Chess Notes

Edward Winter

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1 May 2008: C.N.s 5543-5546
3 May 2008: C.N.s 5547-5549
4 May 2008: C.N.s 5550-5553
7 May 2008: C.N.s 5554-5556
8 May 2008: C.N. 5557
chess

Max Euwe

A selection of feature articles:

Interregnum
Adams v Torre – A Sham?
The Guinness World Records Slump
Chess Records
Early Uses of ‘World Chess Champion’
A Nimzowitsch Story
A Fake Chess Photograph
Chess with Violence
The Genius and the Princess
The Very Best Chess Books
Worst-ever Chess Book?
‘The Swiss Gambit’
Books about Capablanca and Alekhine
Books about Fischer and Kasparov
Earliest Occurrences of Chess Terms
Chessplayer Shot Dead in Hastings
Copying
‘Fun’
A Publishing Scandal
Chess Prodigies
Zugzwang
The Termination
A Chessplaying Statesman
War Crimes
Fischer’s Fury
Where Did They Live?
Chess and the House of Commons
Chess in the Courts
Lord Dunsany and Chess
World Championship Disorder
Copyright on Chess Games
Was Alekhine a Nazi?
Edge, Morphy and Staunton

Archives (including all feature articles)

Factfinder


5543. Pasadena, 1932

pasadena 1932

This group photograph was published on page 116 of the July-August 1932 American Chess Bulletin. Does any reader have a better copy?



5544. Engels v Kieninger

Pierre Bourget (Quebec, Canada) asks who won this game: 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 a6 4 Ba4 Nf6 5 O-O Nxe4 6 d4 b5 7 Bb3 d5 8 dxe5 Be6 9 c3 Be7 10 Nd4 Nxe5 11 f3 Nc5 12 Bc2 Bd7 13 b4 Na4 14 Re1 Nc4 15 Qe2 Kf8 16 Nd2 Bf6 17 Nxc4 bxc4 18 Bxa4 Bxa4 19 Be3 Qd7 20 Qd2 h6 21 Bf4 Kg8 22 Be5 Bd8 23 Re2 Kh7 24 Rae1 Rf8 25 Qc1 Qc8 26 Qb1+ f5

dia

27 Bxg7 Kxg7 28 Ne6+ Kf7 29 Qxf5+.

Our correspondent took the game from the ChessBase Megabase, which states that it was played at Krefeld, 1938 and that Engels was the victor, against Kieninger. However, Mr Bourget points out that according to the crosstable of that tournament Kieninger won their individual encounter.

The game was indeed won by Engels, but at the Wuppertal-Barmen tournament, held in May 1938. Kieninger, who resigned at move 29, annotated it on pages 167-168 of Deutsche Schachblätter, 1 June 1938.



5545. Counter-attack (C.N.s 5090 & 5148)

The dictum ‘counter-attack is the best form of defence’ was traced back to J.A. de Rivière in 1860 or 1861, but now we note the following on page 30 of The Art of Chess-Play by George Walker (London, 1846):

‘The strongest defence is counter-attack.’

We have had no opportunity yet to ascertain whether earlier editions of Walker’s books contained the same, or a similar, remark. As ever, readers’ assistance will be appreciated.



5546. Knight tours

Wanted: examples of the knight tour in actual play. It will, though, be hard to match the re-entrant specimen (Vilela v Estévez, Holguín, 1984) which a correspondent, Ronald Pearce, presented in C.N. 1446 (see page 20 of Chess Explorations):

dia

Play continued 28…Qxd5 29 Rxd5 Ne1+ 30 Kf1 Nxc2 31 Rd2 Nb4 32 Kg2 Nc6 33 Re4 Ne5 34 Rd5 Nf3, and the game was drawn at move 41.



5547. Hans Frank

Martin Weissenberg (Savyon, Israel) quotes an extract from an article by Hans Kmoch about Nimzowitsch which mentions Hans Frank:

‘My last meeting with Nimzowitsch was also the longest. It took place in 1934, when we were both following the second Alekhine-Bogoljubow world championship match as reporters. The games of the match were scheduled to be played in many parts of Nazi Germany – unfriendly territory for a Jew and not particularly safe for a Gentile either, in view of the tensions immediately preceding Hitler’s bloody purge of his political enemies, among them Ernst Röhm.

