in 1909, and was an officer in both World War I and World
War II.
Sawielly Tartakower is the original
spelling of his name in the English alphabet.
His last name can be found often as Tartakover, and sometimes as
Tartacover. His first name is very
often Savielly and sometimes Xavier, all three first names meaning “little
Saul”.
Tartakower was born in Russia and
moved to Vienna, Austria to study law in 1904.
While living in Vienna with his brother, both his parents were murdered
in Rostov-on-Don in 1911, due to Jewish persecution. Vienna was a wonderful place to grow up as a
chess player. Tartakower loved elegance and frequently joined noblemen,
bankers, lawyers and other gentlemen at dinner, after he trounced them at the
chess tables of the elite chess clubs, such as the famous Wiener Schachklub.
In 1914, Dr. Tartakower was a
lieutenant in the Viennese House-Regiment of Infantry, Hoch-und-Deutschmeister
Nr. 4, where he was employed at the Russian front. He was wounded by a bullet in the stomach
and he had to march a long distance to a first aid station, aided by two
privates. Despite his condition, he
managed to consume a dish of dumplings and recovered. He had an iron constitution, the teeth of a
voracious animal, the muscles of a gladiator and the stomach of an ostrich -
whatever entered it was mercilessly digested.
It was joked that if a doctor attempted to pump Tartakower’s stomach, he
would lose the pump.
He was quite the gentleman and would
never take advantage of anyone in a shady deal. Some rich admirers, knowing how badly he
needed money, once arranged a speed tourney with an exceptionally high first
prize, feeling certain that Tartakower would win. But when the Hungarian master Alexander
Takacs came first, the organizers started a fierce argument with him in
Hungarian, and then announced that Takacs had lost a point because of some
technicality. Bowing, the chairman
presented Tartakower with the first prize, a nice pile of hard cash. Bowing
back, Tartakower tore the money to shreds, barely avoiding throwing the pieces
in the chairman’s face.
When that new country of Austrai lost
its independence, his citizenship was transferred, probably as an act of
clemency, to Poland. He spoke no Polish, but he knew French, a language highly
esteemed but little spoken in Poland, and that made his compatriots put aside
their traditional hatred of all things Russian or German and deal with him in
those languages. He proved to be a
valuable acquisition for Polish chess.
That country, under his leadership and of GM Akiba Rubinstein, won the
Chess Olympiad in Hamburg 1930. When
they lost it the following year to a team from the United States, whose members
were predominantly of Polish-Russian ancestry, Tartakower made the famous
remark, “We have branches everywhere”.
In the early 1920s, around the time that he became a Pole by citizenship,
Tartakower became a Frenchman by residence.
After a quarrel with his Austrian publisher, a Russian, he angrily
blamed Austria for wronging him and moved to Paris, which became his permanent
home. During World War II he escaped
the German occupation, served under de Gaulle (as Lieutenant Cartier), and was
subsequently granted French citizenship - his fourth nationality.
“What really made him outstanding was
his fascinating personality. With Tartakower among the participants, any
tournament had color and life. The
European custom of keeping the players together in their spare time and having
them stay in the same hotel, even having them eat in a dining room all to
themselves, gave Tartakower plenty of opportunity to shine as the splendid and
highly original conversationalist and raconteur that he was. He could make a rather serious complaint and
explain his case from many different angles in all earnestness and, without
making any jokes at all, keep his audience bent over with laughter with his
scintillating way of reasoning, the elegant somersaults of his logic, and his
unexpected conclusions. He liked to
play with words, metaphors, conclusions, and contradictions as if they were
chess pieces. Once, at the inaugural
meeting of a tournament, when an unusual suggestion that no one liked was about
to be rejected, Tartakower rose and supported it so eloquently that the motion
carried with only a single opposing vote –Tartakower’s” - GM Hans Kmoch.
Tartakower wrote several chess books,
including, “My Best Games of Chess 1905-1954 (S.G. Tartakower)”, “500 Master
Games of Modern Chess”, “100 Master Games of Modern Chess”, “The Hypermodern
Game of Chess”, and “Modern Chess Strategy”.
One of the first games I ever saw in
a chess book that I actually memorized (I was ten years old or so) was the game
Reti - Tartakower. Reti wins on the 11th move, one of the shortest
games ever played by Masters.
Caro Kann
Defense
R. Reti - S. Tartakower, Vienna 1910
1. e4 c6 2.
d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nf6 5. Qd3 e5 6. dxe5 Qa5+ 7. Bd2 Qxe5 8. O-O-O Nxe4
9. Qd8+!! Kxd8 10. Bg5++ Kc7 11. Bd8#! ... or 10. Ke8 11. Rd8#!
Tartakower contributed many new ideas
to the chess openings literature, including the rather silly “Orangutang
Opening”, also known as the “Polish Opening Tartakower Gambit”, viz., 1.
b4. The story behind the name is
described by Tartakower in his collection of Best Games…….
