Some People will Steal Anything.

Credit: www.butterybooks.com [and yes, the board is reversed...]

A constant reader [to use Dorothy Parker's old moniker] of this blog and of the Hebrew Jewish press noted what is probably the first case of stolen chess property reported in Israel, and possibly including pre-state Mandatory Palestine. On 29/7/1949, Ha'Tzophe ["The Observer"] reported that a woman was arrested when in her possession was found a chess clock which was stolen from the Jerusalem chess club a year before.

To whom, exactly, did this woman plan to sell this stolen property -- considering it was highly unlikely anyone who knew what a chess clock was in Jerusalem at the time would probably have been affiliated with the Jerusalem chess club -- is not clear. Perhaps she didn't know what it was, and kept this strange, obviously broken double clock [only one of the clocks works at once, after all] as a novelty item.

This leads us to the question -- by the same reader -- of when, exactly, was the first chess clocks used in Palestine or Israel? Various chess clubs had such clocks by the 40s, but, for example, in photographs from the first Championship of Palestine in the mid-30s it seems most of the games seem to have taken place without clocks. We have already commented on how, in the 1920s and even later, various tools were used instead for speed chess or regular chess -- i.e., using a stick to beat on the floor every 10 seconds or using two wristwatches [see the tags" "clocks" for example in this blog].

Perhaps it should be added that the modern chess clock [with a flag] was already invented in 1899 but rigid insistence on using it for claiming a win on time was not consider sportsmanlike until about 20 years later, according to the Oxford Companion to Chess.

Clocks

Photo credit: the author, found on e-bay.


Advertisement from 64 Mishbatzot [64 Squares], No. 3 [April 1956], p. 61.

What was the first chess clock made in Israel? Two suggestions. Top, we have a photo (found on e-bay) of an Israeli chess clock, from the 1950s. Note the unusual placement of the clock's buttons on the side, instead of the top, of the clock. This makes it harder to bang them with pieces in blitz, and, more seriously, harder to see from afar whose turn it is to move. More details about this clock would be welcome.

Below, we have an advertisement for 'Chess Clocks Made in Israel', by H. & J. Benjamin, 'Clocks & Watches Manufacture & Export', Jaffa Road 167, Jerusalem. Their P. O. Box, by the way, is 639, and their telephone number, 62-069 -- which gives one a good idea of the size of the city of Jerusalem in those days. This clock seems to have a more standard design. Again, more information about them -- as well as actual clocks -- would be welcome.

Walking Stick Speed Chess

Portrait of an ArchDeacon by Ilya Yefimovich Repin, 1877. Image hosted at www.wikipedia.com by permission of the State Trtyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

From the same interview with Eliezer Pe'er as the previous post:

'Victor Winz and other Tel Aviv player would then [in the 1930s and 40s - A.P.] play a lot of speed chess in the Vienna Cafe, in the Nahalat Binyamin neighborhood in Tel Aviv. They had no chess clocks, so they would pay an onlooker a few pennies to hold a walking stick and bang it on the floor every ten seconds, to play ten-second chess.'

Mystery Tournament

An Israel-made chess clock, ca. 1950. Photo Credit: Avital Pilpel, from an e-bay advertisement.

From Yosef Porat, Oman ha'Sachmat ["Yosef Porat, the Chess Master"] by Eliyahu Fasher and Yosef Porat, p. 29:

'A year later [in 1936-A.P.] the first championship of Palestine took place... it is true that, as the editor of La'Merchav's Chess column noted in 1956, he tried to get details about the tournament that took place in "Sheleg ha'Levanon" coffee house in 1929. But despite the fact that some of the contestants were still alive, neither the crosstable nor a single game score were found. Moves weren't written down and no chess clocks were used (they used hand watches)'.

Presumably, 'pressing the clock' meant pulling out the crown of one's watch and pushing in the opponent's. Not convenient in a time scramble! As no moves were recorded, the games were probably played with a "sudden death" time control (game in so many minutes), as there was no way to determine when the time control was reached.

My research found no record of this tournament anywhere except for Fasher's book (and La'Merchav original article). This is because, unfortunately, it took place in a vacuum: after the folding of the (short-lived) Emanuel Lasker chess club magazine in the mid-1920s, and before any chess columns began to appear in the early 1930s.

Can any reader enlighten us about it?