Tuesday, December 24, 2024

LCCC 2024 Club Champion Decided - See You on Jan. 6! - And an Optimist to the Max Revealed!

 


The Livingston County Chess Club meets every Monday night between 

4pm and 10pm 

at the Buffalo Wild Wings in the Green Oak Mall in Brighton, MI. 

Stop in for some friendly chess, good food and 'refreshments'. 

Everyone of all ages and playing strength are welcome to attend. And free lessons to all beginners!

LCCC will not be officially meeting for the next two weeks. The reason is the holidays, Lions playing on Monday night and it is college football bowl season. Many people will be using our location as a sports bar instead of a chess club! The nerve!

The 2024 Club Championship concluded this week! The winner is Pete B with a 3 – 0 score! Congratulations to Pete. He had a tough final match with the second-place finisher Charlie S.

And thank you to all the competitors!

LCCC will not officially meet for the next two weeks. But if you show, maybe someone will be there. See you all on January 6th, 2025. Happy New Year!

Now back to my little series on great chess players of the past you may never have heard of:

Efim D. Bogoljubow

One way of classifying chess players is by their temperament – the optimist and the pessimist. 

The pessimist views the outcome of each game as always in doubt and filled with trepidation. 

The optimist sees their attacks as always succeeding and their victory only a matter of when the opponent will resign.

Optimism reigned supreme with E. D. Bogolyubov. He was born on April 1, 1889 and was a contemporary of Alekhine and Capablanca.

He went thorough out life with the unshakable conviction that he was the best player in the world! He never let his defeats at the hands of the two players previously mentioned shake his trust in his abilities.

Take for instance, the organizers sent an invitation to Bogolyubov to play in the 1927 New York International Tournament against the likes of Alekhine, Capablanca, Nimzowitsch, Vidmar, Spielmann and Marshall.

Bogolyubov refused and sent this response: “Instead of this mediocre tournament, I propose a match between myself and Capablanca.”

At the time, his high opinion of himself may have been justified. He had just won the prestigious Moscow International Tournament in 1925 by 1.5 points over Lasker and 2 points over Capablanca. 

And the tournament before that, he won a tournament in Breslau with 9.5 points over Nimzowitsch with 7.5 and Rubinstein and Reti with 7 points.

Bogolyubov eventually did get his world championship matches in 1929 and 1934, and both were against the current title holder, Alexander Alekhine, and he lost both by the scores of 15.5 – 9.5 and 15.5 – 10.5 respectively.

It was obvious to everyone that “Bogo” was just not quite Alekhine’s level, but that never swayed Bogo’s belief that he was the best player in the world. Even as late as 1951 when the upcoming Botvinnik – Bronstein Championship match was about to take place, Bogo would tell everyone who would listen that he should rightfully play the winner of that match to really decide the crown!

One would think that this personal but honest optimism would put the other players off. But Bogo’s personality and his enjoyment of life made his boasts endearing to the other players. They never took it as an insult to their abilities, but rather just looked at it as “Bogo being Bogo.”

In the late 1930’s and early 1940’s when it was obvious he would never again be one of the top tournament finishers, Efim would often blame mediocre results on the weather, the food, the lodging the tournament playing conditions or his health. 

Nimzowitsch was quoted as saying, “Poor Bogo has never lost a game in good health.”

Efim died in his sleep in 1952 at the age of 63.


1 comment:

  1. The correct spelling was with a "j" but the software liked the "y". I got tired of correcting the software. Or maybe the software knows something I don't. Either way, an interesting and great chess player from the past!

    ReplyDelete