A Century of Chess: Lodz 1908

Marshall, in his European wanderings, ventured as far east as Lodz for a peculiar triangular match-tournament with Rubinstein and Salwe. (It was meant to be a five-player tournament, but both Schlechter and Marco declined their invitations.) Rubinstein won fairly easily. He beat Marshall +3-2=3 and Salwe +3-1=4 while Marshall scored only +2-1=5 against Salwe. His wins against Salwe were models of positional control.

Against Marshall, he was generally successful in steering the play away from the fanciful tactical positions where Marshall excelled.

For the first time, though, a chink in Rubinstein’s armor became apparent: his relatively weak nerves combined with a capacity to blunder. In the match tournament he gave away two full points through horrible oversights: he overstepped the time limit in a completely winning position against Salwe; and he overlooked a mate in one, again in a winning position, against Marshall. Salwe played better than his score would suggest. He had a tremendous disadvantage in opening preparation.

With white, he played a Four Knights Opening, which never led anywhere; with black, he played the Tarrasch Defense to the Queen’s Gambit; and it so happened that both Rubinstein and Marshall were becoming past masters in tearing that opening apart, generally by taking advantage of the loose squares around black’s isolated pawn. But Salwe was tenacious in defense and had a way of making things difficult for his more famous opponents.