Szymon Winawer. Some Games and a Puzzling Picture.
Some of you may have noticed that I have been posting pictures of late. Sorting through various folders I came across a particular gem that I had been saving in case I needed it. Having a closer look at it I noticed something rather puzzling, and so this article came to mind.
I will get back to it as I go along.
Szymon Winawer. Fascinating player and one that you will have heard of for a change. I could make this article three times as long and still be enjoying myself!!
However, it will be far too long as it is, so I would suggest that you have a look at some stuff, and then come back another time for the rest.
Very much an amateur he held his own at the top level for 30 years and more, well into his 60s.
Not being a great student of the openings he played all sorts of off-beat stuff in the context of the time. The Pirc, Caro Kann, Centre Game, Bb5 in the Sicilian, 2.Nc3 and 3.Qf3 against the French Defence, the Winawer Counter Gambit and so on and so on.
In the middle game he was very dangerous tactically, and could maneuver anybody off the board.
His great strength was - unusually for the time - in the endgame.
Put all that together and you get a lot of fascinating chess!!
His debut was a bit of a shock to the chess world. Basically an unknown, he entered the Paris Tournament of 1867 - he was living there at the time - and came in second!! He was already 29 years old at the time, which is a bit late to be making your debut.
At first sight many games from the tournament make a strange impression - the players look really bad at times! Inexplicably so, and you would think that none of them could actually play and wonder how they got their reputations. All sorts of risky ideas, and games 'thrown away' for no apparent reason.
However, the bizarre rules of the tournament were that draws counted as 0 for either player and were not replayed.
The experiment was never repeated.
He scored a win against the tournament winner, which is where the picture comes in.
O.K. The above picture is cut from this beautiful one from 'Le Monde Illustre', March 1874. It is of chess players at the 'Cafe De La Regence', and is undoubtably based on players who were there during the 1867 tournament.
The picture has a key at the bottom, which is a big help, but also posed me a problem!! I could name on sight four of the figures - De Riviere, Journoud , Kolisch and Winawer. However when you look at the key there is a surprise!!
The figure top right is given as 'Winaver' - undoubtedly Winawer. However, it doesn't look like him!!
The figure bottom left, has Winawer's characteristic hat and Winawer, in all other pictures I have seen, had a full beard. My guess is that the two names have somehow been transposed in the key, but I may be wrong!! Guess we will never know.
In 1875 Winawer was over in Russia, and played with Schiffers and Chigorin - indeed it was Winawer ( one of Chigorin's very first and very last top class opponents ) who secured his place in an international event for the first time.
I have no idea if the following was a competitive game or not - it was published by the loser. There was a tournament won by Winawer, that included Ascharin.
https://www.chess.com/article/view/ascharin-and-other-things
The next game is one of the first Winawer games that I saw. The two finished equal first, with Zukertort eventually winning the play off. An incredible, original, and rather beautiful game!
His opponent in the next game was a fascinating figure. You can find out about him - with some great photographs - here :-
https://www.schachbund.de/news/fritz-riemann.html
In the same tournament we find a game that could have been played yesterday!
Good time for a picture!! Some figures from Nuremburg 1883, I have used the version found in the chessarch article on the event
It contains a nice little story.
If we may believe Leopold Hoffer, the editor of The Chess Monthly, the winner never intended to take part in the Nuremberg tournament:10
The latter [Winawer] had no intention to take part in the Tournament. On a journey from
In that year Winawer played one of his most published games.
It was against this man.
Winawer played some fascinating chess at the big Nuremberg Tournament of 1896 ( and also at Budapest in the same year ) Three of those games. The first is quite well known.
The next two seem to have had Tarrasch chuckling away as he annotated them. Firstly one for my friend Kamalakanta.
For reasons best known to himself, Showalter played 1.d4 against Winawer. His opponent sets out to confuse him from the off. The result is an unusual game, to say the least. I have to point out the delicacy of Winawer's endgame play though.
The next year at Berlin, Winawer was having a nightmare tournament - Blackburne - sensing weakness - chanced his arm a little.
And finally the bit of fun that I like to include in these posts. It was an odds game against someone who later became a fine player, and an interesting story in his own right.
Just replied to a question in the comments. Thought it might be worth while adding it to the main body of the article.
If you have enjoyed this, and fancy seeing some more of Winawer's unique brand of chess, let me know in the comments. Take care everyone, and thanks for joining me.
