Some Pictures

Alekhine (Picture 19) looks like "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn..." (Very Clark Gable-ish). Picture 14 on the other hand looks like a western shootout about to go down. Nice pictures...

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_alphabet Russian alphabet isn't hard to figure out, as many of the letters are the same as we use. The problem is though that some of them looks like another letter we use.

Therefore personal names are easily read in russian books. Reading words in general are as easy to do but much more difficult to understand. Normally also russian names include the person's fathers first name as middlename.

Boris Vasiljevitsj Spasskij - Борис Васильевич Спасский - suggests his fathers first name was Vasiljev. (Vasiljev-son)

Thanks for sharing those pictures batgirl.

 I think it's (Left-Right) Tarrasch, Teichmann, Schlechter ... might be wrong about Tarrasch, but I think it's him ...

Awesome, awesome post by the way!  Love looking at these old pictures of the chess masters!  And I've never seen a lot of these pics before!  I especially like #11 Karpov & Kasparov ... I thought I'd seen all the pictures of those two together, but I hadn't seen that one before!  Thanks!

I like your photos. I have access to a dozen Russian books. I will check them out for more photos. I never looked at them since I can't read Russian. I recall that Fischer carried around Russian printed games and studied them as a young man.

Thanks for posting them! Here is two I have.

Okay. I give up. Who is that?

I guess it is this Bobby Fischer simul

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01BVwkZow3Q

And here is a Samuel Reshevsky simul (aged 8)

Okay. I give up. Who is that?

Sorry. I thought it would be obvious. A: Bobby Fischer, 1953.

I'm really hoping for some expert translations of the text.  I recognize most of the players but the text is mystifying.  For instance, I know which person is Alexander Alekhine in Picture 18, but the rest of the meaning of the caption is elusive.  Or who are all those children around Euwe in Picture 13?

batgirl, have you tried Google translate it? Also, there is an app for Russian translation. I studied Russian, but that would not be expert translation...

Like the Western group is from Carlsbad, with Teichman and Chernev...

Well, Google translation only works with text, not images.  In my attempts to muddle through it, I found that the cyrillc symbols are confusing - some don't seem to exist in the charts I'm using, some look like one thing but turn out to be something else. Then, of course, there's the issue of idioms and such.

In the photo from Carlsbad 1911 Richard V is in the center with Carl Schlecter on the right. I can't place the portly man with the umbrella on the left. I though perhaps Mieses, but he really don't look like him. He may be an organizer or something. Below is a photo from that tournament for reference:

Well, if no Russian speaker speaks up I can get my friend translate them all.

Thanks.  Maybe some linguist will show up and shed some light.

In the meantime, lets look at some more pictures.

Picture 21:

Here are some of the players in the pictures above:

#2 is Richard Reti
#3 is Botvinnik and Viacheslav Ragozin.
#4 is Ragozin and Keres
#6 is Rashid Nezhmetdinov
#7 is the future Latvian champion, Aivars Gipslis, with some kid named Mikhail Tal (who became the Latvian champion that year -1953)
#8  Tal and Spassky
#9 is Ilya Rabinovich, Botvinnik, Grigory Goldberg, and Taiminov
#10 is Botvinnik
#12 shows Paul Keres on left, playing Paul Schmidt.
#16  shows Smyslov and his father
#17 shows Keres vs Smyslov
#20 is Tal of course
#21 is Alekhine

AWESOME GREAT JOB batgirl !!

Picture 22:

On the left in picture 14 is Viktor Tietz I think

Thanks!  I'm pretty sure you're right. He was indeed one of the organizers of Carlsbad 1911.