Mieses Reporting on Chess in Palestine

Credit: see below. Click to enlarge.

Mr. Peter Anderberg has further notified me that the Jüdische Rundschau, whose chess column Mieses edited, also has, for this reason, occassional reports and games about Palestinian chess. 

Above is one example Mr. Anderberg notified me of: Mieses' report (Dec. 4th, 1936, p. 6) of the Tel Aviv 1936 tournament, including a game between Dobkin and Weil. I am working on translating the game into English, in the meantime the German scan (click to enlarge) is a bit unclear, but a better quality version can be found here, with the ability to enlarge it as well. 

Mieses' Own Recollections of His Visit to Palestine

(See below for Credits; click to enlarge).

Mr. Peter Anderberg had notified me that Mieses, after visiting Palestine in 1936, had written an account of his visit -- including a game against Marmorosh which I have not found in the Hebrew press at the time -- in the Jüdische Rundschau, vol. 41, no. 51, 26.6.1936, page 18. 

Mieses' article includes a tally of his games in Palestine, and a survey of the leading organizations, clubs, and personalities he met during the visit. I am now translating the game notes (irregular opening, 0-1 in 23 moves) into English, but the moves should be clear enough in the scan, which can be clicked on for a large picture.

Opening Novelties and Witty Annotations

The following game was played between Yisrael Yosef Kniazer and Moshe Czerniak in the Jerusalem - Haifa Match, 1938. The annotations are by Raafi Persitz in his Book, Ha'Derech Le'Nitzachon Be'Sachmat [The way to Chess Victory], a collection of Kniazer's games (Tel Aviv: Torat Ha'Sachmat Press, 1959), pp. 27-30. Persitz's annotations, of which I give only a selection, are very amusing.

The game started following Tarrasch - Alekhine (1926), with: 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 d4 3.e3 c5 4.b4 g6?! 5.Bb2 Bg7 6.bxc5 e5?! Here Kniazer saw an improvement to Tarrasch's 7. exd4, based on Black's Achilles heel -- the d6 square -- and continued:

 7.Na3! Going to d6! 7...a6 8.Qa4+! Bd7 9.Nb5!

A self-pin of the knight, but the a6 pawn is "even more" pinned. 9...Nc6 [9...Kf8 10.Qa3 followed by Nd6. ] 10.Nd6+

"He doth neither slumber nor sleep" [Psalms 121:4 -- A. P.] 10...Kf8 11.Qa3 Better than  11.Nxb7 Qc7 12.Nd6 Rb8 and Black may fish in troubled water. 11...a5 12.Be2 Again refusing the pawn. 12...g5 13.0–0 h5 Nine pawn moves out of 13 -- such luxury is expensive. 14.Ne1 Nh6 Offering h5 as well! 15.f4! exf4 16.exf4 g4 17.Nd3 Nf5 18.Ne5 Be6 Of course taking on e5 is out of the question. 19.Nexf7!

19. Bd3, increading the pressure, is also good, but apparently White was under doctor's orders to take a pawn every 45 minutes. 19...Bxf7 20.Nxf5 Bf6 21.Nd6 The horse returns to his stable.  21...Nb4 22.Qb3 

From now on both sides, for some reason, start playing "Shatranj", the old game in which the pieces could move only slowly.  22...Qc7 23.a3 Nc6 24.Rab1 Rb8 25.Qd3 Qd7 26.Qe4 Rg8 27.Bd3 Bg6 28.Qe2 Bf7 29.Bf5 Qe7 30.Qd3 Qc7 31.Rfe1 Rg7 32.Nxf7 Kxf7 33.Be6+ Kf8 34.Qf5 Qd8 35.Bd5 h4 36.Re6 Rf7 37.Rd6 1–0 A strange and extraordinary game in all its phases.  

Poisoned Pieces

A game between Kniazer (White) and Winz, from Persitz's book, The Way to Victory in Chess (or perhaps 'The Way to Chess Victory' -- Ha'Derech Le'Nizachon Be'Sachmat), pp. 25-26.

Kniazer,Yisrael Yosef - Winz,Victor

Tel Aviv - Haifa Match, 1938

Annotator: Raafi Persitz

  

White threatens Qh4 and Nxb1. But... 

24.Rxa4! Both rooks are "poisoned". 24...a5 

24...Nxb1 25.Rxa7; 

24...bxa4 25.Rxb8 Qxb8 26.Qg8+; 

24...Qh4 25.Qg8+ 

25.Qg8+! Ke7 26.Qxd8+ 

26.Qg5+? Kd7 27.Qxd2 bxa4 28.Rxb8 Qxb8= 

26...Kxd8 27.Rb2 

The rest is a matter of tecnhique. 

