"Shachmat"''s own Potted Version of Israeli Chess History up to 1964

Source: see below

What was the ICF's own view of the history of chess in Israel? A potted history - in English - was found on pp. 31-29 of Shachmat, November 1964 (vol. 3, no. 4). The page numbers are reversed - 31 being the first page of the article - since this history is in the English language section of the magazine, written from left to right, while the rest of the magazine is in Hebrew, from right to left... 

Typical of the era was the fact that there were a few "screw ups": the pictures, of Porat, Aloni, and Kraidman (in order) had the names of the players in tyhe photo in Hebrew, not in English, and - incidentally - the November 1964 volume itself has the date "October 1964" by mistake on the front cover. 

Israeli Championship,1968-1969

Source: Sarah Aloni's collection

Above are some nice photos of the players in the Israeli Open Championship, 1968-1969, which took place in Be'er Sheva, Israel. Can anybody help identify the players? I believe the seond image from the top has Malchiel Peretz (white) playing Yair Kraidman, and the third from the top might have Uzi Geller (white) playing Zadok Domnitz, but I might be wrong.

Edited to add: A frequent correspondent suggests that in the top photo, we have Avraham Kaldor (white) playing  the old Moshe Blass. Another correspondent suggests that Geller's opponent is not Domnitz, but rather  Ya'akov Bernstein ("Ya'akov" is Gaige's preferred spelling in Chess Personalia). He also suggests In the second picture from the top is the young Michael Porat (son of Yosef Porat) playing against Yoel Aloni, Be'er Sheva open 1972. 

I believe the second correspondent is surely correct about Bernstein, but am less sure about Porat-Aloni. This can be resolved by looking at the list of participants in the 1968-1969 vs. the 1972 tournament. I am quite certain the photo is from the 1968-1969 tournament because of the source -- a set of photos from that tournament in Sarah Aloni's collection. But it's not inconceivable a photo from a later tournament was misplaced in her photo album. 

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:

More Chess Signatures

Source: ebay (click on image for larger picture)

The above is the program of the Israeli 1957 chess championship. The seller wants $350 for it, which seems a rather high price. But at least it does have the signature of most (not all) of the participants, including, e.g., on the right page of the last image, Czerniak (top right), Porat (top left), Itzchak Aloni (bottom right), and Dyner (bottom left).

Still, we are beginning to see here some challenges to the "old guard", e.g., Yair Kraidman (top right, second image), Rudy Blumfeld (to left, second image) and others. 

Czerniak, Havana 1966

Source: Ma'ariv, Oct. 24th, 1966, p. 13

Moshe Roytman notified us of a long article in Ma'ariv about the 1966 chess Olympiad. In it we find an interesting pen-portrait of Moshe Czerniak, by the paper's chess correspondent, Shaul Hon, describing him in the meeting place in Madrid, Spain, where the Middle Eastern, African, and Western European teams were housed before being flown to Havana:

[Czerniak] knows personally almost all the teams' members. On each he has a funny anecdote or story to tell. You pull his sleeve -- and dozens of stories fall out, like ripe pears... He became the [Israeli] team's unofficial translator, knowing no less than seven languages, Spanish included... without him the restaurant menus would not be more intelligible to us than if they were written in Chinese. 

But not only we make use of him -- the South African team seized him like a valuable prize, since without his help they would have to mumble and point their fingers, and the Spaniards would not understand anything they want... twelve teams are now in Madrid, including Morocco [i.e., an Arab state -- the point is that it did not boycott the olympiad due to Israel's presence]. 

Hon adds that the Israeli team is made of the "old timers": Smiltiner, Aloni, Porat and Czerniak himself; the two "youths" are Kagan and Kraidman. Indeed, this was the "last hurrah" of the old guard. In 1968 only Czerniak and Porat played, and -- in 1974 -- Czerniak, on the third board.

Yair Kreidman -- 66 years of active high-level chess

Credit: see below.

As the Israeli Chess Federation's web site reports (Hebrew), GM Yair Kraidman (left in the photo) had just played and achieved a very respectable 9th place in a large international tournament in Malta.

This marks his 66th year playing in serious events, starting from the very first Israeli junior championship, 1950, where he shared 1st place with Raafi Persitz (3.5/6), Persitz being declared the winner on the tiebreak, as Kraidman himself notes in an interview on the ICF's web site (Hebrew).

What is more, It is easy to find in numerous online databases that Kraidman has been playing regularly in international events, and this is not a one-off return, but a continuation of a constantly active career. The article also notes, inter alia, that this year marks Kraidman's 40th years as a GM. While this is not a record of chess activity per se, of course, it is quite noteworthy. Congratulation to Kraidman for his longevity!

