A Century of Chess

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A Century of Chess: New York 1918

A Century of Chess: New York 1918

kahns
| 5 hrs ago

There are two great opening innovation stories that both come from 1918. One is the introduction of the Budapest Gambit — a group of minor Hungarian masters passing on the secrets of the Budapest at a tournament in Berlin, which led to the a...

A Century of Chess: Berlin Grandmasters 1918

A Century of Chess: Berlin Grandmasters 1918

kahns
| 8 days ago

Again, it’s hard to believe that this tournament really took place. It was held in September-October of 1918 with Berlin facing food shortages and the Armistice a month away. Schlechter would die of some combination of starvation or pneumoni...

A Century of Chess: Berlin Masters 1918

A Century of Chess: Berlin Masters 1918

kahns
| 15 days ago

Another somewhat ghoulish event from wartime Berlin. The tournament was one of several Bernhard Kagan-organized events. If the Lasker-Tarrasch match of 1916 had the aim of supporting a war charity, these 1918 events had the more limited and crucia...

A Century of Chess: Rubinstein-Schlechter 1918

A Century of Chess: Rubinstein-Schlechter 1918

kahns
| 22 days ago

As hard as it is to imagine a Lasker-Tarrasch match in 1916, it’s more difficult still to envision Rubinstein-Schlechter in Berlin in 1918. Schlechter would die of malnourishment in December and there’s something very ghostly about pla...

A Century of Chess: Lasker-Tarrasch 1916

A Century of Chess: Lasker-Tarrasch 1916

kahns
| 29 days ago

It’s a bit hard to believe that this match was played - both that anybody thought of organizing a chess match in Berlin in 1916 and also that Lasker and Tarrasch managed to put aside their differences to play a promotional match. Tarrasch's ...

A Century of Chess: Janowski Matches 1916-18

A Century of Chess: Janowski Matches 1916-18

kahns
| Apr 22, 2023

In a last gasp of pre-war Utopianism - also, essentially, his dying wish - the chess Maecenas Isaac Rice sent out invitations to all the leading European masters to attend his planned tournament in New York in 1916. Needless to say, most of the in...

A Century of Chess: New York 1916

A Century of Chess: New York 1916

kahns
| Apr 10, 2023

Another tournament with Capablanca at his height. The organizing committee invited a string of European masters, most of whom, unsurprisingly, did not respond, although somehow both Janowski and Borislav Kostic shipped across the Atlantic to be th...

A Century of Chess: New York 1915

A Century of Chess: New York 1915

kahns
| Apr 3, 2023

In 1915 there was of course no chess in Europe and all competitive activity was limited to America. New York City held a tournament featuring the hemisphere’s strongest players, including Capablanca and Marshall. It was essentially the same ...

A Century of Chess: Mannheim 1914

A Century of Chess: Mannheim 1914

kahns
| Mar 22, 2023

The “unfinished tournament” has become a part of chess lore. The tournament was the biannual German chess congress, which, befitting the pre-war spirit of international cooperation, was really just a very strong masters’ tourna...

A Century of Chess: St Petersburg 1914 (Part 2)

A Century of Chess: St Petersburg 1914 (Part 2)

kahns
| Mar 11, 2023

Capablanca started the finals of the 1914 At Petersburg tournament with a commanding 1.5 point lead. He had put on a master class in the preliminaries. His biographer Miquel Sanchez wrote, "It is difficult to find a collection of games of such ser...

A Century of Chess: St Petersburg 1914 (Part 1)

A Century of Chess: St Petersburg 1914 (Part 1)

kahns
| Mar 2, 2023

This probably is the greatest single tournament ever held. It’s really amazing how often it comes up - in virtually all of the classical intro to chess books I've read; and then in places as far-flung as Twin Peaks’s second season, whe...

Teichmann-Spielmann 1914

Teichmann-Spielmann 1914

kahns
| Feb 21, 2023

An attractive match between two fighting players. Spielmann and Teichmann were of roughly equal strength and a similar temperament. Spielmann was a more one-sided player - a confirmed Neo-Romantic - but both he and Teichmann were distinguished by ...

A Century of Chess: Savorin Cup 1913

A Century of Chess: Savorin Cup 1913

kahns
| Feb 13, 2023

The first meeting of Alekhine and Capablanca - and à humiliation for Alekhine. Having secured a sinecure-for-life from the Cuban government, Capablanca was dispatched to St Petersburg and played, essentially, a high-level 'simultaneous matc...