“This move, which has so bizarre an
aspect, occupies a place of honour amongst the ‘freak’ openings. Later, at the New York Tournament of 1924, I
termed this the ‘Orangutang’ Opening, not only because I employed it there
against Maroczy - after a previous consultation with a young orangutang (during
a visit by all the masters to the New York Zoo on the eve of the game in
question) but also since the climbing movement of the pawn to b4 and then b5 is
reminiscent of that inventive animal.
The name has stuck” - Tartakower.
Tartakower’s other lasting chess
opening contributions are…….
Caro-Kann Defense – Tartakower
Fantasy Variation: e2e4|c7c6 d2d4|d7d5 f2f3
Caro-Kann Defense – Tartakower-Nimzovich Variation: e2e4|c7c6 d2d4|d7d5
b1c3|d5e4 c3e4|g8f6 e4f6|e7f6
Dutch Defense - Staunton Gambit - Tartakower Variation: d2d4|f7f5 e2e4|f5e4
b1c3|g8f6 g2g4
French Defense – MacCutcheon - Tartakower Variation: e2e4|e7e6 d2d4|d7d5
b1c3|g8f6 c1g5|f8b4 e4e5|h7h6 g5d2|f6d7
French Defense – Classical Tartakower Variation: e2e4|e7e6 d2d4|d7d5 b1c3|g8f6
c1g5|f8e7 e4e5|f6e4
Queen's Gambit Declined – Orthodox Tartakower: d2-d4|d7-d5 c2-c4|e7-e6
b1-c3|g8-f6 c1-g5|f8-e7 e2-e3|e8-g8 g1-f3|h7-h6 g5-h4|b7-b6 f1-e2|c8-b7
h4-f6|e7-f6 c4-d5|e6-d5 b2-b4|c7-c5 b4-c5|b6-c5 a1-b1|b7-c6 e1-g1|b8-d7
e2-b5|d8-c7 d1-d3|f8-d8 f1-d1
Scotch game - Tartakower Variation: e2e4|e7e5 g1f3|b8c6 d2d4|e5d4 f3d4|g8f6
d4c6|b7c6 b1d2
Sicilian Defense – Dragon Classical Reti-Tartakower Variation e2e4|c7c5
g1f3|d7d6 d2d4|c5d4 f3d4|g8f6 b1c3|g7g6 c1e3|f8g7 f1e2|b8c6 e1g1|e8g8 d4b3|c8e6
f2f4|d8c8
Torre Attack – Tartakower Variation: d2d4 d7d5|Ng1f3 Ng8f6|Bc1g5
Tartakower is probably most beloved
by his witty sayings, sometimes hilarious, sometimes facetious, sometimes
pessimistic, sometimes optimistic, but most of the time uncannily true. There is no anthology of chess quotes which
does not include at least some of his famous quotes…….
“The winner of a game is the one who
has made the next to last blunder”
“It is always better to sacrifice
your opponent’s men”
“There is really only one mistake in
chess - underestimating your opponent”
“Chess is a fairy tale of 1001
blunders”
“Sacrifices only prove that someone
has blundered”
“Ich mache Fehler - also ich
existiere!” - I make errors, therefore I am!
“Das Schach ist nur durch die Fehler
existenzberechtigt” - The existence of chess can only be justified by the
necessity of making errors
“Moral victories do not count”
“All chessplayers should have a
hobby”
“Tactics is knowing what to do when
there is something to do; strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing
to do”
"De ce nombre ‘grand V’, la
valeur qu’il se donne, Soustrayons ‘petit v’, ce qu’il vaut pour de bon. Il en
ré, ce que l’algè ordonne : ‘Grand V’ moins ‘petit v’ - é Illusion” (“Let ‘S’
be the strength that a player professes, And ‘s’ represent what in fact he
possesses, From a small calculation we reach the conclusion that ‘S’ minus ‘s’
must equal Illusion”)
“Some part of a mistake is always
correct”
“To avoid losing a piece, many a person
has lost the game”
“The blunders are all there, waiting
to be made”
(Note: In translating the original German using
http://babelfish.altavista.com, I produced the following computer English
translation: “The errors are all lie that they wait for of being store clerks!”
“The great master places a KT at e5;
mate follows by itself”
“Some KTs don't leap - they
limp”
“A chess game is divided into three
stages: the first, when you hope you have the advantage, the second when you
believe you have an advantage, and the third - when you know you’re going to
lose!”
