Renewal

Source: Davar, Sept. 24th, 1937, p. 4

In the following note, a propos of the Palestinian championship, Marmorosh adds that on Sept 18th, the representatives of 'a few chess organization in the country' had convened to 'renew the national chess organization and to put it on a solid base'. These included the Jerusalem Lasker club; the Tel Aviv club; the clubs in the Sharon area; the 'new chess club in Haifa'; and the 'chess association of the clerks' club in Jerusalem'. The 'founding meeting' was scheduled for 25/9/1937 in the Menorah club.

While this federation's activity, like chess activity in Mandatory Palestine in general, became (almost) moribund due to the war, it shows us a good 'snapshot' of the growth in interest in chess all over the country since the early 30s, as interest was raised for various reasons, such as visits by Rubinstein, Flohr, and Mieses, the sending of a team to the Olympiad in Warsaw in 1935, etc., as we have seen previously on this blog.

Nice Combination by Marmorosh

Source: Davar, Sept. 10th, 1937, p. 3

On Sept. 5th, (p. 6), Marmorosh reported in Davar he will give a simultaneous display at the chess club in 4 Allenby St., Tel Aviv, on the 7th. Three days later, he reported the result (+27 -3 =4) in his column, as well as the following position. Apparently, Marmorosh, like some other masters, was willing occasionally to play black in such displays.

The game continued (Marmorosh's annotations):

1. ... Rf3! 2. Re1 (of course 2. gxf3 Nxf3+ - A. P.) Qg3+ 3. Kg1 Rf2!! 4. Qxf2 Nf3+ 5. Qxf3 exf3 6. Rc1 f2+ 7. Kh1 Bf3! 0-1

A bit generous on the exclamation points, perhaps, but a nice finishing-off combination nonetheless; and thanks to the commentator below for pointing out my original typo (writing the impossible 2. Re3 instead of 2. Re1).

Chess on the Radio -- in 1937?

Source: Davar, Sept. 10th, 1937, p. 3

In the above selection from Marmorosh's chess column, it is noted that the results of the 1937 Palestine championship will be 'be announced that very night on the radio [emphasis in the original - A. P.] and published the next day in the press'.

Does anybody know if the tournament's results really were broadcast over the radio? Checking the radio schedule in Davar from the relevant period notes that there were various programs which might have broadcast this information -- e.g., the evening news or the sports broadcasts -- but nothing more specific was noted.

But, if so, it would (probably) be the very first radio broadcast about chess in Israel or Mandatory Palestine, unless the previous visits of foreign masters (Rubinstein, Flohr, or Mieses) happened to be mentioned in the radio news at the time. 

Unusual Prizes

Source: Davar, Sept. 5th, 1937, p. 5.

Moshe Roytman, our frequent correspondent, found the following "coming attraction" notice for a simultaneous exhibition by the 'well known Viennese master Siegmund Beutum' (link to Wikipedia; see also 'Beutum' in this blog) against 30 opponents in Nahariya, at the Paltov Coffee House -- a local "institution" at the time (photo credit: Andreas Meyer, an early resident of Nahariya who recorded much of its history).

The tournament was sponsored by the Haifa branch of the Dubek cigarette factory, and promised prizes 'from the Dubek factory's products' -- presumably, cigarettes -- to the winners. Are there other cases where cigarettes were offered as prizes in tournaments?

It should be added that less than a month later, while reporting on the 1937 Palestinian championship, Marmorosh (Davar, Oct. 1st, 1937, p. 4) notes that 'the Dubek company made sure there was an ample supply of its product' , which implies they provided the contestants with cigarettes gratis as a sponsorship.

P.S.

It could be that the simultaneous display didn't take place, as there is no report on it in the next days in Davar -- including in Marmorosh's chess column of the Sept. 10th issue (p. 3) in the same month.

Chess and S-_-X

Credit: Sodahead.com

I noticed a "spike" of interest in my blog lately. I asked some people why and it turns out I have been noticed by a certain well-known chess blogger and GM who had linked to my post about chess in music.

I thank the man for the attention, but I cannot link "back" there since his chess blog, to my great surprise, is full of nude pictures! (No, not those chess players...). Why would someone feel the need to "spice up" a chess blog, of all web sites, with nude pictures? What is the motivation?

This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only well-known chess site that does anything like this. Occasionally some web sites like "chess base" may "spice up" things a bit by, for example, posting photographs of chess players participating in a tournament (especially attractive female ones) in "glamour shots", but certainly will not post nudity or sex.

Let me emphasize that it is certainly not the case that the author of the blog is using chess as an excuse to run a "porn" blog. First of all he is a GM, and, second, the chess context of the blog is certainly the main point of his blog. The "nudies" are an afterthought. For that matter, he doesn't seem to be making some sort of political point against censorship laws, either.

It seems that his motivation is different -- the same as that of John Speelman or the late Larry Evans, as Edward Winter noted in a review of one of Speelman's books (C. N. 332; scroll down from the top of the web page to find it). Winter writes that some authors are so fearful of making chess seem dull, that they must "spice things up": in Speelman's case with over-the-top prose ('the game looks like a blue-print for a cosmic junkyard!', for example), here with nude pictures.

Matters of taste aside, does this really work? I doubt it. I find it unlikely that anybody who is looking for chess on the Internet would be more likely to visit a chess blog because it has nude pictures. Like the overheated prose in certain chess books, it seems to me that it's more likely to achieve the opposite of the intended effect. Besides, unlike heated prose, nude pictures make the blog inappropriate for children, who are a major target audience for chess, and are distasteful for many men and (especially) women.

Finally, a point of fairness: shouldn't such a blog include a warning that it is inappropriate for children?

