Next Club Meeting Monday Dec. 6, 2021 - Speed Tournament - and More Chess Facts

We had another fine evening of casual chess and conversation at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Brighton, MI.

We will be meeting again this coming Monday, December 6th, between 4pm and 10pm. 

Stop on by.

We are also having our Club Speed Chess Championship that night. Entry fee is FREE!

The tournament should start around 6:30ish. Every entrant will play 2 games against his opponent each round. Each player will have only five (5) minutes to complete the game. No delay or increment will be used. You will play one game with White and one game with Black. Two wins or a win and a draw, and you win the match.

Depending on the number of entries, we may complete the tournament that night, or we will finish it on December 20. I am guessing we will get it done in one night!  Even a 6:30pm start and 40 minutes for a round, we can get 4 rounds in. 

Feel free to stop in and try out your chess skills! And if you don't want to play in the speed tournament, there is usually other non-participants around to play casual chess with. Or, watch the action! Speed chess is very exciting!

Now for a few more chess facts:

The worst score ever recorded in a chess tournament took place in Monte Carlo in 1903. Colonel Moreau played in all twenty-six rounds and lost every game. (Sounds like your humble scribe on casual chess night)

Ernest Grunfeld, one of the greatest authority on the openings back in the early 1900's, always opened a game with White with 1. d4. (Bobby Fischer of course said 1. e4 is best for White)

Frank J. Marshall found what he thought was a winning line in the Ruy Lopez opening and saved it for ten years to use on a specific opponent. That opponent was Jose Capablanca, who Marshall played in New York in 1918, and lost the game.

Perhaps the most fanatical devotee of chess ever known was Daniel Harrwitz. He played at the Cafe de la Regence in Paris, morning, noon and night seven days a week. In addition, he had chess figures embroidered on his shirts and wore stick pins shaped like chess pieces. 

But perhaps, you know someone like this yourself.

Harrwitz was one of the very few players to beat Paul Morphy with the black pieces. He played a 12- game match against Morphy in Paris and won the first two games! But then lost the next five of six with a draw sprinkled in there. Down 5.5 to 2.5 Daniel quit the match siting health reasons.

We mentioned child prodigy and American GM Sammy Reshevsky in the last article. Before the Western Open in 1933, a reporter asked Sammy if he expected to win the tournament? Sammy replied, "There is no one here who can beat me." He was correct. No one did beat him, but he did not win the tournament either. Rueben Fine won the tournament, drawing Sammy and beating more of the other participants than Sammy did.

Speaking of Sammy and Rueben, here is another piece of chess lore. But we have to add into this tale the American chess Master and author Fred Reinfeld.

Reshevsky and Fine were grandmasters. Fred Reinfeld was a master, but never earned even an International Master title, let alone a GM title. But with Reshevsky being #1 and Fine being #5 in the United States, and Reinfeld ranked usually between #8 and #15 in the country, they seemed to meet each other quite often in big tournaments in the USA.

Now rankings at this level are usually even more accurate than ratings in the more normal ranges of let's say 1900 to 1000. There is much fluctuation and many upsets at that lower level. In the nosebleed section of the rankings, there is much less of that.

So Reshevshy had a predictable winning record against Fine. Sammy was too great a tactician for Rueben. That just makes sense.

And Fine had a dominating record against Reinfeld. Fine just crushed Reinfeld in the middle game or the endgame. Again, sort of expected.

However, the lower rated Reinfeld had a winning record against Sammy Reshevsky! How can this be??

Well, you might have heard it said that styles make fights, or classic battles in other sports. The puncher versus the counter-puncher, the strong offense against the strong defense, the attacking player versus the volley/return tennis player. 

Well Fred Reinfeld was a chess opening expert! He wrote books on the subject, from beginner to grandmaster level books. Sammy, as we told you in the last article, never bothered to learn openings that deeply. He played mostly by genius, tactical analysis and some chess intuition thrown in. 

Reinfeld was Sammy's perfect Achillies Heel. Sammy would get so bogged down in the opening against Fred, that Sammy would fall way behind on his clock. This time trouble caused him to error even worse. Other times he just fell into clever opening traps Fred knew and Sammy did not.

As we maintain on this blog, chess is the greatest game in the world. Period.

Next Club Meeting This Monday November 22, 2021 - And Some Chess Opinion

Another night of casual chess is on the slate for this coming Monday. So don’t be a turkey and miss out. And who wants to be a turkey this close to Thanksgiving? And add to that, the thrill of meeting your humble scribe in person! No autographs please. Well for an adult beverage, ok.

In addition, we have a chess player of much acclaim in the chess world - coming all the way from Beverly Hills! You don’t want to miss his visit! What is his claim to fame? Well, he claims to be a chess player. As the great Zen Master said, “We’ll see.”

LCCC had another fine night of casual chess on Nov. 8 with 14 players in attendance. We almost always have at least 10 players in attendance, guaranteeing a nice mix of opponents so you can get your chess on!

Not only that, our Club’s personal server, Sydney, will make sure your hunger and thirst are taken care of. She may be the best part of the entire visit to Buffalo Wild Wings.

Our LCCC Tournament Director, Ken T, has slated that the 2021 LCCC Speed Chess Championship will be held on December 6, 2021 and maybe December 20, 2021. The tourney is free to enter! The games will all be of 5 min with NO delay!