“A draw can be obtained normally by
repeating three moves, but also by one bad move”
“Reti
studies mathematics although he is not a dry mathematician; represents Vienna
without being Viennese; was born in old Hungary yet he does not know Hungarian;
speaks uncommonly rapidly only in order to act all the more maturely and
deliberately; and will become the best chessplayer without, however, becoming
world champion”
In the cold winter season of 1919-20,
when Vienna was suffering from a severe shortage of fuel, he was asked him how
he could do any writing when his room was without heat. “I just keep the window open”. (If you’re like me, you’ll have to reread
this over about five times before you get it).
Possibly my favorite of his quotes
was when he once lost five games in a row in a tournament and was asked
why…….
“I had a toothache during the first
game. In the second game I had a
headache. In the third game it was an
attack of rheumatism. In the fourth
game, I wasn’t feeling well. And in the
fifth game? Well, must one have to win
every game?”.
-----Terry Crandall
“Chess will always be the master of
us all”.
--Alexander Alekhine
ALEXANDER ALEKHINE (1892-1946)
World chess champion 1927-1935, 1937-1946 (17 years total).
Dr. Alexander Alexanderovich Alekhine
was born on October 31, 1892 (Halloween) in Moscow. He was not only one of the greatest chess
players that ever lived, but he was also one of the most brilliant. His combinatorial chess is a legend.
His father was a wealthy landowner, a
Marshall of the Nobility and a member of the Duma. His mother was an heiress of an industrial
fortune. His older brother, Alexei,
played chess and was able to draw Harry
Nelson Pillsbury when the latter gave a simultaneous blindfold
display in Moscow on 22 boards. Until
World War II, Alexander spelled his last name Aljechin. We have evidence of this, especially during
his tournaments in the early 30’s and his World Championship matches with Dr.
Max Euwe in the mid-30’s.
Alexander learned chess from his
mother and brother around 1903 when he was 11.
By 1904 he was playing correspondence chess, that is, chess by mail, the
same way the great Paul Keres developed into a chess giant. At age 16 he was at the Imperial High School
for Law in Moscow and played lots of chess.
He played a match with Benjamin
Blumenfeld in 1908 and won with 7 wins out of 10 games. In early 1909, Alekhine won the Russian
Master title in St. Petersburg. In the
summer of 1910 Alekhine played in the 17th German Congress in
Hamburg and ended up in 7th place.
In 1911 and 1912, Alekhine did not have many good results, for lack of
play, but he did win a minor tournament in Stockholm, Sweden in 1912.
He didn’t win his first major chess
tournament until 1914 in St. Petersburg, Russia, when he tied for first place
with Aron
Niemzowitch. This was his “coup de grace”, a term he used so profusely in his chess
writings. A few months later, after
tying with Nimzo, he played in the famous 1914 St. Petersburg Tournament of the
same year (1914) where the five finalists would be bestowed the title of
“Grandmaster of Chess” by Czar Nicholas
II of Russia. These would be the very first Grandmasters of Chess. Alekhine came in third, behind Dr. Lasker
and Capablanca, but ahead of Dr. Tarrasch and Marshall. This was a great accomplishment, since the
field contained stellar chess players, including Akiba
Rubinstein.
In the tournament of Mannheim,
Germany in 1914, Alekhine was leading an International Tournament with 9 wins,
1 loss and 1 draw, when World War I broke out.
Being a Russian, he was captured as a prisoner of war. They released him a month later. During the war, after his release from
prison, he served the Russian Red Cross in Austria.
While he was hospitalized after being
wounded (a contusion of the spine), he became the strongest blindfold chess
player in the world. That’s how great this guy was. I mean, when normal people go to the
hospital, they are totally sad and in pain.
Instead, he devoted himself to blindfold chess and became the best in
the world in an extremely short period of time. You have to love this guy.
After the war, he served as a
magistrate for the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department. He was a lawyer at heart, but would become
one of the greatest chess players that has ever lived.
In 1919 he traveled to Odessa and was
briefly imprisoned in their death cell suspected of being a spy.
In 1920 Alekhine returned to Moscow
and married a Russian baroness several years older than he. He had already fathered an illegitimate
daughter in 1913.
Alekhine started working in a film
studio intending to be an actor. In October 1920 Alekhine won the first USSR
chess championship in Moscow, ahead of Niemzowitch.
In 1921 Alekhine joined the Communist
Party and became a translator for the Communist International and the secretary
of the Communist Education Department.
He then left his wife and the Soviet Union and settled in Paris where he
married a Swiss common intern delegate, Anneliese Ruegg. A few months later he abandoned his older
second wife and went to Berlin. He won
three straight tournaments in Triberg, Budapest, and The Hague. In Budapest he popularized what is now
called the Alekhine’s defense.
In 1922 he took second in London,
behind Capablanca, and first
at Hastings. In 1923 he tied for first
at Carlsbad with Bogoljubov and Maroczy.
