The Tartakoverisms of Savielly Tartakower

Baseball has Yogi Berra and his Yogi-isms, but Chess has Savielly Tartakower and his Tartakoverisms. Savielly Tartakower was known for his many witty aphorisms which were often called Tartakoverisms. I have compiled a list of a few of them.

Tartakower's remarks about chess include:

• "It's always better to sacrifice your opponent's men."
• "An isolated pawn spreads gloom all over the chessboard."
• "The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made."
• "The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
• "The move is there, but you must see it." 
• "No game was ever won by resigning."
• "I never defeated a healthy opponent." (This refers to players who blame an illness, sometimes imaginary, for their loss.)
• "Tactics is what you do when there is something to do; strategy is what you do when there is nothing to do."
• "Moral victories do not count."
• "Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders."
• "The great master places a knight on e5; checkmate follows by itself."
• "A master can sometimes play badly, a fan never!"
• "A match demonstrates less than a tournament. But a tournament demonstrates nothing at all."
• "Chess is a struggle against one's own errors."
• "Every chessplayer should have a hobby."
• "A game of chess has three phases: the opening, where you hope you stand better; the middlegame, where you think you stand better; and the ending, where you know you stand to lose."
• "As long as an opening is reputed to be weak it can be played."
• "Stalemate is the tragicomedy of chess."
• "Erro ergo sum."

To understand his quotes, you have to understand the man himself.

Tartakower is regarded as one of the most notable chess personalities of his time. Harry Golombek translated Tartakower's book of his best games, and in the foreword wrote:

Dr. Tartakower is far and away the most cultured and the wittiest of all the chess masters I have ever met. His extremely well stored mind and ever-flowing native wit make conversation with him a perpetual delight. So much so that I count it as one of the brightest attractions an international tournament can hold out for me that Dr. Tartakower should also be one of the participants. His talk and thought are rather like a modernized blend of Baruch Spinoza and Voltaire ; and with it all a dash of paradoxical originality that is essential Tartakower.

One variation of the Dutch Defence is named after him. The Tartakower Defence in the Queen's Gambit Declined (also known as the Tartakower–Makogonov–Bondarevsky System) also bears his name, as does the most common variation of the Torre Attack. He is alleged to be the inventor of the Orangutan Opening, 1.b4, so named after Tartakower had admired a great ape during his visit to the zoo whilst playing in the great 1924 tournament in New York. Tartakower originated the Catalan Opening at Barcelona 1929. This system starts with 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nf6 3.g3. It remains very popular today at all levels.

José Raúl Capablanca scored +5−0=7 against Tartakower, but they had many hard fights. After their fighting draw in London 1922 (where Tartakower played his new defense), Capablanca said, "You are lacking in solidity", and Tartakower replied in his usual banter, "That is my saving grace." But in Capablanca's reports of the 1939 Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires for the Argentine newspaper Crítica, he wrote:

The Polish team … is captained and led by Dr S. Tartakower, a master with profound knowledge and great imagination, qualities which make him a formidable adversary.  … Luckily for the others, the Polish team has only one Tartakower.

Sugden and Damsky stated that like other chess players of all ages and ranks among whom there is generally no lack of idiosyncrasy or superstition, Tartakower, a trenchant wit, took a most unsightly old hat with him from tournament to tournament.

He would only wear it on the last round and he would win. Notably this hat did not guarantee him success in casinos, which he visited as though it were a job of work. The roulette table would regularly acquire both the Grandmaster's prizes and the numerous fees from his endless string of articles.