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.