In 1924 he took 3rd place in New York, behind Lasker and
Capablanca. In 1925 Alekhine won a
tournament in Baden-Baden. This was the
first international tournament in Germany since World War I.
In 1925 Alekhine became a naturalized
French citizen, entered the Sorbonne Law School, and wrote a thesis on the
Chinese prison system, becoming Dr. Alekhine.
In February 1925 Dr. Alekhine broke
the world blindfold record by playing 28 games blindfold simultaneously, winning
22, drawing 3 and losing 3. He then
took first place at Baden-Baden with 12 wins and 8 draws.
In 1926 Dr. Alekhine beat Dr. Max
Euwe in a match and challenged Capablanca for the world championship. Dr. Alekhine had just married for the third
time to another person much older than him, Nadezda Vasiliev. She was the widow of a high-ranking Russian
officer.
In March 1927 Dr. Alekhine took
second place, behind Capablanca, in New York, with 5 wins, 13 draws, and 2
losses. In July he won at Kecskemet
1927. He was now ready to meet
Capablanca for the world championship after putting up $10,000 in gold. Jose Capablanca accepted the challenge and
began their world championship match in Buenos Aires on September 16,
1927. By November 29, 1927 Dr. Alekhine
beat Capablanca with 6 wins, 25 draws, and 3 losses. The only time-out was when Dr. Alekhine had
six teeth extracted during the match. Dr. Alekhine became the 4th
official world champion of chess after Steinitz, Dr.
Lasker, and Capablanca. All the games in Buenos Aires took place
behind closed doors. There were no
spectators or photographs.
Dr. Alekhine avoided Capablanca’s
challenge of a re-match and took on Bogoljubov at Weisbaden in September
1929. Dr. Alekhine won with 11 wins, 9
draws, and 5 losses. He avoided
Capablanca by insisting that the winner get $10,000 in gold, just as he got in
Buenos Aires. But after the stock market
crash, there were no backers.
At the 1930 Chess Olympiad he scored
his first 100% score when he won all nine games as board one for France. From 1929 to 1932 Dr. Alekhine took first
place at San Remo (performance rating of 2812), Bled, London, and
Pasadena. Dr. Alekhine was also giving
large simultaneous exhibitions. In 1932
he was playing up to 300 opponents simultaneously from New York to Paris. In 1933 he played 32 people blindfold
simultaneously in Chicago, winning 19, drawing 9, and losing 4 games. He traveled the world giving simultaneous
exhibitions, including Shanghai. He was
made an honorary Colonel in the Mexican army and appointed as chess instructor
for the Mexican army.
In 1934 Dr. Alekhine married for the
4th time to a lady, Grace Wishart, 16 years older than he. She was the widow of an Englishman and
retained her British nationality. He
had met her at a minor chess tournament which she had won. Her prize was one of Dr. Alekhine’s
books. She asked him to sign the book
and their relationship developed from that moment.
In 1934 Dr. Alekhine defeated Eufim
Bogoljubov for the world championship in Baden-Baden with the score of 8 wins,
15 draws and 3 losses. He then accepted
a challenge from Dr. Max Euwe. On
October 3, 1935 the world championship match between Dr. Alekhine and Dr. Euwe
began in Zandvoort for $10,000 to the winner. On December 15, 1935 Dr. Euwe had won with 9
wins, 13 draws, and 8 losses. This was
the first world championship match to officially have seconds (a second was an
assistant who stayed up all night analyzing an adjourned chess position and who
gave advice to the champion as to the next move).
In 1936 Dr. Alekhine played in
Nottingham, England which was won by Capablanca and Dr. Botvinnik. Dr. Alekhine ended up in 6th
place. His game with Capablanca was the first time they had met since the world
championship match in 1927. Dr.
Alekhine asked for a rematch and got it in 1937 where Dr. Alekhine defeated Dr.
Euwe in Holland with 10 wins, 11 draws and 4 losses. The story is that Dr. Alekhine quit drinking
and smoking and really practiced for the rematch. A review of the games of that match support
that theory.
At the 1938 AVRO tournament in
Holland, the top eight players in the world participated. This was the strongest tournament ever held.
First place was $550. Dr. Alekhine, for
the first time in his life, came ahead of Capablanca. Capablanca, for the first time in his life,
scored below 50%. Flohr, the official
challenger to Dr. Alekhine in the next world championship match (called off
because of World War II) came in last place without a single win in 14 rounds.
Dr. Alekhine was representing France
on board 1 at the Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires when World War II broke
out. As team captain of the French
team, he refused to allow his team to play Germany. He returned to France to enlist in the army
and became an interpreter. When France
was over-run he tried to go to America by traveling to Lisbon and applying for
an American visa. To protect his wife
and their French assets, he agreed to cooperate with the Nazis. He wrote six articles critical of Jewish
chess players and participated in a Nazi chess tournaments in Munich, Salzburg,
Warsaw, and Prague. When asked about the German siege on his apartment, he
said, “The Germans have scientifically ransacked my apartment”.
