All Russian Amateur Tournament. St. Petersburg, 1909. Some Pictures and Games.

An earlier posting, https://www.chess.com/blog/simaginfan/lasker-learns-from-blackburne somehow gravitated to the subject of the St. Petersburg Tournament of 1909. 

In response to that I dug out my copy of the Russian version of the tournament book. 

At the same time as the main event - The Chigorin Memorial - there was held the 'All Russian Amateur Tournament'. This is remembered as the first notable success of Alexander Alekhine, who had not yet turned 17 years of age. He won the first prize - a cut glass vase valued at 650 roubles. This photograph of him with his prize is from page 225 of the tournament book.

Behind him finished three players who were later to gain international reputations; Gedali Rotlewi, Boris Verlinsky and Peter Romanovsky. Each of them in an interesting story in himself, and perhaps I will come back to one of them at some point.

 In the tournament book is the following photograph of two young teenagers, they were born in the same year, Alekhine and Romanovsky.

On this occasion Alekhine met his match, as the game shows.

The decisive game of the event came just three rounds from the end of the tournament. Rotlewi went on to earn the Master title the following year, and finish fourth at the great tournament at Carlsbad in 1911. Sadly, that was to be his last major event. History remembers him as the loser of 'Rubinstein's immortal game'.

O.K. Seems like this may be an image that is not to be found on public sources. Rotlewi does not appear in the group photograph given above, but this is on page 278 of the Tournament book.

Maliutin - Rotlewi, taken during the game given below by Zenomorphy. It appears to be at move 10.

The following game is the one which won the brilliancy prize - as you will see, even those at the lower end of the table were pretty good players!!

To close - for now at least - a sketch of the future world champion by L. Kiprianovich, from page 333 of the book.