The interview, for Hebrew speakers, is worth reading in its entirety, especially in its comparisons of Israeli chess (and chess in general) today as opposed to in the past. For example, he notes that in the past chess - even in the highest levels - was much more "gentlemany". For example, when Kraidman was playing in Manila (Philippines) in an all-GM tournament right after getting the GM title, his opponent, Petrosian overslept, and came an hour late.

Kraidman could have demanded a technical victory, but he didn't want to miss the chance to play the (ex) world champion - so he played and lost. Today, he notes, this will simply not be done: players would just demand the technical victory without playing as a matter of course.

We add that losing is, of course, never fun - but it does not seem that Kraidman is too sorry for having actually played Petrosian in a serious tournament, not an opportunity that comes every day, even if he lost. By chance, a colleague of ours, a strong but not a top-flight player, had happened to play both Mangus Carlsen online in two games, and John Nunn in a tournament. He lost all three games, unsurprisingly - but is glad he had the experience.

40 Years Later

Shahmat No. 4 (Aug. 1998), p. 10

In 1958, the Israeli chess tradition of Shach-Kayit (roughly translated, 'chess vacation') in Netanya had began. A correspondent noted that the 40-year reunion, arranged by Zvi Bar-Shira, includes some known persons from the 1950s and later. They inlcude, sitting from right to left: Rivka Lichtenfeld, Zalman Gurevich (who was Ha'Poel's chess organizer [Rakaz -- רכז] for over 20 years, Avraham Dekel, and Bar Shira. Standing from right to left are Yosef Tamari (the youngest participant in 1958), GM Yair Kraidman, Yaakov Mogilveski (from the organizing committee), Ido Spector, Yosef Ziv, Avner Hadar (Ha'Poel's 1998 chess organizer), and Haim Borer (most names, except Gurevich and Kraidman's, phonetically spelled).

The article also notes the winners in the 1958 were Uzi Geller (Israeli champion, 1972), with 7.5 from 9, before William Potasman, Immanuel Guti (member of the 1964 Olympic team) and Tibor Solomon with 6.5, etc.

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. 

Kraidman's First (?) Published Game

In the following game, Yair Kraidman, then 25, defeated the reigning Israeli champion, Moshe Czerniak -- no mean feat for a 25-year-old playing against an IM, at the time when there were only about 100 IMs in the entire world.

Kraidman,Yair - Czerniak,Moshe [E73]

Israel Championship  (2), 10.1957

[Annotations: Eliyahu Shahaf]

Source: Davar, 11.10.1957

1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 g6 3.d4 Bg7 4.e4 0–0 5.Be3 d6 6.Be2 e5 7.d5 Ne8 8.g4 f5 9.gxf5 gxf5 10.exf5 Bxf5 11.Nf3 Na6 12.Rg1 Kh8 13.Qd2 c6 14.Bh6 Bxh6 15.Qxh6 Qf6 16.Qxf6+ Nxf6 17.dxc6 bxc6 18.0–0–0 Rad8 19.Nh4 Ne4 20.Nxe4 Bxe4 21.f3 Bf5 

22.Rg5! 

A very nice tactic that wins two pawns, after which the country's champion [Czerniak - A.P.] fought on in a lost position. 

22...Be6 23.Rh5 Rg8 24.Bd3 Rg7 25.Ng6+ Kg8 26.Nxe5 Rf8 27.Nxc6 Nc5 28.Be2 Rg2 29.Rxd6 Rxe2 30.Rxc5 Bf7 31.Rf6 Rxh2 32.Rcf5 Re8 33.Re5 Kg7 34.Rxe8 Bxe8 35.Rd6 h5 36.Nd4 Bg6 37.c5 h4 38.c6 h3 39.c7 Rh1+ 40.Kd2 h2 41.c8Q Rd1+ 42.Ke3 Re1+ 43.Kf4 h1Q 44.Qc7+ Kh8 45.Qd8+ Be8 46.Qf6+ Kh7 47.Nf5 Qh2+ 48.Ng3 a5 49.b3 Kg8 50.Qg5+ Kf8 51.Qh6+ Qxh6+ 52.Rxh6 Ra1 53.Rh2 a4 54.Nf5 axb3 55.axb3 Bg6 56.Nd4 Kf7 57.Ke5 Ke7 58.b4 Rb1 59.Kd5 Kf6 60.b5 Bd3 61.Kc5 Ke5 62.Rh5+ Kf4 63.b6 Rc1+ 64.Kd6 Ba6 65.Ra5 Bc8 66.Ne2+ 1–0