By 1943 Dr. Alekhine was spending all
his time in Spain and Portugal as the German representative to chess
events. After World War II he was not
invited to chess tournaments because of his Nazi affiliation.
In 1946 he was about to accept a
match title with Botvinnik. On the
evening of March 23 or early March 24, 1946 Dr. Alekhine died in his hotel room
in Estoril, Portugal. Some say he died of
a heart attack. Others say he choked on a piece of meat. The body was not buried for three weeks as
no one claimed the body. Finally, the
Portuguese Chess Federation took charge of the funeral. Less than a dozen folks showed up for his
burial.
In 1947 the FIDE Congress voted for
Dr. Euwe to be the world champion since Dr. Alekhine died. However, the Soviet delegation was late for
this vote. The next day, after protest
from the Soviet delegation, the title was rescinded in favor of a
match-tournament which Dr. Botvinnik won.
In 1956 the USSR and French Chess
Federation agreed to transfer his remains to the cemetery in Montparnasse,
Paris. FIDE provided the
tombstone. It is in the shape of a chessboard
made out of red granite and there is a bust of him made out of marble. The birth and death dates on Dr. Alekhine’s
tombstone are wrong, however.
The
tombstone reads…….
ALEXANDER ALEKHINE
1ST NOVEMBER, 1892
25TH MARCH, 1946
CHESS WORLD CHAMPION
1927-35-37 TO THE END.
In world championship play, Dr.
Alekhine won 43 games, drew 73 games, and lost 24 games for a total of 140
games, with a 56.8% win ratio. He was
world champion for 17 years, playing in five world championship matches. Dr. Alekhine played over 1000 tournament
games, scoring 73 percent in his games.
His historical ELO rating has been calculated to be 2690.
-----Terry Crandall
Mir Sultan Khan
One of my favorite chess players is
Sultan Khan, who went by the name of “Mir Sultan Khan”.
He went to England from India in
1929. (Now a part of what is called
today as Pakistan). He returned to
Pakistan in 1933. It was his master’s
wish (Sultan Khan was merely a servant), his master was a Maharaja.
In the four years in England, Khan
won the British Championship, defeated ex-World Champion Jose Capablanca, and
played first board for England during the World Chess Olympiads in 1931 and
1933. You can’t get better than that. Here’s a
quote from a famous Britain chess author…….
“(1905-1966)
Sultan Khan won the British championship in 1929, 1932 and 1933, and
represented England in three Olympiads.
He had a great natural talent for the game which brought admiration from
Capablanca who called him a genius”.
The great Paul Morphy played for 3
years, 1857-1859. The great Mir Sultan
Khan played for 4 years, 1929-1933. How
do they do that and be so good?
-----Terry Crandall
Miguel
Najdorf
GM Miguel Najdorf was a flamboyant
poet of the chess pieces who was one of the most celebrated grandmasters never
to play for the world championship.
GM Najdorf is perhaps best known for
the opening variation that carries his name, the popular Najdorf variation of
the Sicilian Defense. The formation, championed by Bobby Fischer and Garry
Kasparov among others, arises after 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cd 4 Nd4 Nf6 5 Nc3
a6. He also played the famous Polish
Immortal Game in 1935, which went around the world. In that game, he sacrificed all of his minor
pieces.
‘It is one of the most hotly
contested methods of starting games today’, said GM Robert Byrne, the chess
columnist for ‘The New York Times’. ‘It
is aggressive, adventurous and capable of turning the tables with little
warning’.
GM Najdorf (pronounced NIGH-dorf),
who was born in Warsaw, Poland and began playing chess at age 12, traveled to
Buenos Aires in 1939 with the Polish national team for a tournament. Two weeks after he arrived, Germany invaded
Poland. You can probably guess what
happened next…….
Unable to return safely to his family
in Poland, Najdorf, who was Jewish, stayed on in Argentina. He thereby escaped the Holocaust, but he
lost his wife, child, father, mother and four brothers in concentration camps.
In the 1940’s, GM Najdorf gave an
exhibition of blindfold play, or play without sight of the board. He took on 45 players at one time, carrying
all the games simultaneously in his head.
He won 39, drew 4 and lost 2. In
1972, he recalled in an interview: ‘I did this not as a stunt. I hoped that
this exhibition would be reported throughout Germany, Poland and Russia and
that some of my family might read about it and get in touch with me’. But none did so.
When Najdorf died on July 4 in 1997
at the Malaga University Hospital in Malaga, Spain, he was 87 and was survived
by his second wife, Rita, and daughter Mirta Najdorf. The cause of death was complications from
surgery. He had been staying at a hotel
in the Spanish resort Marbella and underwent the surgery on July 4th.
