Sunday, June 30, 2024
Persitz Making an Impression
Aloni Making an Impression
Saturday, June 29, 2024
Baron, Banker, Chess Master - and Grandson of a Rabbi
"The Flower of Youth"
Mosheh Oved
Samuel Schweber
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
"What Time's the Next Swan?"
Chess and Sex
The British Foreign Office. Credit: Wikipedia.
In foreign office document FO 371/168255 from 5 June 1963, sent from the Havana embassy, Sir Herbert Marchant, then the British ambassador in Cuba, sent his superiors in the foreign office a review of the state of culture in Cuba after the revolution. He noted that "Havana has very few book-shops" but nevertheless there is a "plentiful supply of paper-back text books on Chess and Sex, both popular with Cubans."
The popularity of chess is understandable, due to Capablanca, of course, but why on earth would the other activity be popular in Cuba?
Wednesday, June 12, 2024
Dobkin vs. Czerniak in the Foreign Press
Mr. Halsegger, in his deep dive through old American chess magazines, also notes the following rare (for the time) report of an Israeli game - from the Israeli championship of 1956 - in the foreign press. The game Dobkin - Czerniak (0:1).
Bobby and Friends
Chess Booms
Our frequent correspondent Herbert Halsegger notes an article from a Jewish magazine for politics and culture about the chess boom in Israel in 2012 when Boris Gelfand played for the world championship with Viswanathan Anand.
This made us think about previous chess "booms." The recent one due to The Queen's Gambit is well known (and still ongoing) and so was the Fischer boom in the USA after Fischer won the world championship in 1972.
Are there any other examples of such "booms" in history? Did chess, for example, become noticeably more popular after the first international chess tournament, London, 1851?