Ross' Caricatures

Source: Chess Review, March 1965, p. 81

We have noted in this blog Ross' caricature of Itzchak Aloni. Now, Mr. Herbert Halsegger notifies us that the caricature, together with those of many other masters - see list in the bottom of the post under "תוויות" (subjects) - are found in a Chess Review article of the 1964 olympiad, March 1965, pp. 78-81. Two are given above; the rest can be found in the article itself. In particular, there are caricatures of the entire USSR team. 

P.S.

Trying to find more information about Ross, I googled in Hebrew "רוס מאייר" - "Ross illustrator." As it happens, this is the way you spell in Hebrew the independent (if that is quite the word) film maker Russ Meyer, which google gave me a lot of, how shall we say, educational information about (link goes to Wikipedia's biography of him). 

Chess in Israel, 1960

 

A frequent correspondent points out to us the following note about the "Lasker" (top) and "Reti" (bottom) tournaments in winter 1960 (the source is Ha'boker, 30 March 1960, p. 3.) The interesting point is that in Lasker's "training tournament," the leader is Stepak, then a soldier, who just drew Pilshchik, another young player. Another soldier, Bernstein, is also mentioned. 

On the other hand, Reti's "winter tournament" is still old guard: the winners were Wolfinger and Gruengard, both of whom were already active in the 1940s and earlier. 

A Snapshot

Source: La'Merhav Feb. 12, 1960, page 8 

A frequent correspondent notifies us of the interesting "snapshot" of the Israeli first league in 1960. We see the "old guard" in Jerusalem's Rubinstein club: Czerniak, Dobkin, Mohilever and others. We see a "mixture" in Tel Aviv's Lasker club: Aloni and Oren, but also the young Domnitz. The IDF's and the students' teams naturally feature young players: Kraidman, Guti, Stepak, and others. Tel Aviv's Reti has the "old timers" Smiltiner and Barav but also the young Persitz in the first board. 

Of particular interest is the Bat Yam club, which has Gereben in the first board, but the article (by La'Merhav's chess columnist, Fasher) notes that he already left the country -- and that Bat Yam also lost Ya'akov Mashian, the Iranian-Jewish master, 'who also left the country'.

Mashian returned to Israel in the mid-70s (at least according to Wikipedia), and -- incidentally -- played with Stepak a 193-move game in the Israeli championship semifinals (Stepak won, 1:0). This game, according to Tim Krabbe, was the longest recorded game ever played for seven years (1980-1987), and is still the longest game in time -- 24.5 hours -- 'a record it will forever hold'.

As for Gereben, he had emigrated to Israel in 1959 and played in the 1959 Israeli championship (coming in second), but left the country soon afterwards, as Fasher already notes. Ha'Tzophe of Oct. 9th, 1959, p. 4, notes our correspondent, says the 'Erno Gereben (Grünfeld)' had come to the country shortly before the championship began. Can any reader explain why 'Grünfeld'?

Edited to add: a frequent correspondent noted that the English-language Wikipedia entry for Gereben has his birth name as "Ernest [or Ernst] Grünfeld' and adds:

This name change, with other survival skills, probably helped him survive the holocaust. It was printed in the Israeli press that during one of the Olympiads, a Hungarian player, in a worse position, whispered to the Israeli player (in Yiddish) 'I am a Jew', and the game was drawn. 

It turned out to be Gereben. Based on the details given by our correspondent, an Olimpbase and Chessbase search reveals the game is probably Gereben - Kniazer, Amsterdam 1954, ending in a draw in the following position:

Chess Posters

Source: The NLI

In Israel, it was common until the 1970s (at least) to advertise chess tournaments on posters which were posted on official notice boards in cities. Here is one for the 1969 (15th) Tel Aviv Championship, officially, the Abraham Labounsky memorial tournament. It includes both the "old guard" -- Czerniak, Aloni, Blass, Smiltiner -- and the "new blood", such as Bobis, Stepak, and 'ten talented youths'.

Stahlberg - Blumenfeld, 0-1

In 1964, a tournament in Netanya took place with Gideon Stahlberg, Miroslav Filip, and others, with the young Yair Kraidman winning (7.5 / 11), ahead of Yidael Stepak and Filip (7), Stahlberg and Guti (6.5), etc. This was one of Kraidman's first significant victories.

Surprisingly the tournament does not appear in the "usual" sources (i.e., Chessbase's databases, chessgames.com, etc.) Davar reported on the tournament, by its chess column editor, G. Palai. The game Stalhberg - Rudy Blumenfeld reached this position:

Source: Davar, 25/6/1964, p. 9 (originally printed w/rook on f8, not e8)

And continued (Palai's annotations):

21... Qh4 practically the winning move, threatening not only g4 but mainly Be5. White must exchange queens and lose two pawns. 22. Qg3 QxQ+ 23. hxQ Rxe4 threatening BxN+ winning the bishop. 24. b3 Bxg4 25. Rbe1 RxR 26. RxR Bf3! Not content with a two pawn advantage, Black weaves a mating net. 27. Kf1 Kg7 White resigns (0-1) due to the unstoppable R-h8-h2 etc. One of the shortest and most decisive games in the tournament.

Unfortunately the score up to this point is corrupted. As printed, it is the impossible:

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. Be2 c5 6. d5 Qa5 7. Qd2 a6 8. f3 e6 9. g4 exd5 10. cxd5 Re8 11. Nh3 h5 12. Nf2 hxg3 13. fxg4 b5 14. 0-0 b4 15. BxN BxB 16. Nd1 Qd8 17. Ne3 Nd7 18. Nc4 Ne5 19. Rab1 NxN 20. BxN Bd4 21. Qf4.

Can anybody reconstruct the actual game -- or find more games? (I do not currently have at hand Shachmat from 1964, for example, which would be the obvious place to check).

Edited 25/8/2015: Amatzia Avni informs us that, as suspected, the games (or at least most of them) were in fact printed in Shachmat in 1964. 

Edited 30/8/2015: Moshe Roytman informs us that more information is found, for example, in Shlomo Kandelshein's book about Aloni. 

An International National Championship

Jews came to Israel, or Palestine, from many countries. In the 1961/62 Israeli chess championship the result was that the players were, in effect, an international team: Jewish emigrants from all over the world, as well as native-born Israelis.

This could be seen in the different languages used to record the moves, according to Eliahu Shahaf's (ed.) book, Alifut Israel be'Shachmat 5722 [Israeli Chess Championship 1961/62] (Tel Aviv: "Mofet" press, 1962), p. 90:

Rudy Blumenfeld - English
Amiel Harel - Hebrew
Zadok Domnitz - Descriptive English
William Potasman - German
Moshe Czerniak - Spanish
Itzchak Aloni - Hebrew
Raffi Ruppin - Hebrew
Zelig Chessakov - Russian
Aveshalon Yosha - Hebrew and Latin [sic]
Yedael Stepak - Hebrew
Israel Gat - Hebrew
Yuval Ron - French
Ya'akov Bernstein - Hebrew
Amir Helman - Hebrew
Yosef Porat - German.

That's from six to eight different languages, depending on what exactly was meant by 'Latin', and whether to count 'descriptive English' notation as a separate "chess language" than 'English' (here meaning algebraic English notation).