A Century of Chess: Scheveningen 1913

A Century of Chess: Scheveningen 1913

kahns
| Feb 6, 2023

It’s a surprise to me, playing over games from this period, to realize how much Capablanca and Alekhine developed in tandem. Both had their first successes in 1909. Both emerged as international stars in 1911. But Capablanca arrived in inter...

A Century of Chess: Capablanca's Tour 1913-14

A Century of Chess: Capablanca's Tour 1913-14

kahns
| Feb 1, 2023

In 1913, Capablanca, with his new post in the Cuban Foreign Office, was dispatched to Europe as an emissary-at-large. His titular post was as consul in St Petersburg, but, really, his task was to be a professional chess player, playing as widely a...

A Century of Chess: Quadrangular Tournaments 1913

A Century of Chess: Quadrangular Tournaments 1913

kahns
| Jan 23, 2023

The travels of Oldrich Duras in 1913 precipitated a pair of quadrangular tournaments - one in St. Petersburg in April and another to accompany Duras’ visit to New York in September. Both tournaments had little at stake except to take advanta...

A Century of Chess: Alekhine-Levitsky 1913

A Century of Chess: Alekhine-Levitsky 1913

kahns
| Jan 16, 2023

In 1913, for the first time, it becomes possible to talk about a Capablanca-Alekhine rivalry. By a scheduling quirk, the major Central European tournaments were held in 1912 leaving 1913 a barren chess year. The action shifted east and west - to a...

A Century of Chess: Havana 1913

A Century of Chess: Havana 1913

kahns
| Jan 9, 2023

The second of a two-part series - a joint venture by the Manhattan and Havana Chess Clubs that served as an unofficial Pan-American championship. Capablanca won New York, winning his first ten straight games, and, after a loss to Jaffe, just holdi...

A Century of Chess: New York 1913

A Century of Chess: New York 1913

kahns
| Jan 2, 2023

When Capablanca comes to mind, you tend to think either of the boy prodigy or of the international playboy, set for life and unassailably world champion. It’s easy to forget the somewhat itinerant New York stage - matriculating at Columbia, ...

A Century of Chess: Marshall-Janowski 1912

A Century of Chess: Marshall-Janowski 1912

kahns
| Dec 26, 2022

Marshall and Janowski played five matches (!) against each other, for a total of 80 games, more encounters than any other pair of players until Botvinnik-Smyslov. This was match four, sponsored by Nardus, Janowski’s indefatigable patron, and...

A Century of Chess: Vilnius 1912

A Century of Chess: Vilnius 1912

kahns
| Dec 19, 2022

The last stop on Rubinstein’s European tour of 1912 - and his fourth straight tournament victory. There’s a pleasing west-east flow to the tournaments: he started the year in San Sebastián in Spain at what would now be called a ...

A Century of Chess: Breslau 1912

A Century of Chess: Breslau 1912

kahns
| Dec 12, 2022

The third leg in Rubinstein’s victory tour of 1912 - and the only one of his four tournament victories (a long-standing record) in which he shared first place, tying with Duras. There is something fitting about the result. They came up toget...

A Century of Chess: Stockholm 1912

A Century of Chess: Stockholm 1912

kahns
| Dec 5, 2022

In 1909, Alexander Alekhine, at age 16, won the amateur chess championship of Russia, securing for himself the title of master.  In 1910 he finished a very respectable shared seventh at Hamburg, alongside Tarrasch. In 1911 he finished shared ...

A Century of Chess: Bad Pistyan 1912

A Century of Chess: Bad Pistyan 1912

kahns
| Nov 28, 2022

What are the best single-year performances in chess history? Just to throw out some possibilities: Paul Morphy (1858), Jose Capablanca (1922), Alexander Alekhine (1931), Mikhail Tal (1959), Bobby Fischer (1971), Anatoly Karpov (1977), Garry Kasp...

A Century of Chess: San Sebastián 1912

A Century of Chess: San Sebastián 1912

kahns
| Nov 21, 2022

The premier tournament of its time. San Sebastián 1911 introduced Capablanca to the international chess scene. The tournament’s second incarnation didn’t have quite the same drama - Capablanca was unavailable to play - but it wa...

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