Von Weisel and the "Graf Zeppelin"

 

Source: Neue Freie Presse, 26 March 1929

We have occasionally mentioned von Weisl in this blog. Mr. Herbert Halsegger notified us of the particular issue of the Neue Freie Presse in which he reported on the trip on many pages, with the above being the headline of the entire paper that day. 

In particular, Mr. Halsegger notes that Abul Fath (or Abu al-Fath, in the English spelling), an Egyptian journalist who was also on the flight, played in the tournament organized on the Zeppelin which was organized by Badt and won it, as the Weiner Schach-Zeitung reported (vol. 7 no. 7 [April 1929], p. 107). 

This seems to conflict with von Weisel's report in the Neue Freie Presse that the tournament ended with the victory of Dr. von Guerard, in particular after defeating "the members of the press" - i.e., von Weisl and al-Fath. 

Acoustics and Sportsmanship

Source: Shachmat, No. 3 vol. 3 (October 1964), p. 31.

The above is part of the reports by Eliahu Shahaf on the Tel Aviv Championship of 1964, given here without further comment.

Crowning or Reincarnation?

Source: Shachmat, vol. 2 nos. 11-12 (June-July 1964), p. 29.

We have often noted in this blog the issue the matter of chess terms in Hebrew (see. e.g., "chess terms" or Shaul Hon's obituary.) One issue was how to translated "promotion". The committee by H. N. Biyalik in 1932 for Hebrew chess terms preferred gilgul, "reincarnation," while Shaul Hon later suggested hachtara, "crowning." (See "Minuach Ivri Be’shachmat" [Hebrew Terminology in Chess], Shachmat, vol. 2 no. 8 (March 1964), pp. 3-4, 3.) 

The above is a a reply to Hon, arguing for gilgul instead of hachtara, in the end of the problems section (pp. 23-29) of the June-July issue: 

A terminological point: the reader surely noted that we used here the term "reincarnation" and not "crowning" as Shaul Hon suggests... we problem composers believe that one can crown a pawn into a queen, but not to a rook, bishop or knight, since promotion to the officer's rank [i.e., from pawn to piece - A. P.] does not require a royal act like crowning. The term "crowning" comes, apparently, from the prejudice of "pure" players for whom every pawn on the seventh rank is a potential queen and any other reincarnation is unmentionable! In the world of composition, such "forbidden" reincarnations are a matter of course. 

The term "reincarnation" - as opposed to some other term like a literal translation of "promotion" (kidum) - probably occurred to Biyalik since he looked at the pawn as if it "died" and was "reborn" as a new piece. Perhaps the terms also harks back to the fact that the promoted piece is usually also one which was previously "killed" (i.e., captured).  

Chess-Themed Unit Symbols

Photo: A. P.

Another rarer example of chess in the IDF is when unit symbols have a chess theme. Here, a certain unit has a "black knight" themed patch. It is, in this photo, worn by a major in the said unit on his uniform. 

Chess pieces, while not common, are not unheard of as part of a unit's insignia. Engineering units sometimes have a chess rook (or at least, an old turret that looks similar to the Staunton chess rook) as an emblem. Another example of a knight in the insignia is that of the US Army Psychological Operations.

Chess in War

Photo: A. P.

Now that the (latest) war in the Middle East seems to be over, I post one example of what soldiers in all of Israel's wars had done - as well as in the pre-state mandatory Palestine. Here are two soldiers during a pause in the fighting - playing chess. 

Swedish Chess

 

Photo Credit: Wikipedia in Hebrew.

In many countries, playing blitz in pairs - where a piece captured by one person is passed to the partner, and can be put in their own board instead of a move - is popular at the club level. It is known as "bughouse" in the USA. In Israel, for some reason, it is known as Shachmat Schvedi - "Swedish Chess." Doron Cogan asks if anyone knows what reason, if any, is there to connect Sweden to this chess variant. 

It should be noted that the English-language Wikipedia web page for "bughouse chess" has a reference to what seems to be the only chess book about it - Bughouse Chess by George von Zimmerman - with the quote from the book (p. 186) saying:  

Other less common names for bughouse include Team chess, Hungarian chess, Swedish chess, New England Double bughouse, Pass-On chess, Tandem Put-Back, Double Speed, Double chess, Double Five, Simultaneous chess, Double bug or Double bughouse.

Some of the names are descriptive. "Bughouse" itself presumably refers to the fact that the games tend to be rather frantic in nature. "Swedish chess" is included, but - not owning the book - I do not know why. 

 

Chess from the Beginner's Point of View

 

Source: see below.

What happens when a man is a good writer and scholar, but a self-admitted beginner in chess? Most chess players would say that his insights about the game and life would not be worth much. But this is not necessarily true. As Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out, the weak players plays chess just as much as the strong one. Mychal Denzel Smith, a low-rated beginner, writes in an interesting essay about what chess means to him (the illustration is taken, as an example, from the many illustrations in the essay, by Peter Oumanski). 

Smith shares with us that scholars' mate is not good chess, that pawns are important, that using the queen to threaten the opponent without developing one's pieces is no good, and so on. He makes, however, no pretenses that he is teaching experienced players something new; rather, he is describing his own process of learning the basics. The essay is best in its examples of interesting facts - for example, that the "scholar's mate" really meant (when the term was first coined) "student's mate" in the sense of young students, and in other languages is it know as "school mate" or "shoemaker's mate" (as in Hebrew). I.e., "scholar" here was a term of derision, not praise. 

Perhaps due to the very fact that he is a beginning and looks afresh at chess, he avoids the old cliches. Chess is not, for him, a status symbol, something to be taken up as a matter of showing one is intelligent. It is - what is often forgotten - fun, a game, and a skill to be mastered. While the author seems (like many scholars nowadays, alas) to be rather obsessed with class/race/social differences, he correctly points out among other interesting things how chess, like other supposedly "highbrow" activities - opera for example - is not only for intellectuals but can be known on a high level by all.