Franciszek Sulik | The Greatest Chess Player NOBODY Knows.
Franciszek Sulik was a Polish-born chess player. His date of birth is only found on a Polish Wikipedia page. Yet, he played in the Polish Olympiad team which came 2nd, and then, after migrating, became arguably the greatest South Australian chess player in history. Franciszek (Frank) Sulik is a forgotten name. That is why I made this.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 2: The 8th Olympiad and the war.
Chapter 3: After migrating to South Australia.
Franciszek Sulik was born on the 28th of November 1908. Not much is known about his schooling path, but he graduated from the Lviv university in 1932.
Franciszek would reappear for the 2nd Polish team championship in 1934 playing with a relatively weak Lviv team. 8 teams played in the tournament who could certainly beat the Lviv team, but that didn't happen.
For the first game, Lviv played Pomerania. In a turn of events, the player on the 1st board, Henryk Friedman lost, it was up to Sulik and the others. In total, that was the only loss for the team that round. Sulik won his game.
For the next few rounds, Sulik held strong and drew all of his next four games. then won his last two. He played Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, and more teams but he still held strong. He was one of the only people in the tournament to go unbeaten. His team ended up coming third due to him.
The 3rd Polish championship was relentless. Games were lost and won, Tartakower played in the tournament as well as Miguel Najdorf. 2 famous polish players that you probably didn't realise were polish!
In the Swiss system, for the first round, stronger players would play weaker players... This time, Sulik versed Tartakower. This first game went surprisingly well for Sulik as he preserved a draw against Tartakower.
For round 2, he versed Miguel Najdorf... The game has actually been recorded unlike every other game we've shown.
The rest of the games Franciszek played weren't recorded. He won 5 and drew 6 out of 16 games.
The next tournament he played was a relatively insignificant tournament with only 3 players in it.
There weren't any tournaments for the rest of the year but, in 1936, the 3rd unofficial Olympiad was held in Munich.
The Munich unofficial Olympiad was a chance for Frank to prove himself on a large stage. Sulik played 7 games and 3 of them are recorded...
There were 2 more games that were recorded but I want this blog to not be entirely full of words.
There weren't any more tournaments that we know he went to until 1938. The city of Lodz is located approximately 75 kilometres from Warsaw. All of the 15 games were recorded so I thought to give the 5 best games.
Game 1:
Game 2:
Game 4:
Game 8:
This game is long, so here is a singular position in the game that white messed up...
Game 11:
The 8th Olympiad would be a difficult challenge for the Polish team, but they were a very good team for the time and Sulik had managed to climb up to 1st reserve. The Polish super team for the Olympiad consisted of Tartakower, Najdorf, Frydman, Regedzinski, and finally, Franciszek Sulik.
There was great competition, including Tromposky, Capablanca and World champion, Alexander Alekhine. Poland could either lose horribly or win tremendously.
In total, there were 27 teams. They were sorted into 4 groups and then whoever came 1-4 went to the next tournament the A tournament and the rest went into the B tournament.
The tournament started off rocky, with a loss for Sulik but then he won this game against a guy with the last name Aponte.
That is what I call a brilliant move! The rest of the tournament played out nicely.
For the next game, he played this masterclass which I will show as a puzzle.
For the last game of the group stage, Sulik won. Poland came 1st in the group stage.
The Polish players must have still been getting ready for the actual Olympiad but then...
Many of the Polish players were Jewish and knowing the Nazis, they knew they couldn't simply return home. Many German players as well as other people stayed in Argentina while the war raged on. The war ruined Sulik's best point in his career!
In 1941, the people playing in the 8th Olympiad were playing a tournament called Mar de Plata. At the same time, concentration camps like Auschwitz were being built and were designed to kill hundreds of thousands of people due to minor decisions, were being built along Poland. There are massacres that I probably can't go into more depth about because they are that bad!
After Operation Barbarossa, Lviv, Sulik's hometown was being destroyed and erased with a concentration camp. This didn't feel right to Sulik, hundreds were dying every week, and they played chess through it. As a nice, empathetic man, he wanted that to change...
Sulik knew the risks but that didn't matter... Franciszek signed up to join the Polish military.
Sulik joined the 2nd polish corps which were fighting in Italy. These were some of the famous people who were fighting.
There were athletic ones.
There were future Supercentenarians.
But most of all, there was a bear...
Yeah... I'm not kidding somehow. Wojtek was the head of the 22nd artillery supply company in the 2nd Polish corps. He became a celebrity bear after carrying ammunition crates like his fellow human comrades during the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Okay...
Sulik fought in many battles up the Italian peninsula, doing what he could. Meanwhile, the chess players were still playing chess in Argentina...
After a while, the war had concluded. Sulik migrated to South Australia as a refugee...
Chapter 3: After migrating to South Australia.
Sulik migrated to Adelaide, Australia after being stationed in Greece. Adelaide is quite the biggest city in the entire region of South Australia.
Sulik didn't play in a tournament for a few years, probably doing something more personal, like getting friends and meeting new people.
In 1954, Sulik reappeared and won the South Australian championships with a remarkable score of 5/5.
Sulik proceeded to play in the Australian championships in Late December 1962 and early January 1963. Here is one of the games he played...
Sulik did well in the rest of the tournament.
In 1969, Sulik played again in the South Australian championships as well as the 1970 and 1971 championships... HE WON ALL THREE!
He then won it again in 1973 and 1974.
Frank started to keep his scoresheets it seems...
Not much is known what happened directly after he retired but Franciszek Sulik died in 1997.
"When he passed, his loved ones and relatives generously donated $10,000 dollars and a trophy." Written by the South Australian Chess Association talking about an article about the South Australian Chess Championship. The tournament Sulik once dominated.
The trophy is quite large and has a plague with the engravings of "The Frank Sulik Challenge."
Both the money and the trophy will be awarded to the first person who win the South Australian chess championship 5 times.
Franciszek Sulik should be remembered for what he did for the Polish and Australian chess foundations.
Rest in Peace.