You will play two games against the same opponent. Two wins or a win and a draw gives you a victory. A split match is a draw for the result posted. We are figuring about a half hour to complete a round and maybe ten minutes for Ken to set up the new pairings and post them.

I believe a 6:30 to 7 pm start for the first round, depending on attendance and the number of entries. Late entries always welcome, even after the first round.

If the number of entries is large, we may go two nights of play. If we can get it done on the 6^th, we will do that instead. Three rounds @ 40 minutes is …..if my public school education doesn’t fail me….is two hours. That is easily done in one night. This is the most likely scenario.

Four rounds might be a go too, but we might let the leaders of the tournament decide if they want to play or wait two weeks.

Now for some chess history. Irving Chernev was a chess player, chess book writer and a chess historian. This 1933 article of his, is where this material was pulled from. Now the reason I post it here is because there are some suggestions of great games you can look up and play through at your leisure. Not to mention the list of great players from the past, a little history about them, or an opinion about them, that your humble scribe thinks are fascinating! My comments in brackets. Here we go:

 The perfect game is Reti-Kostics, Teplitz, 1922. (I could of swore it was my victory in the tournament of …oh, any one of them!)

The most important game, Pillsbury-Tarrasch, Hastings, 1895.  (ed. Note – I would like to know why?)

The greatest queen-ending player was Marcozy. (That happens almost never happens but good to know)

The most exhaustive…… and exhausting annotator is Tarkakower. The laziest, Lasker and Teichmann. (Ouch, and from a fellow writer? Me thinks he protest too much.)

The most artistic Rook endings are found in Rubinstein’s games. (Rubinstein was a great player!)

The most interesting matches were Alekhine – Bogoljubov, 1929, Tarrasch-Schlechter, 1911, and Capablanca-Euwe, 1931. (Agreed on two. Didn’t know about the middle one)

The most interesting combinative game was Alekhine-Cohn, Stockholm, 1912. (need to see it and run it thru a chess engine!)

The best tournament was Carlsbad, 1911. (Maybe, but that was before the 2nd Piatigorsky Cup, August 1966. What a tournament of chess greats that was!)

The three greatest books, “My Best Games of Chess” – Alekhine, and “My System” – Nimzovitch. (And Chernev left off one of his due to modesty. Uh, …….ok. But those are two great books!)

The coolest player under fire – Issac Kashdan. The hardest fighter – Lasker (which Lasker, he did not say, but I can guess)

The best annotators – Alekhine (agreed), Marco and Grunfeld (never saw their work).

The most unexpected move ever played was played in a game between Lewitzky-Marshall, Breslau, 1912. (uh, who made it and what move was it?)

The quietest finishing move was Black’s 25^th move played in the Samisch-Nimzovitch, Copenhagen, 1923.

The most brilliant move was move 36 in the game between Alekhine-Tartakower in Vienna, 1922.

The most brilliant player beyond a doubt is Alekhine. (Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen were not born yet)

The most over-rated player was Paul Morphy. (How would you like a punch in the mouth? Bobby Fischer calls Morphy the most under-rated chess player of all time, and he also said Morphy was farthest ahead of his contemporaries than any other player.... ever)

The greatest blindfold player is Alekhine. (At that time, yes, he was)

The greatest simul player was Capablanca. (correct, for that time)

The greatest natural player was Zukertort. He once one a tournament in 1883 by 4.5 points and his closest competitor was the current world champion Steinitz.

Ed. Closes - One could argue that American Sammy Reshevsky may have been the best natural player ever. This child prodigy chess player never bothered to learn or memorize opening theory at all. He played nearly every game by the seat of his pants, and was #2 in the world many times in his life. But he had a propensity to fall for deeper opening traps for just this reason, leaving him in positional and/or time trouble many, many times.

2021 LCCC Champion Crowned! - Next Meeting Nov 8, 2021 -And Some Chess Facts

 

The wily veteran and retired school teacher, Paul Mills (left) captured the club championship! Paul (4 - 0) played steady and never varied from his solid chess approach. Congratulations Paul!

Sam Thompson was a clear second (3.5).

Pete Bruder and Mike Nikitin finished tied for 3rd (3).

Thank you to all 15 players who participated.

We are meeting again this Monday at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Brighton MI at 4pm until 10pm. Please stop by for some fun casual chess.

Now for some fun chess facts:

> An English Master J.H. Blackburne was a player in international tournaments for over 50 years! (1862-1914).

> A. F. Mackenzie, although blind, composed some of the finest chess problems ever published.

> Judge James McConnell had the distinctive honor of having played chess games with both Paul Morphy and Jose Capablanca.

> Former USA Champion A. B. Hodges participated in every cable match between the USA and England and never lost a game.

> Alexander Alekhine played in a GM tournament in Bled, Slovenia in 1931 and did not lose a game for 26 full rounds. His margin of victory was 5.5 points over second place finisher Efim Bogoljubow, who was only 6 points ahead of the last place finisher.

> GM David Janowski lost a match to Frank Marshall. But confidence in his own play never waivered. A few months after the match, Janowski cabled Marshall and challenged him to another match and he would give Marshall knight odds.

> German Master Arnold Schottlander needed only a draw to win the Leipzig Tournament in 1888. His opponent, German Master Jacques Mieses offered him a draw during the game. Schottlander turned him down, then promptly lost the game and with that, 1st prize.