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. 

More Caricatures By Ross

 

Source: see below

Herbert Halsegger notifies us that G. Ross (the initial is taken from the source mentioned below, p. 49) had made many more illustrations of the players in the 1964 Olympiad. The above sketches are taken from the report, "1964 Olympiad - Selected Games" by Hans Kmoch, on pp. 49-53 of Chess Review, February 1965. Many more are found there. See also about Ross in this post.

Achievements in Old Age

 
Source: Chess Review, May 1965, p. 131

Achievements in chess in old age are a matter of historical times. Today, the youngest world champion - only 18 - had just been crowned. In the past many players were active into old age and occasionally won important tournaments, Emmanuel Lasker and Jacque Mieses being two well-known examples. In the above clip, brought to our attention by Herbert Halsegger, it is noted that Miguel Najdorf won at Mar de Plata against a strong field at the relatively old age of 55. All three of these masters were, of course, Jewish. 

The interesting thing is that the winners of the second and third place, Averbakh and Stein, were 12 and 24 years younger, respectively. What is the largest age difference, in a major tournament, between the winner and the runner-up(s)? 

Israel in the Finals

Source: see below

The same volume of Shachmat mentioned in the previous post had, following the article about Israeli chess history, also a short article reprinted from the Jerusalem Post about Israeli in the 1964 Olympiad's finals (pp. 29-28, again in reverse order). 

It is a rather interesting article - as typical of the period, having little to do with chess itself, and much more with the relation of chess to education, Jews in general, a cure for the "dismal performance" of Israeli athletes in physical sports, and so on. Again, as in the previous post, the name of the player - Zadok Domnitz - was printed in Hebrew. 

"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. 

Some Popular Articles about the Jewishness (or Otherwise) of Chess Masters

 

Source: see below

It is sometimes not clear whether a certain player is Jewish or not. That depends on one's definition of "Jewish." Bobby Fischer was undoubtedly Jewish according to Jewish law since his mother was Jewish, but there is no need to restate here his well-known antisemitism. On the other hand, Garry Kasparov is not Jewish according to Jewish law, since only his father was Jewish, but he never denied his Jewish origins. One interesting case is that of Vasily Smyslov, who apparently has some Jewish ancestry but was is not, nor claimed to be, Jewish. 

We have noted before on this blog that Palestinian or Israeli chess writers had a tendency to "convert" any player with any Jewish ancestry to Judaism. But has the accuracy improved in the age of the internet? Is the internet used well or badly?  

As a casual beginning, we have looked at two interesting web pages. One of them is Aish (short for Aish Ha'torah, "the fire of the Torah"), the website of a well-known Jewish education and advocacy organization. It has a surprisingly well-researched general article about Jews and chess, as noted in the link given, from which the picture above is taken. In particular, it distinguishes fact from fiction: it notes that the stories about chess in the Talmud are not true, and that the story of a chess-playing Jewish pope is obviously a legend. Still, it is not fully accurate, for example claiming that Smyslov is a Jew. 

Another website is the humorous Jew or not Jew website. The site rates "how Jewish" a person is not just based on Jewish law but on how Jewish they see themselves, based on their public utterances, as well as the obviously subjective "how much we want the person to be a Jew in the first place" due to their achievement, as their "About the Jew Score" page explains. What is surprising is that this light-hearted website actually has most of the facts about Jewish or non-Jewish chess players correct. 

For example, while "blaming" Kasparov for "losing for a computer" which will lead to a future when "we're all enslaved by machines," they are quite correct about his original name and family origin. They are also openly skeptical about Smyslov's Jewishness, noting that "nobody knows for sure" whether he has Jewish ancestry (not quite true - but at least they do not simply assume he is Jewish). They also note that despite rumors about Spassky's Jewish parentage, that is not the case. 

I have deliberately chosen sites whose chess-related articles make no pretensions of being works in chess history, but are intended instead for readers primarily interested in Judaism, not in chess. It is somewhat surprising to see that just here, where one would least expect it, the actual chess history content is reasonably accurate.  

Perhaps, after all, as Edward Winter notes more specifically about Wikipedia in his most recent feature article, "general" chess information on the internet - while still full of dross - at least shows signs of improving, both in the case of specific good articles and in the removal of mistakes that are pointed out. The problem, notes Winter, is that as always, "chess history suffers when Wikipedia entries make do with references to obviously sub-standard sources." 

One example is the article about Spassky in Wikipedia. While the article has over 140 entries, almost all are from other online sources, without any indication to the reader about those sources' reliability. Compare this to what Winter justly calls a "fine article" about Hugh Myers, where the many references are almost all to the original primary sources - or to Winter's own well-regarded web Chess Notes. 

Sammy Rubinstein, a Simultaneous Display by his Father, and the Need for Sources

 

Boylston Chess Club shield. Source: see below.

Terje Kristiansen points out to that the Boylston Chess Club posted on its blog (see link) an interesting history of Akiba Rubinstein's family. In particular, it notes that Samuel "Sammy" Rubinstein also was a strong player, with a FIDE rating of 2380, being champion of Brussels in 1949. 

It should be added that while the blog post attempts to give sources and be accurate, some of the information or photos are unsourced and there are some mistakes. For example, Akiba Rubinstein did not visit Palestine twice, in April and May 1931, but only once - in April and May. Also, the photo included as a "simul in Palestine" is - probably - not from Palestine, despite appearing as such in Donaldson and Minev's book on Rubinstein (The Life & Games of Akiva Rubinstein, vol. 2, p. 370). 

As it happens, I was asked about this very photo by Philip Jurgens in an email from 27 September 2021. He noted the similarity of the photo to the following one, which was taken in Palestine. I wrote back that I am skeptical for reasons that may be worth repeating here. Mr Jurgens agreed, but pointed out that my skepticism is circumstantial (i.e., there is no exact location known that proves it is not from Palestine).  

Rubinstein gives a simultaneous display. Source: see above.

Here is a version of my reply to Mr. Jurgens, noting the reason for my skepticism. It had been shortened and edited for clarity.

1. While superficially similar, the photograph here is not actually in the same room. 

2. The people in the photo are dressed in conservative black - not how people would dress in Palestine back then (although the difference is somewhat subtle). Similarly, golden watches and pipes, while not unknown, were not common in Palestine. In short, the Palestine simuls were much more "working class" than this display.

3. All the sets are matching sets, of the same size/making. This would not be typical of Palestine of the time, where it was customary for players in simultaneous displays to bring their own sets. Local chess clubs simply didn't have 50 or 100 matching sets available.

4. The demonstration board in the back seems to be in German or another European language, not Hebrew. 

5. I do not recognize any of the players/personalities in your photo. 

6. In many of Rubinstein's simuls in Palestine, the players were mobbed and assisted by their neighbors/onlookers - very typical of the time in Palestine, but not in Europe (to the great chagrin of Palestine chess column editors, who tried to uproot this "uncivilized" practice...). Here the onlookers are not doing so.

The Boylston Chess Club's blog post is sloppy with sources for its photos. It mentions Donaldson and Minev's book but does not give the exact location of the photograph from it (this was given to me by Mr. Jurgens). 

Why does this matter? Because this is how mistakes are perpetuated. That Donaldson and Minev made a mistake about a photograph in their two-volume work is not the issue. No book is free from mistakes, and their two-volume biography and game collection of Rubinstein is a very serious work with a great deal of original material. But when a photo from their book is posted elsewhere, as in the blog in question, without giving the exact source, then the mistake sticks and becomes a "fact" that is hard to eradicate.