Nimzowitsch considered himself protected by three consulates: the Latvian because of his birthplace, the Danish because of his residence, and the Dutch because some of his reports were going to a newspaper in Holland. He boasted of this protection even to Reichsminister Hans Frank, who at that time was in charge of the “protection” of art and later became the governor of Nazi- occupied Poland. Frank followed a few games of the match and sometimes chatted with the masters and reporters, including Nimzowitsch. He even invited the whole chess troupe to his villa for lunch. The Jews Mieses and Nimzowitsch were included in the invitation, but only Nimzowitsch showed up. At the luncheon he demonstrated his usual persecution mania by complaining first about a dirty plate and then about a dirty knife. The Reichsminister, seated directly opposite him, pretended not to hear.

frank

Hans Frank

In Kissingen, where some of the match games were played, I was a guest in the same hotel at which I had stayed during the tournament in 1928. Overcrowded then, it was empty in 1934. At dinnertime, when the restaurant should have been crowded, there were only four people in the room: my wife and I, and, at another table, Frank and an elderly man who I later learned was the composer Richard Strauss. The sinister emptiness of that dining room, which the hotel manager attributed to “bad economic conditions”, should have been a forewarning, but the Nazi leaders understood nothing. Frank himself failed to understand what was going on under his governorship in Poland. He became known as “the butcher of Poland”, and for his war crimes he was hanged in Nuremberg.’

If any reader has Nimzowitsch’s reports on the 1934 world championship match we should be grateful to know whether they contain points of particular interest.



5548. Nimzowitsch and exercise

nimzowitsch

Aron Nimzowitsch

On pages 128-129 of The World’s Great Chess Games by Reuben Fine (New York, 1951) the following appeared regarding Nimzowitsch:

‘Many other eccentricities are reported of him. At one time a doctor ordered him to do calisthenics; he began to do them in the tournament room. During a particularly difficult situation once, he went to a corner and stood on his head.

Were it not for these unfortunate aberrations, Nimzowitsch might well have become world champion.’

And from page 66 of Fine’s The Psychology of the Chess Player (New York, 1967):

‘Towards the end of his life, (1929-1935), the émigré Russian master Aron Nimzowitsch was advised by his physician to take more exercise. He thereupon proceeded to act on this advice by performing calisthenics during actual tournament play. When it was not his move, he would go off to his corner and do deep knee bends or the like. Several times he astonished spectators by standing on his head. In spite of these aberrations, Nimzowitsch scored his greatest successes around this period.’

Whether any corroboration exists for these claims that Nimzowitsch (‘once’ or ‘several times’) stood on his head we do not know, but when George Botterill mentioned the subject on page 461 of the December 1974 BCM he described Fine as ‘scurrilous’. We can add that the following was published on page 68 of the December 1946 CHESS, in an article by M.G. Sturm:

‘Another good method is to perform physical exercises on the floor. ... If anyone tries to stop you, quote Nimzowitsch, who attributed his success, at some tournament or other, to such a course of physical exercises.’

A further question is whether the story has any connection with the claim that Nimzowitsch ‘once’ broke his leg during a game of chess. This letter from Kester Svendsen was on page 101 of CHESS, January 1948:

nimzowitsch



5549. Capablanca dressed for tennis (C.N. 4114)

yates

Frederick Dewhurst Yates

C.N. 4114 asked about the earliest sighting of the well-known story about Capablanca turning up in his tennis gear to resume a game of chess against Yates at Hastings, and we offered the following ‘once’ version by G. Koltanowski on page 180 of CHESS, 14 January 1936:

‘Capablanca once turned up to play off an adjourned game against Yates, dressed in white flannels and with a tennis racquet in his hand. Didn’t we chuckle when, four hours later, with the darkness of night outside the congress room, he was still playing – chess, not tennis.’

We added that Koltanowski wrote similarly on page 80 of With the Chess Masters (San Francisco, 1972), whereas on page 24 of Chessnicdotes II (Coraopolis, 1981) he stated that the episode had occurred ‘in the 1929 tournament at Hastings’ in a game between Capablanca and Vera Menchik.

Now an earlier (and, again, different) version by Koltanowski can be presented, from page 122 of the 1 December 1932 issue of his magazine Chess World:

yates

His account in CHESS spoke of ‘the darkness of night’, but now there is a reference to playing tennis ‘this morning’. More substantively, Capablanca and Yates had only one draw in any Hastings tournament, on 4 January 1930. Koltanowski was there, playing in the Premier Reserves event, but since the Cuban’s game against Yates was not adjourned (it lasted only 26 moves), the confusion continues.



5550. Thousand Islands, 1897

A photograph from page 148 of the American Chess Magazine, August 1897:

thousand islands



5551. Lupi and Alekhine (C.N. 4388)

The Portuguese champion Francisco Lupi gave some further observations about Alekhine on pages 204-207 of CHESS, April 1947:

‘With all respect to Botvinnik, I am not altogether convinced that the great master and Soviet champion would have won his match against Alekhine.

