I remember several years ago an interesting and sometimes heated discussion arose on a chess forums about how good GM’s are compared to the rest of us. You’d think there would have been no debate, but there was.      There is a whole generation of players who have been raised on Internet chess and Blitz chess in particular who have never played in a tournament nor have they ever seen a GM in action up close and personal.      Also, it’s somewhat surprising to learn that so few players are familiar with chess history or who have actua ..read more

`After Frank Marshall retired in 1936, the US Championship had consisted of biennial championship tournments even through the years of WW2. The USCF eventually developed a “master plan” for the Championship because the 1948 tournament had shown that the idea of holding qualifying tournaments had resulted in a drastic reduction in the level of play.      The USCF's solution was a three-year cycle of elimination events that would begin with regional preliminaries (as in the past) and then the next year there would be a “Candidates Tournament” made up of the regional qualifi ..read more

      There was a tournament in 1929 that was won by Capablanca who finished with a superb +13 -0 =1 which put him 1.5 points ahead of Tartakower who was also undefeated. Colle was a half point behind Tartakower and the rest of the field, which consisted of minor masters, weren’t even close.      While he was there Capablanca gave a simultaneous and one of the games made its way into a book titled The Fine Art of Chess that was published in 2019 by Lyudmil Tsvetkov. The book is a BIG one! There is a total of 40 games and 812 pages! The Kindle edition is ..read more

    Back in 1951, unemployment was low as was the inflation rateand the average household income was $3,510 a little over $41,000 in today’s dollars. By comparison the average household income in the United States last year was a little over $67,500. Are we any better off?      In any case, in 1951, Americans were buying houses in the suburbs, television, refrigerators and new cars which average $1,500, a cheap $17.600 today. Gas was 10 cents a gallon, $2.23 in today’s dollars which made it cheap even in 1951.     On January 27, nuclear testi ..read more

    Reshevsky first arrived in Detroit in 1920 and a nationally known checker player named Morris Steinberg took an interest in the chess playing boy wonder and in turn interested Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), a businessman, philanthropist and part owner of Sears in the prodigy.     Rosenwald determined that it was in that the boy’s best interest to tale a break fro chess and get his education and enjoy “a normal boyhood.”      Consequently, between the years 1924-1931 Reshevsky played only occasionally during school breaks. He entered Northe ..read more

    William M. de Visser (November 5, 1855 0 December 4, 1922, 68 years old) was a charter member of the Manhattan Chess Club, an expert player and organizer. In 1899, he won the New York State Championship.      When he died at his country residence in Brentwood on Long Island, New York, chess circles in the New York area lost one of the outstanding figures who for 30 years had been President of the Metropolitan Chess League.      As an active member of the Brooklyn Chess Club he occasionally played on its teams. He was also elected an ..read more

    He was a Harvard, class of 1929, graduate who won the precedent, setting Harvard, Yale, Princeton and West Point College Chess League’s first organized individual championship tournament in the history of college chess in the United States. The game were played in the Manhattan Chess Club on April 8, 9 and 10, 1929.      Chevalier of Harvard demonstrated a clear superiority over all of his rivals by defeating them in five consecutive rounds and emerging with a perfect 5-0 score., thereby earning him the earned the distinction of being the first American ..read more

    Needless to say, with WWII going on there wasn’t a lot of chess activity going on, especially in England.      January was the start of the nocturnal Luftwaffe bombing offensive chiefly targeted at the Greater London area which lasted until May. Later, in September, the first V-2 rocket attack on London was launched from The Hague. And, on June 6th, D-Day for the Normandy landings was launched. It involved 155,000 Allied troops.      In other British news, in February a pay as you earn system of tax collection introduced and in May t ..read more

    In the winter of 1948, when it came to the attention of the Manhattan Chess Club that three top foreign players would be spending December in New York, a tournament was put together on short notice.      The masters in question were former world champion Max Euwe, Miguel Najdorf and Swedish champion Gideon Stahlberg. Unfortunately, Stahlberg would not be staying in New York long enough to participate, so he declined. His invitation went to Samuel Reshevsky, who also declined. Argentinian master Herman Pilnik found out about the tournament from Najdorf a ..read more

     When it comes to picking Alehome’s greatest game it;s impossible because he had so many, but his game against Reti at Baden-Baden, 1925 has to be one of them. It’s been annotated by a lot of GMs including Gary Kasparov. You’ve probably seen it before, but even if you have it’s worth looking at again.      Following World War I which ended in November of 1914 no really great tournaments had been held in Germany and so Tarrasch prevailed upon the authorities Baden-Baden, a famous spa city, to host another international tournament...the last had bee in 18 ..read more