Benjamin Leussen. Another Of The Forgotten. Part Two.
Good afternoon everyone. back with part two.
As said, I have not posted everything I have and still more to find, but you have to stop somewhere. That's the thing with doing proper primary source research stuff ( not the modern world go to the chessgames.com indexes, and then see what comes out of a google search stuff passed off as 'deeply researched from multiple sources' rubbish! Rant over!) You save everything of interest and then have to edit it down, not wanting to discard anything!
So, usual advice. Just drop in and out when you have time to spare.
O.K. Let's visit one of the truly great books - The tournament book of Barmen 1905. ( I am the guy who came up with the term 'The Barmen Generation'!!)
I have posted on the Hauptturniers elsewhere. The were also two Master tournaments. Leussen was in the 'B' Tournament.
A tidied up version, via chessgames.com
As you can see. Leussen didn't have a great tournament, but Niemzowitsch had a worse one!
The young Niemzowitsch
got upset by the comments in the tournament book about his chess. One that comes to mind is something like ''whatever Herr Niemzowitsch is, there is one thing he is not - a positional player.''
So, here's the Leussen - Niemzowitsch ( that's how he wrote his name at the time, but he later changed that a little, as I recall. He was a student in Berlin and using the Germanic transliteration which is always the one in my head) game.
O.K. On the Barmen tournament, but not from it, I have thrown this in here for two reasons.
Firstly a great picture from the tournament book.
and the fact that it must hav contributed to Leussen getting an invitation to the Masters B rather than a Haptturnier. Plus a little tactic for you to find.
One more from Barmen. Julius Perlis
was in interesting story, and a good enough player to beat Alekhine.
Again, I have included this as a curiousity - one of the worst sealed moves ever!
O.K. A there are a couple of things mentioned before regarding Georg Olland.
In the magazine the picture is from in 1910, he disputed Leussen's position as the leading Dutch player, in a letter to the magazine. There he gives some match results, including 3 matches against Leussen, not the two given by other sources.
A game between the two.
Certainly by 1910 Olland had a point - in the match from which I gave the Blake game last time, Leussen was on board 3.
On top board for Holland there was Abram/Abraham Speijer. He is best known for his participation in the St. Petersburg 1909 tournament. A picture from that ( I have a much better version in my copy of the tournament book, but forgot to scan it! OOps!
His rivalry with Leussen went back a long time - before either had reached the top of Dutch chess.
Tid 1899.
From memory, Bleijkmans played at Barmen.
Back to 1909 - just doing stuff as it comes out of the folder here. A game against the fascinating Rudolf Loman - worthy of a blog of his own, which someone else may get to doing!
Where next? Lets give this one, from one of Leussen's hauptturnier apperances. His opponent, Eduard Dyckhoff is a legend in correspondence chess - go dig out his game against Keres, for example.
In the notes there you get a guy famous for that one game - Alexander Halprin. So I will throw in a picture of him as a bonus - more bonus pictures to come!
O.K. I mentioned Johannes Esser
before. He was a major figure in his non-chess life.
A picture to link him with what follows.
For me, Leussen's result at the Scheveningen 1905 tournament was the best result by a Dutch player before Euwe. ( lots of stuff on the dutchbase site if you want to go and look, including one of the Olland - Leussen matches)
Oldrich Duras is a player I really like! He won the Master title at Barmen - I did a blog many years ago on that - rather wonderful - Hauptturnier, where he shared first place with Rubinstein, ahead of Vidmar.
Did a Dutch player beat a Grandmaster in a serious tournament encounter prior to this game? I can't think of one, but there may well be an earlier one. Interesting question!
O.K. Some bonus material, just because it's in the folder and I didn't throw it in elsewhere.
A great historical picture via my friend JustChessandSports on x.com
Netherlands 1887. Benima, Sulzholz, Veraart, Jan Tresling, Olland, A. Van Foreest. Front Pinedo, Loman, Tinholt, Kothe and D. van Foreest.
Barmen 1905 had a big musical program, including The Seacadet, a chess march and a chess waltz. I can scan the musical scores of those if any of my musician friends want to try playing them out - for piano, iirc.
Thanks to anyone who stayed the course, with apologies for the inevitable typos and general lack of any kind of organised format. Cheers guys.
