All sorts of chess trivia

Thank you!  Join in if you wish.

I'm not into trivia, which is comprised of unrelated (often exaggerated or fabricated) and disjointed "facts," but rather into story-telling that tries to give some insight.

Just a quick question about that game.  I noticed neither side castled.  Any idea if castling wasn't around yet or if the players just didn't think it was a good move?

My understanding is that castling was developed in the 1300s to the 1400s in Europe.  I know the rules were not standardized until centuries later.

Castling was a multiple move operation at one time.   Perhaps batgirl could explain it better.

In January and February, 1889, world champion Wilhelm Steinitz and Russian master Mikhail Tchigorin, played a title match.  It lasted for 17 games, with Steinitz winning 10 1/2 to 6 1/2.  Only the final game was a draw!

I would have liked to have been there.

Random chess trivia:

I read that once Benjamin Franklin played chess against a French diplomat. The diplomat put Franklin's king in check, but Franklin ignored the check and just moved an irrevelant piece. The diplomat was shocked and said to Franklin;

"Sir, can you not see that your king is in check?"

Franklin was reported to have replied something similar to:

"Oh, yes, I would save him if he was a good king. But our king is not a good king, unlike yours. You can take him if you like."

Cute :)

Further to post 73 : Steinitz played five World Championship Matches when he was Official World Champion in the period 1886-1894 :

He won four : 12½-7½  Zukertort, 1886; 10½-6½ Chigorin, 1889; 10½-8½ Gunsberg, 1890/91 and 12½-10½ Chigorin again, 1892.

He lost the fifth, 12-7 from Emanuel Lasker, 1894, the new World Champion; the "revenge" in 1896/97 was won by Lasker 12½-4½.

You would have liked to have been there ? 125 years ago ! Brrrr...

Tchigorin was the last of his kind, I think.  The Steinitz matches were really more than a battle between two grandmasters, but a battle between the older Romantic school (Tchigorin) and the new Positional style (Steinitz).

And the 1880s and 1890s were an amazing time in workd history.

Yes, a battle between school and style, but keep in mind their ages : in 1889 Chigorin was 39 years young and Steinitz 53 years old; in 1892 Chigorin 42 and Steinitz 56..., an "old" man in those days...

The period 1880-1900 reminds me (I am 80 now) of my Grandfather, born in 1869, who told me of all new things he saw : 1885 earliest motor car built; 1887 electric lamp; 1890 telephone London-Paris; 1894 motorcycle; 1895 motion pictures / film; 1896 1st modern Olympic Games.

He joined the Dutch Navy and was in the war with his ship near Atjeh / Aceh in 1888-1890, in The Dutch East Indies, one of the numerous wars in 1880-1900 all over the world.

This forum is about chess trivia, so let me mention chess tournaments as well in this 20 years period : 1895/96 St Petersburg Lasker; Wien 1882 Steinitz and Winawer; London 1883; Hastings 1895; Neurenberg 1896 Lasker; Budapest 1896 and London 1899 Lasker.

So you are right : an amazing time in world history !

John Wayne and chess.

Hastings 1895 was Pillsbury's great victory.  I wonder what impact he would have made on the game had he not contracted syphilis.

Thanks for the link to that write-up. :-)  I never knew Wayne was a vhess player.  I knew about Bogart, though.

Steinitz and Tschigorin had an interesting interaction.  As mentioned, they were from opposing schools.

Of their 24 Evans Gambits (a Romantic opening of the first order), an opening Morphy felt was "irretrievably lost for the first player," of which all but two were played after 1889,  Tschigorin won 13 and only lost 6.  5, of course were draws.

Their overall score was almost dead even:  Tschigorin 25, Steinitz 26. 8 draws.

http://www.chess.com/blog/batgirl/koltanowski-vs-bogart
http://www.chess.com/blog/batgirl/hollywood-chess

It was back in 1946.  Bogart had just lost a chess game, along with a $100 bet, to restauranteur, Mike Romanoff (whose real name was Hershel Geguzin and was from Lithuania, not Russia as he pretended ).  That same evening, Bogart called Romanoff for a revenge game also for $100.   20 moves later, Bogart won his $100 back thanks to Herman Steiner,  (once a US Champion, the hero of the USA-USSR Radio Match of 1945 and founder of the Hollywood Chess Club) who was coaching him throughout the game.

                                          Bogart playing Mike Romanoff
                           (in the background are Lauren Bacall and Bob Cootes)

Great picture that I had never seen, batgirl! A side note about Humphrey Bogart. Louise Brooks, who starred in G.W. Pabst's "Pandora's Box"(1929), said that the real Humphrey Bogart was probably best exemplified in the film "In a Lonely Place"(1950):

"In a film whose title perfectly defined Humphrey's own isolation among people, "In a Lonely Place" gave him a role that he could play with complexity because the film character's, the screenwriter's pride in his art, his selfishness, his drunkenness, his lack of energy stabbed with lightning strokes of violence, were shared equally by the real Bogart."

Well, trysts, you're the film expert.  I don't watch films.

Oh, and the photo is circa 1955.

Thank you

I recommend that you give that film a view, batgirl. If that was what he was like in real life(and from what I've read about him it seems closest to the truth), then you may be in for a little surprise