Lasker Club Symbol

Credit: Davar, Nov. 4th, 1941

Above is the logo, taken from an advertisement announcing the movement of the club to a new address, of the Emanuel Lasker Chess Club in Tel Aviv. It should not be confused with the club of the same name that operated in Jerusalem. The banner in the middle of the board says קלוב שחמטי -- chess club -- while the motto on the bottom says  עמנואל לאסקר -- Emanuel Lasker. On the right the writing says, 'THE CHESS CLUB "Emanuel Lasker"'.

 P.S. In Hebrew, unlike in English, the noun tends to come first and the adjective or possessive later, e.g., 'house red' (bayit adom) or 'club Lasker' (moadon Lasker) instead of 'red house' or 'Lasker's club'. Also, surprisingly, the official logo of the club had not often been seen in print.

Note 21/4/2015: Typing Error Corrected.

Interregnum

G. K. Chesterton, from wikipedia.

"I have nothing to write except an apology for not writing..."  -- G. K. Chesterton, Government and the Rights of Man.

Having been more or less criminally negligent (for personal reasons) in updating this blog, it is interesting to note that I have partners in crime. In the 1940s Mandatory Palestine, there also was a long interregnum where there was little, if any, chess content published. When it came to magazines, apart from a few false starts and some books, there had been no national magazine from the 1930s (Ha'Sachmat, 1935/6, 2 issues) to the 1950s (64 Mishbatzot, 1956/7, 13 issues) : in both cases, started and edited by Moshe Czerniak.

Newspapers had the same problem. In the 1930s, as we noticed, it was Moshe Marmorosh who was the #1 reporter, producing weekly, or at least bi-weekly, columns for the two most important newspapers in the country, Ha'aretz and Davar. Yet his literary contributions to both papers had tapered off in the early 40s; the latest column edited by Marmorosh I could find in Davar was from June 8th, 1940, and in Haaretz from July 25th, 1941, and the column in Ha'aretz was only published very occasionally for about a year before that.

While there was occasional chess content in both papers later on, especially reports on tournaments' results and the occasional game, a regular column was only re-established in Davar on Nov. 22th, 1946 (i.e., after the war), as part of their sports page in the new weekly supplement, Davar Ha'Sahvua ('Davar this Week', published on Fridays). It was edited (as is explicitly first stated on Feb 7th, 1947, column) by Shaul Hon. An even longer interregnum -- more than a decade! -- occurred in Ha'aretz, where the new column, edited by Czerniak, appeared on June 5th, 1953. Here, it was not only that (two) wars had to end -- WWII and Israel's war of independence -- but also Czerniak had to return to Israel from South America, where he had been living since the 1939 Olympiad. He did so in the early 50s.

More on Erez Biton

Picture Credit: Wikipedia

As we noticed in the previous post, Erez Biton was mentioned as a blind player in his youth. He had just won the the Israel Prize for Literature -- not for his chess, but for his poetry. He is the first Mizrahi (Levant) Jew to win the prize.

Biton, of Moroccan descent (though born in Algeria), emigrated to Israel at age 6 in 1948. He was blinded and lost his right arm in an accident at age 11 -- which didn't stop him from becoming (as Wikipedia [link in Hebrew] notes, as well as the above link about the Israel Prize) a strong chess player, an important poet, and -- in his "day job" -- a social worker and rehabilitative psychologist. His poetry concentrates on the struggles of the Levant Jews in Israel.

Our frequent correspondent, Moshe Roytman, gave us a plethora of links (in Hebrew) from the Israeli press about Biton's chess exploits. For example, Davar notes that he was selected as a member of the committee of the world organization of chess for the blind (18/4/1968 p. 10), took second place in the Israeli championship for the blind (Jan. 8th 1971, p. 7), etc., as well as supplying us with some of his games. Chessbase and similar databases have more games, and Olimpbase has his complete olympiad record.

More on Aizikowitz: Composer, Player, Chess Promoter

Credit: Davar, 24/1/75, p. 24

Moshe Roytman notes that the correct pronunciation of the name of the person who was responsible for chess for the blind is probably Jacob Aizikowitz (יעקב אייזיקוביץ) and not "Itzkowitz" as I called him in the previous post (now changed).

This is made clear, for example, by the way his name is spelled in Hebrew article above, provided by Roytman, about how Erez Biton won a tournament for the blind in Aizikowitz's memory, as well as by the way his name is spelled in English in Eliyahu Fasher's Ha'Problemai Hai'sraeli: Yesodot Ha'Compositya Ha'Sachmatait [The Israeli Problemist: The Base of Chess Composition]. 

In Roytman's 1983's edition (as he points out to me), as well as in my 1964 one (Tel Aviv: Mofet Press, 1964), his name is spelled Aizikowitz in English (p. 20), and appears with a photo of him -- clearly the same one as in the newspaper given in the previous before, only of better quality:

In the 1983 edition, there is information about his dates -- b. 1898, Poland, d. 1973, Israel. The book (in both editions) published one two-mover by him (p. 82 of the 1964 edition):

The 1964 edition also has a short capsule biography (p. 65): 'Born in Poland in 1898, emigrated to Palestine in 1927. A clerk in the Haifa municipality. Began to be interested in chess in 1914 and in problems in 1955, especially two-movers. Recently [written in 1964 -- A. P.] became interested in promoting chess among the blind'. Presumably the later edition includes his death date. 

Shachmat, vol. 11 no. 7-8 (131), (unfortunately my copy doesn't have the exact page number), has an English-language obituary of him -- incidentally, on the same page as a shorter (Hebrew-language) "double" obituary for Leonid Shtein and Folke Rogard (click on image to enlarge). It too uses the same photograph of him:

Solution to problem (from the same book, p. 152 of the 1964 edition): 1. Qf8! (block).