27...Ne4 28.Rxa5 Nxc3 29.Ra3! Ne2 30.c3 b4 31.cxb4 Nxd4 32.b5 Nb3 [32...Nxb5? 33.Ra5] 33.Ra7 Ke8 34.h6 Kf8 35.Kh3 Kg8 36.Kh4 Rxb5 37.f4 Nd4 38.Rg2+ Kh8 39.Ra8+ Kh7 40.Kh5 Nf5 41.Rgg8 and Black resigned (1-0) due to the forced continuation 41...Nxh6 42.Rh8+ Kg7 43.Rxh6, etc.  

Porat's First Published Game in Palestine

The following game is from the Tel-Aviv - Jerusalem match (Jerusalem won 11:9, in a two-round ten-board match) concluded Feb 16th, 1935, and reported Feb. 22nd, 1935, in Davar's chess column by Marmorosh (p. 6) It is typical of Porat's style, with his particular partiality to Indian setups and strategic, rather than tactical, chess (although as an IM he could, of course, play all positions well). Here the game is against the 'famous Berlin player Enoch', another refugee from Germany. Porat (White) is playing for Tel Aviv. Of course, Porat was still named Foerder then, but I have changed the name in Marmorosh's annotations for consistency's sake.

1. Nf3 Nf6 2. e3 b6 3. b3 Bb7 4. Bb2 e6 5. d4 Bb4+ An unnecessary move. 6. c3 Be7 7. Nbd2 c5 8. Bd3 cxd4 9. cxd4 Nc6 10. Rc1

a3 first is better, but White wants to provoke Nb4 hoping to win a pawn. A very dangerous idea, since Black gets a strong attack. 10... Nb4 11. Bb1 Ba6 Prevents castling. The game now becomes very tense. 12. Nc4 d5 13. Nce5 Ne4! The White king is stalemated, so there is the threat of Nxa2 followed by Bb4+! But Porat defends himself coolly. 14. Nd2 O-O 15. Nxe4 dxe4 16. a3 Rc8! 17. Bxe4

White achieved his objective, but is still in danger, since he cannot castle. 17... f5 18. Rxc8 Qxc8 19. Bb1 Qc7 20. Qd2 Qb7 Threatens g2. 21. Nf3 Nd5 22. Bd3 Rc8 Black takes over the important c-file. 23. Ke2? A serious mistake. Castling was better.

23. ... Nf6? Black didn't exploit White's mistake: 23... Nf4+! 24. exf4 Qe4+ 25. Qe3 Bxd3+ 26. Ke1 Rc2 and wins. 24. Rc1 Ne4 25. Rxc8+ Qxc8 26. Qd1 Bd6? Taking on a3 immediately was better. 27. Ne5 Bxa3! 28. Bxa6 [Of course 28. Bxa3? Nc3+ -- A. P] 28... Qxa6+ 29. Qd3 Qxd3+ 30. Nxd3 Bxb2 31. Nxb2 b5 32. Nd3 a5 33. f3 Nd6 34. Nc5 Kf7 35. e4 fxe4 36. fxe4 h5 37. h3 a4 Drawn (0.5-0.5). The most interesting game in the match.

Actual Founding of the Palestine Chess Federation

Decleration of the founding of the Palestine Chess Association. See source below.

In a previous post we have wondered when exactly the Palestinian Chess Federation was founded, if in Nov. 1934 it already speaks of a "previous" committee of the organization. The answer is found in Mohilever's recollections, in Shachmat no. 261-262 (Feb. - March 1985), p. 35-36.

Mohilever notes that the official founding was in the 'Zidon' cafe in Tel Aviv, where 'about 30 players, mostly from Tel Aviv and a few from Jerusalem and Haifa' met on June 30th, 1934.

Israel Rosenfeld was chosen as the chairman of the organization, the two Levonsky brothers (Avraham and Nachum) as secretary and trasurer, respectively, Winz and Wexler as members, etc.; the document above includes the signatures of practically all important players or activists in Palestinian chess at the time, which naturally made the organization accepted by the players in the country in general.

They also had a foreign dignitary to endorse them. No less a personage than Salo Flohr, then (as noted before in this blog) visiting Palestine, was present, chosen as an 'honorary chairman', and signing his name first on the list (about the middle of the page in the photograph above).

Within a year, quite apart from everything else it did, the organization also had that essential issue: a masthead, with the name in English and Hebrew and two knight heads and a rook next to a checkered field:

P. S.

It would be nitpicking to go back and correct all previous mentions I made of the term, but from now on I will be careful, when relevant, to use the correct 'Palestine Chess Federation', as they masthead says, and not 'Palestinian Chess Federation'.

The Early Days of the Palestine Chess Federation

Source: Davar, Nov. 14th, 1934, p. 5. 