GM Najdorf became an Argentine
citizen in 1944 and went on to be a leading tournament contender after the end
of the war, a status he held for more than 20 years.
Though he never managed to qualify
for a championship match, he compiled an impressive record. He won 52 international tournaments; he won
the Argentine chess championship eight times; he repeatedly headed the
Argentine national chess team, and in 1948 he was considered one of the world’s
ten best players. He was also a
longtime chess writer.
GM Najdorf, a short dapper man with a
big voice, was a delight to spectators because of his imaginative attacking
games. He was also a high-strung competitor
with the odd habit of buttonholing other players in the tournament room, while
his opponent was thinking, and asking them, ‘How do I stand?’.
Of course, it is against the rules to
solicit others’ opinions during a game, but GM Najdorf was never
challenged. On one occasion, however,
the player he questioned simply stood there, shy and speechless: GM Najdorf had
absentmindedly addressed his opponent in that day’s game, the noted Soviet
chess theoretician GM Isaac Boleslavsky.
Although Najdorf is credited with
inventing the Najdorf defense, others may have got there first. ‘He did most of the creative development of
it,’ GM Robert Byrne said, ‘but he was anticipated by various Czechoslovak
masters, particularly Karel Opocensky. That is not unusual in chess, where the
flowering of an idea often outweighs its origin’.
GM Najdorf is said to have been one
of the world’s richest chess players, not from chess but from business, as a
representative of insurance and finance companies.
He loved to play friendly games with
people far more famous than he, including Fidel Castro, Winston Churchill, Che
Guevara, Nikita Khrushchev, the Shah of Iran and Juan Peron.
GM Najdorf also exchanged letters
with a passionate chess player in Rome.
As a result, Argentine fans who followed the Najdorf column in the
Buenos Aires newspaper Clarin were able to ponder a chess problem contributed
by the enthusiast in Rome, Pope John Paul II.
-----Terry Crandall
The great Sammy Reshevsky was born in
Poland in 1912. By the time Sammy was
only eight years old, he toured the world to display his prowess as a child
prodigy of chess, giving exhibitions in Europe and the United States.
I quote Reshevsky from his
autobiography…….
“Wherever I went, great crowds turned
out to see me play. For four years, I
was on public view. People stared at
me, poked at me, tried to hug me, asked me questions. Professors measured my cranium and
psycho-analyzed me. Reporters
interviewed me and wrote fanciful stories about my future. Photographers were forever aiming their
cameras at me.
It was, of course, an unnatural life
for a child, but it had its compensations and I cannot truthfully say that I
did not enjoy it. There was the thrill of travelling from city to city with my
family, the excitement of playing hundreds of games of chess and winning most
of them, the knowledge that there was something “special” about the way I
played chess, although I didn’t know why”.
--S.
Reshevsky, Reshevsky on Chess, 1948.
Reshevsky’s
philosophy
when as an 8-yr-old and as a 36-yr-old
In the following quote from his
autobiography, Reshevsky describes his chess philosophy, both from the point of
view of an 8 year-old child as well as an accomplished adult player. Note that chess has changed more than a
dozen times since Philidor of the 18th century, and so the winning
philosophy changed also. So Reshevsky’s philosophy wouldn’t work in today’s
chess world. But it did when he was
alive. So here is the quote from his autobiography published in 1948…….
“When I was a child touring Europe
and the United States as a chess prodigy, my performances were the subject of
much speculation. Everyone was curious
to know “how an eight-year-old boy could beat gray beards at their own
game”. People continually pestered me
for an explanation. I could not answer
their questions then, nor can I do so now.
Chess was, for me, a natural function, like breathing. It required no conscious effort. The correct moves in a game occurred to me
as spontaneously as I drew breath. If
you consider the difficulty you might have in accounting for that everyday
action, you will have some inkling of my dilemma in trying to explain my chess
ability.
Today, spectators feel another kind
of astonishment. It is my practice to
spend the major part of my allotted time on the first fifteen or twenty moves
of a tournament game. As a consequence,
I am often forced to play at breakneck speed to avoid overstepping the
limit. After such a game, I am
frequently asked why I took so long considering “obvious” moves. That’s a question to which I am able to give
a partial answer.
To a chess master, there is no such
thing as an “obvious” move. Experience
has shown repeatedly that wins or draws are thrown away by thoughtless
play. Careful planning is the essence
of chess strategy. Every move must be
scrutinized with care. Each must be
analyzed in the light of the plan under consideration. Nowhere is waste of time
more severely punished than in chess”.
