
Capa Clobbers Bernstein!
In 1911 a world-class chess tnmt was organized in San Sebastian, Spain with the requirement that all entrants have won at least two 3rd-place prizes in prior world-class tnmts. A relatively inexperienced newcomer from Cuba did not meet this requirement, so Nimzovitch and Osip Bernstein (pictured here) objected to the newcomer's invitation, which was based mostly (I think) on his shellacking the world-class GM Frank Marshall in a 1909 match by the lopsided score +8 -1 =14. The newcomer was none other than J R Capablanca, who beat both Nimzovitch and Bernstein in a famous game here, with some "revisionist" analysis done almost a century after the game was played!
PS: Marshall generously argued in favor of Capa's admission to this heavywt tnmt - a genuine sportsman if ever there was one!
Ossip Samoilovich Bernstein (20 September 1882 at Zhytomyr, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) – 30 November 1962 in the French Pyrenees) was a Russian chess grandmaster and a financial lawyer.
When FIDE introduced official titles in 1950, Bernstein was awarded the International Grandmaster title. He had level or nearly level lifetime scores against such outstanding players as the second World Champion Emanuel Lasker (+2 −2 =1), Akiba Rubinstein (+1 –1 =7), Aron Nimzowitsch (+1 −2 =4), Mikhail Chigorin (+2 −1 =0) and Salo Flohr (+0 −0 =3). However, he had a poor record against third World Champion José Raúl Capablanca (+0 −3 =1); and against the fourth World Champion Alexander Alekhine (+1 −8 =5). SOURCE: Wikipedia