Alexandr Koblencs. Some More Games And Pictures. Lots!

Good afternoon everyone.

Well, I had to stop digging and put the material onto the page. Too much here for one blog really, but hopefully you will drop in and out and enjoy another of my looks at a neglected player.

Koblencs loved chess!  A quote from Sosonko's 'Chess Silhouettes'.

''I think that, were the maestro to have ended up on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, within a couple of years the first chess championship would have been held there. Plans would also have been made for a team championship, junior chess schools would have been functioning, as would a higher master school, where the maestro himself would read lectures''.

Some games and pictures! Will just drag them out of the folder as i go along - no deep planning here, as usual. 

An early one against a well known chess figure.

Tal once said that if his opponent's King was in the centre he would try to find a way to get at it, even if he knew it couldn't be done! Steiner leaves his king in the centre too long, and Koblencs finds a way to get at it. I once wrote a blog about winning attacks based on Na7 - here you get the Black version - Na2.

That game is also an excuse to post a beautiful picture from the wonderful ones taken at the 1935 Olympiad in Warsaw.

Even earlier, a game against my dear and much missed friend Barry Wood.

While we are doing wonderful pictures, I really only included this next game as an excuse to repost a special picture. At the back of the picture is the young Mikhail Tal - I believe this is the first picture of him in a competitive setting - from the Riga championships in 1950,

This next one was a special pleasure for me to include for a number of reasons. Firstly another great picture from Warsaw 1935. The latvian team, via The Encyclopedia of Latvian Chessplayers.

And secondly because back in the day we all studied this opening line. You never see it nowadays, but. apart from guys like Smyslov, Geller, Kasparov, etc. It is worth looking at the genius Ivanchuk who played/plays both sides of the position.

The two were still going at it many years later! The final move is a treat!

Another Olympiad picture - this one from 1939, with apologies for not remembering the site which has group pictures of all the teams.

A picture bonus! from The Encyclopedia of Latvian Chess Players. This is great!
Koblencs' opponent was also a seriously good c.c. player - good enough to beat a world champion - Jacov Estrin in that form of the game.

O.K. Another theoretical debate from it's time, best known for a couple of Botvinnik - Smyslov games. I don't have a picture of Koblencs' opponent, so a cartoon of Koblencs from the Encyclopedia. 

Well, the pgn I downloaded for this next one does not have the tournament details, and I can't be bothered to go through all the files again! From memory it was from the 1972 Latvian Championship. Another theoretical debate. I spent a lot of time looking at this whole g4 setup for a top level c.c. friend of mine who was preparing for a world championship semi-final many years ago, as he played the King's Indian - that dates it to pre-engine! - and one of his opponent's was using it.

And finally the stuff you really wanted to see - Tal against his trainer.

Two wins for Koblencs.

And this one has a story - from Team Tal by Valentin Kirillov, mentioned above, as Tal spoke about it.
''We probably engaged in our fiercest hand to hand combat at the 1953 Latvian Championship. I managed to secure first place, barely squeaking by the Maestro. In our game I got a worse position right out of the opening, then blundered away a Pawn but managed, as is often the case, to receive a little compensation for it. Things heated up; moreover, Koblencs got himself into some serious time trouble. I started setting traps and the Maestro kept avoiding them. My position was horrendous, but Koblencs was a nervous wreck - he stopped recording his moves and no longer knew how many he had left until the time control, so I said to him 'you have to make six more moves, Maestro'. He calmed down, took my word for it, and confidently played out the remaining moves. I soon resigned, and following that we became great buddies''. 

Well, the game is not in any of the - many! - Tal collections I have, but the wonderful rusbase  (without which these blogs would not have been possible) has the early moves and the final ones.

Contrary to Tal's account, he could still have held the draw until his final mistake.

A few more pictures to clear the folder.

With humble thanks to rusbase, elk and ruby publishers, and, in particular, the compilers of The Latvian Encyclopedia of Chessplayers for making this, and the previous, blog possible - without their hard work it would not exist.