A frequent correspondent of ours notes that on Nov. 14th, 1934, the Palestinian Chess Federation officially started its activities by opening a chess club in the "City" cafe in Tel Aviv (three times a week) and calls for all chess players to join by writing to the secretary, Nachum Labounsky, in his Tel Aviv address. What's more it notes that its first general meeting in the same cafe had about 70 (!) players. It is interesting that one of the items on the agenda was 'hearing a report about the activities of the previous [chess] committee'.

As there was no previous chess Palestinian Chess Federation prior to this date, indeed the article itself notes that it had just started its actions, this can mean either the leading Tel Aviv players or organizers, perhaps that of the Rubinstein's club committee, or else that a committee of chess enthusiasts had worked as an unofficial Palestinian Chess Federation before the official annoucement. Mystery solved -- see next post, above.

Lebounsky himself writes on Nov. 30th in Davar (p. 10) that the Federation's two main goals are, apart from promoting chess in general (buying new sets, arranging tournaments, etc.) to stop the 'chaos' in Palestinian chess by having one federation, and to get Palestine into FIDE for the Olympiads -- in both of which it succeeded.

Edited to add: Ami Barav notes that the corrct spelling is 'Labounsky', not 'Levonsky'.

How to Get Better in Chess & Variations in Laws

Source: Shock Ha'Sach [The Game of Chess], p. 12, by Yosef Zamnitz (ph. Sp.), Vilna, 1880.

For those of us who think our game is in a rut, here is some advice from Zamnitz on how to attack:

17. The attack. After he had put his army in the correct tabia, the player should try to create a plan to capture and defeat his opponent. It is a good idea to think at the same time of two goals and targets, so that if the enemy realizes one and nullifies it, the other will remain; and if it too will fail, he will create another plan. But he should be careful not to expose himself in his desire to defeat his enemy, and will fall, beaten, before his also-scheming opponent.

In other words: 'make good move and win, but avoid making bad moves and losing'. Well, true so far as it goes, but...

In fact however we are being somewhat unfair to the book. It does have quite a lot of interesting and rather deep strategic advice -- for example, distinguishing between the general characteristics of 'piece play' and 'pawn play' and considering them both as legitimate  (p. 13) or carefully considering the relative advantages of bishops and knights and noting that which one is superior depends on the type of position (p. 27).

Most interesting is the book's list of rules which are 'dependent on pre-game agreement or location'. These includes "two-move" chess (where the game starts with two moves in a row by the same player), variations in castling and promotion (e.g., can a pawn be promoted to a piece that still is on the board, etc.), whether it is customary to announce a 'check to the queen', is en passant allowed, and whether reaching a position where the opponent has a bare king counts (on its own) as a victory or as an immediate draw (!) (p. 9-10).

Finally, The author seems to have a strong dislike of the 'very ungentlemany way' of winning the game by queening one's last pawn (p. 11) since it makes one pawn (the book, incidentally, speaks of one 'farmer', Ikar, from the German term Bauer) enough for victory, which the  author clearly does not consider the correct way to win a chess game, namely, by a vigorous attack, although the book does prefunctory discuss basic endgames (in the very last pages of the book, pp. 35-36).

Eduard, Emanuel, and Edward Lasker

Source: Ha'Tzfira, Oct. 1st, 1897, p. 3

The Jewish press, even in the 19th century, sometimes reported on chess. In this report of Emanuel Lasker's victory over Wilhelm Steinitz in the world championship match, we read much interesting biographical information about Lasker -- i.e., his father's initials (M. Lasker), exact birth date, early history, and so on.

With the flowery language typical of the Hebrew press at the time, it describes him as a genius whose game 'went from strength to strength', how the match between him and  the match as a contests about who will be 'the supreme king and ruler of all the lands' in chess, and so on. To be fair, most of the flowery language are in fact biblical verses, originally describing kings or emperors, used to describe, here, chess players. This was considered a sign of education and good taste at the time, much like using classical Latin or Greek quotes was in the wider literary world.

What is interesting is that the article opens with the claim that:

 The name "Lakser" became known in this century. Who, while hearing the name, does not remember fondly the man who, with his genius, fought gallantly in the German Parliament for the German Jews' rights and the rights of all Germans? 

The famous Lasker here is Eduard Lasker  -- a liberal German Jewish politician. Not the least of the chess world's Lasker's claims to fame, notes  Ha'Zfira, is his family relation to this man.

As wikipedia notes (with sources), the chess playing Edward Lakser was distantly related to Emanuel Lasker -- and, therefore, also to Eduard Lasker. One wonders if Edward Lasker, the chess player, who was born Eduard Lasker (as the name is spelled in German-speaking countries) is named in honor of Eduard Lasker, the politician?