The Latvian Team Of The 1930's. A Chess Goody Bag
Afternoon everyone. Back with more from The Encyclopedia Of Latvian Chess Players. A big bag of goodies to browse through and take your pick from.
In the 1930s Latvia was one of the better teams in the Chess Olympiads - you can look it all up on olimpbase!
My eye fell on this wonderful picture. Like most in The Encyclopedia it was new to me, and a valuable one in the historical sense.
Lets go from the left.
Feigins. Possibly best known as the loser of a beautiful game against Salo Flohr
That's one strange game!! Makes you doubt Szabo's sobriety- looks like drunken blitz!!
Petrovs. The most fascinating member of the team, and a terrible story. I will let you look into it for yourselves. A great talent who I first looked at when studying Keres. The man could play.
There is another picture online of him with his beautiful wife. It just breaks your heart and makes me, personally, very angry. But best to just stick to the chess.
A game for the textbooks, as I explain in the notes.
Sadly two players did not arrive in time for the official photographs of that tournament
Apsenieks (apologies for floating in and out of using the Latvian 's' at the end of the names - just how my head works, Petrovs is just that whatever the databases say!!)
Hazenfuss.
Just time to throw in bonus items regarding other players in the Latvian team of that time.
My dear friend @introuble2 did a magnificent article on the Latvian top board in the 1928 Olympiad - he was another player unjustly remembered as the loser of a game to one of the greats.
https://www.chess.com/blog/introuble2/hermanis-matisons-a-great-latvian-master
A nice picture - again totally new to me, with some names mentioned here, plus one of the early Latvian greats.
Ozols
was a fascinating figure who later moved to Australia and took up correspondence chess. As a former c.c. player I will give this game.
That was rather beautiful!! He is also part of a curious piece of chess Olympiad history. Two of the shortest decisive games in the history of that tournament came in matches between Latvia and Scotland!! Strange but true.
And this one. The round before, the Scottish player had spent 12 hours - according to Kazic's book on the Olympiads - battling with Simonson, and was exhausted. As with the previous game, no notes needed!
A nice picture to finish with. I hope that however much time you spent with this over, various little visits, you took pleasure from it. Our love of chess is a great gift. Take care everyone.
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