In 1924, at the age of 12,
Reshevsky’s parents stole him away from chess and he went to school for the
first time of his life. A tutor helped
him to graduate high school level, which Reshevsky had no problem doing. Reshevsky then went firstly to University of
Detroit, and then to University of Chicago, where he obtained his degree in
Mathematics in 1933.
I quote
from his autobiography…….
“While I was at school I played very
little serious chess. Among musicians,
it is a rule, rather than the exception, that the child prodigy of one
generation is the mature artist of the next.
There are fewer cases in chess. This much, however, is clear: if one decides
to make chess a profession, a childhood devoted to the game cannot possibly be
a handicap. In my own case, chess has
always been the medium in which I feel most at home: at a chessboard I express
myself in my mother tongue”.
In 1932, Reshevsky came in a tie for
third in the tournament in Pasadena, California (my birthplace) and lost to the
great World Chess Champion, Dr. Alexander Alekhine. In 1933, the mature 21-yr-old Reshevsky
returned to serious chess for the first time after that loss.
In 1934, after Reshevsky tied for
first prize at the Western Championship at Chicago, he won first prize without
a loss of a game in the International Tournament at Syracuse, NY. Here is when he earned the right to play in
the tournament that contained Capablanca.
In 1934 is where he beat the great, THE GREAT, Jose Capablanca, whose
record is 416 wins, 19 losses in his career, at Margate, England. Reshevsky actually came first prize in the
tournament.
If you add up all of his wins in the
US Chess Championships, US Open Championships, Western Championships, and
American Championships, no one else even comes close.
In the great 1936 Nottingham
Tournament, Sammy was only ½ point behind the lead. For years this was considered the greatest
and strongest chess tournament in history.
He then dropped out of chess, but
came back to win the US Chess Championship in 1938, and then skipped a year,
and defended it in 1940. He then
dropped out of chess again, but played GM Isaac Kashdan for the US Championship
in 1942, which Reshevsky won.
Reshevsky played in the great 1951
Candidates Tournament that Bronstein won.
In 1961 he played a drawn match against the most famous chess prodigy,
Bobby Fischer. When he was almost 60
years old he qualified for the Inter Zonal at Mallorca and scored 9½ points out
of a possible 23. He even won a
tournament in the 1990’s in Iceland, before his death.
-----Terry Crandall
“Later,
... I began to succeed in decisive games. Perhaps because I realised a very
simple truth: not only was I worried, but also my opponent."
-
GM Mikhail Tal
The great Mikhail Tal, “the Magician
from Riga”, was one of the greatest attacking geniuses in the history of
recorded chess. His attacking style
consisted of beautiful displays of multiple, cascading fireworks, where the
true nature of the positions during the execution of his combinations was
unfathomable by his opponents, even Tal himself!, in the scant time limit
imposed in human over-the-board chess games.
Unlike the smooth, almost effortless
style of a Capablanca, Tal purposely played moves that created the maximum
complications for both sides. He once
said, “One doesn’t have to play well.
One only needs to play better than his opponent”. Dr. Lasker would have loved that quote, for
he too deemed the game of chess as a struggle between two minds, as opposed to
each player blindly making “correct” moves.
Born in Latvia in 1936, Tal was
relatively unknown to the chess world compared to his famous Soviet
compatriots, viz., Botvinnik, Smyslov, Keres, Bronstein, Spassky, Petrosian,
etc., until the late 1950’s, when his name shot around the chess world when he
won the Championship of the Soviet Union both in 1957 and 1958, and then
winning the World Championship Interzonal Tournament in 1959 to become the
official challenger to Botvinnik’s chess throne. In the 1959 tournament, he even scored 4-0
against the young, but brilliant future World Champion, Bobby Fischer. Tal’s style mesmerized the chess world, and
GM Ragozin explained the reason best: “Tal does not move chess pieces by hand,
he uses a magic wand”.
Tal was so intimidating in those
years that he made seasoned Grandmaster opponents shudder with fear. A case in point is a game played between GM
Tal (as Black) and Hungarian GM Pal Benko (as White) at the Interzonal
Tournament in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1959.
This was the third cycle (the first two were played in Bled and Zagreb,
respectively), and Benko was starting to think that Tal had been hypnotizing
him due to his poor record against him so far.
So Benko took with him sunglasses and wore them while at the
chessboard. But Tal, who had heard of
Benko’s plan to wear sunglasses before the game started, borrowed enormous dark
glasses from GM Petrosian. When Tal put
on these ridiculously enormous glasses, not only did the spectators laugh, but
other participants in the tournament did, as did the tournament controllers,
and finally even Benko himself laughed.
But unlike Tal, Benko did not remove his glasses until the 20th
move when his position was hopeless.
