Alexandr Koblencs. Six Games And Some Pictures.

A simple and unpretentious Sunday chess lunch today - more a roast chicken than a beef joint with Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings. I hope you enjoy it.

My friend https://www.chess.com/member/gennady_boychenko  has been posting some nice little blogs, including some reminiscences of Alexandr Koblencs ( or Koblentz, or various other forms)

He is best known as Tal's trainer

but he was a fine player in his own right. Multiple times Latvian champion - and Riga champion.

Me being me, I went looking for his games. Well, I don't own a database, and the online ones have very few of his games. So I have spent a couple of days on rusbase going through some of his Latvian championship games, and will share a few here, with the notes I wrote as I went along. I will probably post more at a later time.

The decisive game was against a player I have featured in a previous blog

Another player of repute in the tournament was Lucius Endzelins.

A lesser known opponent, who seems to have been a well known Latvian chess figure.

In these six game blogs I like to include a 'fun game'. The loser of this game

must have been baffled as to how he  managed to not only fail to win it, but to actually lose it!

Back to some normality after that!
Koblencs' opponent in this next game was a minor figure - just a couple of lines in the Encyclopedia, and no picture. So a Koblencs in his youth picture!

Well, the name in the game file of Koblencs' opponent must be an incorrect transliteration. I am sure it is this guy :-

A lot came into my head going over this one, so excuse the self-indulgent notes!! I forgot to add in that, according to a story of Tal's, Koblencs seemed to have been susceptible to time trouble (40 moves in 21/2 hours was standard back then)

That's all for now - lots more games - including a win against Tal - and pictures in the folder, so expect a follow up! Cheers.