Palestine Tournaments in Chess Review, 1947

 

Source: Chess Review, March 1947, p. 9

In Chess Review, 1947, there is a short - but detailed - report on three tournaments in Palestine. One was the Tel Aviv championship (held, we add, in the "Lasker" chess club), mentioning in particular - with slightly variant spellings - A. Labounsky, Mandelbaum, Keniazer and Porat [Foerder]. It also mentions the "Jewish settlements" tournament - presumably the one of the communal settlements - and the upcoming 1947 championship, which eventually did not take place (the next championship, of the new state of Israel, took place in 1951) but mentions Hon, Aloni, and Rabinovich-Barav, as well. 

As Others See Us

 

Sofonisba Anguissola, Portrait of the artist's sisters playing chess, 1555. Source: wikipedia.

It is annoying that posts that mention chess to the general public often have inaccurate information. One example is the following article, "Game On," by Paul Dickens, from The New Criterion. It notes Anguissola's work and is a book review of Frank Lantz's new book, The Beauty of Games. It is a high-brow, erudite review, but it starts with...

The story goes that in 1923 Marcel Duchamp finally abandoned his “hilarious picture” of psychosexually contorted glass and wire, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, to spend more time playing chess. He was certainly obsessed with the austere beauty of the game, famously pronouncing that “while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” For most of us, however, if we are minded to consider the aesthetic value of games at all, it is usually only in a derivative sense. We can appreciate the Art Deco elegance of Duchamp’s own custom-made chess set, for instance, without sharing his passion for obscure variations on opening d4.

"The Story goes." "Famously pronouncing." "Obscure variations on opening d4." Why is it that books or articles that mention chess are so often lacking in accuracy and sources? 

On Edward Lasker, by Mona Karff

 

Source: Chess Life and Review, January 1976, p. 7

Biographical articles about chess players by other players are, of course, very common, but Herbert Halsegger notes an interesting example. Not only are both the subject and author Jewish - which is hardly surprising in chess! - but the author of the article about Edward Lasker is a female master, namely the Jewish Mona Karff. We should note that as we mentioned elsewhere, Edward Lasker had, in the same year, visited the chess olympiad in Haifa, 1976. 

Problemists in Palestine

 

Source: Ha'aretz, 8 October 1939, p. 5

A frequent correspondent notes that a long and detailed chess column appeared in Ha'aretz in October 1939. The most historically interesting part is a long report about the "Lasker" Chess Club in Tel Aviv. In particular (above) it notes that the "problemists' committee" met and decided to create a "composers' club" which will "meet every Thursday at 5 PM" at the chess club. The secretary chosen was Felix Zeidman (ph. spelling).