After winning the 1959 Interzonal,
skeptics still thought that Botvinnik was such a solid, positional player, that
Tal’s attacking style, somewhat purposely flawed by Tal’s design, would not be
able to penetrate Botvinnik’s granite-like defense. But in 1960, when Tal played Botvinnik for
the World Championship, he won the 6th game with an outrageously
complicated and risky piece sacrifice, because Botvinnik couldn’t navigate
through all of the complicated variations that Tal created on the board. Tal then went on and won the match and was
crowned the 8th Chess Champion of the World.
However, Tal faded away as quickly as
he sprang out of anonymity. Not that he started playing badly or sloppily; he
remained one of the strongest chess players in the world until his death in
1992. But in 1961, he played against
Botvinnik in the obligatory return match and found that Botvinnik had spent the
time since the first match doing his homework and systematically finding ways
to take advantage of the kinks in Tal’s incredibly complicated attacking
style. Botvinnik retained his World
Championship title, and Tal never reached the pinnacle ever again, due to the
succession of chess geniuses Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov.
But we all learned so, so much from
Tal, that it will be only rarely in the forever future of the Game of Chess
that mankind will see the likes of him in other players.
In 1988, I played in the American
Open in Long Beach, California, USA, and Tal was playing in the same
tournament. He spent little time at the
board, however, because they didn’t allow smoking in the tournament hall, and
he was almost always standing out in the corridor, dressed in disheveled
clothing, chain-smoking away, while all of his fans, including me, would be
inside staring at his current game’s position.
He would casually stride in between cigarettes; make a dazzling reply (usually
very quickly); and then return back to his little smoking area outside. It was very exciting for me to see such a
character live in action like that. He
will always remain one of my favorites.
One of my all-time favorite chess stories is the famous “Hippopotamus
Game” that Tal divulges in his Autobiography.
To illustrate what a chess player can actually be capable of thinking
during play, he created a hypothetical (hippothetical?) dialogue between a
journalist and himself. I will quote
the story by Tal straight from the Autobiography…….
Journalist: It might be inconvenient
to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly, but I
would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head
while playing a game?
Tal: Yes. For example, I will never
forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where
I was intending to sacrifice a KT. The
sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but
when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that
nothing would come of it. Ideas piled
up one after another. I would transport
a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation
where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a
completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous “tree of
variations”, from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small
branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity. And then suddenly, for some reason, I
remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanovic Chukovsky…….
“Oh, what a difficult job it
was. To drag out of the marsh the
hippopotamus”.
I don’t know from what associations
the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were
convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my
humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you
drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh? I
remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and
even a rope ladder. After a lengthy
consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to
myself: “Well, just let it drown!” And
suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared.
Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on - of his own
accord! And straightaway the position
did not appear to be so complicated.
Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the
variations, and that the sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely
intuitive. And since it promised an
interesting game, I could not refrain from making it.
Journalist: :
“And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how
Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an
accurately-calculated piece sacrifice ...”.
Anyway, records show that GM Mikhail
Tal (as White) against GM Evgeny Vasiukov (as Black) in the 1964 Soviet Union
Championship at Kiev, won in 58 moves.
-----Terry Crandall
Francois Andre Danican-Philidor
The best chess player of his
day was Francois Andre Danican-Philidor, born in France on September 7, 1796. The name Philidor was passed on through his
grandfather from King Louis XIII, a tribute to this family of royal musicians.
During years of waiting to perform in the chapel of Versailles, the young Francois learned the
moves of chess and became the best player in the chapel. Philidor supported
himself by giving music lessons, arranging and copying music. Spare time was spent at the Cafe de la Regence
in Paris. There he learned from the strongest player
in France, M. de Kermur, Sire de Legal.
Legal had heard that old Italian masters could play without sight of the
chessboard. Philidor said he often did
the same when he could not sleep at night.
In 1745, Philidor went to Rotterdam
and then to London
accompanying a music company. Due to unexpected cancellation of the concerts,
his focus shifted to chess to earn a living.
During 1747, he played a 10-game match with Phillip Stamma one of the
strongest players of his time. He gave
him odds of a move and the drawn game would count as a win for Stamma. Philidor trounced Stamma with a score of 8
wins; 1 draw and 1 loss. When he was in
his prime, few opponents could challenge him without receiving odds or placing
him under a blindfold. Often he would
play two or three blindfolded at the same time. His published chess strategy, “L’Analyse du
Jeu des Echecs”, stood for a hundred years without significant addition or
modification. He preached the value of a
strong PA center, an understanding of
the relative value of the pieces, and correct PA formations. We still remember
his motto, that “PAs are the soul of chess”.
Unfortunately, none of his games from his prime exist today. Philidor died in London, after being denied a passport to
return to France
for a demonstration match. The newspaper
obituary read “On Monday last, Mr. Philidor, the celebrated chess player, made
his last move, into the other world”.
His death occurred at the end of August 31, 1795.