I knew Alekhine well during his last years. Throughout many a journey in Spain together, en route to participate in tournaments, I have come to know his every gesture. I have seen him attired superbly and I have seen him, not so much later, looking like a tramp. It has struck me how both in his play and in himself, how extraordinarily his style revealed itself in a capacity to improvize – and a capacity to recuperate. ...

It is true that, when he received here in Lisbon the news of the British Chess Federation’s negotiations for his match against Botvinnik, the great man was at his lowest ebb. But a few days afterwards, I watched him playing so beautifully, so ingeniously in friendly conflict with the well-known English problemist G.F. Anderson – no second-rate player either – that I felt his powers of recuperation were unimpaired.

It has frequently been said that, after his last match against Euwe, Alekhine had never recaptured the fire of his San Remo days. I should answer this by saying, simply, that in his later years he inclined more towards soundness and simplicity.’

On page 205 Lupi discussed Alekhine’s game against Paul Schmidt in the Warsaw-Cracow tournament on 10 October 1941 (game 2311 in the Skinner/Verhoeven book on Alekhine). Before presenting Lupi’s account we reproduce the relevant part of the game from page 171 of the November 1941 Deutsche Schachzeitung (notes by Blümich) and page 173 of the 1 November 1941 issue of Deutsche Schachblätter (annotations by Alekhine).

alekhine

Deutsche Schachzeitung

alekhine

Deutsche Schachblätter

Our diagram shows the position before Alekhine played 31 Rc1 h5 32 Rg6 (instead of 31 Rb8+ Qc8 32 Rxc8+ (or 32 Bxc8) and 33 Bf5 mate):

dia

In CHESS Lupi wrote:

alekhine

To the small number of photographs of Lupi which are available, we add one from opposite page 145 of La vida de Arturito Pomar by Juan M. Fuentes and Julio Ganzo (Madrid, 1946):

pomar lupi



5552. Nimzowitsch and exercise (C.N. 5548)

Dan Scoones (Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada) notes that page 24 of Nimzowitsch’s booklet Kak ya stal grosmeysterom (Leningrad, 1929) recommended the practice of gymnastics with ‘Müller’s system’.

nimzowitsch

Our correspondent identifies the book in question as Mein System: Fünfzehn Minuten täglicher Arbeit für die Gesundheit by J.P. Müller, published at the beginning of the twentieth century.



5553. New Fischer book

Yakov Zusmanovich (Pleasanton, CA, USA) draws attention to the first monograph on Fischer to be published since the master’s death: Vybrané Partie Roberta Fischera by V. Babula, Z. Hráček, R. Biolek, D. Kaňovský and P. Šimáček.



5554. Crosstable wanted

Graeme Cree (Austin, TX, USA) is seeking the crosstable of the 35th USSR Championship (Kharkov, 1967). There were 126 participants (Swiss system), and the tournament was won by Polugayevsky and Tal.



5555. Who?

chess



5556. Leit-motif

C.N. 438 (see page 113 of Chess Explorations) quoted Harry Golombek on page 362 of the December 1968 BCM, in a report on that year’s Olympiad:

‘It is an odd fact that most big chess events seem to have some main theme running through the best games, rather like the leit-motif of a Wagnerian opera. The theme at Lugano was the isolation of the black queen’s pawn and play on the white squares in front of it.’

Examples of tournaments with a theme are still being sought.



5557. Nimzowitsch’s dictum

nimzowitsch

Aron Nimzowitsch (Schweizerische Schachzeitung, May-June 1931, page 67)

A fresh addition to our feature article on ‘The Most Famous Chess Quotations’ is Nimzowitsch’s dictum ‘First restrain, next blockade, lastly destroy’. It is certainly famous, yet we are struck by how seldom it is to be found on the Internet. Moreover, not a single webpage consulted by us gives the source (My System), and we found no instance on-line of the original German (‘Zuerst hemmen, dann blockieren und schließlich vernichten’).

Below, to provide the context, is the full passage as it appeared in the first German and English editions (Berlin, 1925, page 246 and London, 1929, page 181):

nimzowitsch

nimzowitsch

It was in the section entitled ‘Doppelbauer und Hemmung’/‘The Doubled Pawn and Restraint’. Page numbers vary, but in the later editions of My System in our collection the reference is page 133, 151, 207 or 217. The last of these relates to the translation published by Quality Chess, Göteborg in 2007, which had a slightly different wording: ‘First restrain, then blockade and finally destroy.’




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