Vera Francevna Menchik (Mencikova) was born in Moscow, Russia on February 16, 1906. Her father was Czech and her mother was British.  When Vera was 15, the family and she moved to England in 1921.  She became affiliated with Geza Maroczy, who started coaching her in 1922.

In 1923 she began participating in men’s international tournaments.  FIDE established the 1st world championship for women in July, 1927, which Vera won at the age of 21 in London.She won every Women’s World Championship after that (Hamburg 1930, Prague 1931, Folkestone 1933, Warsaw 1935, Stockholm 1937, and Buenos Aires 1939).

Her record in championship play was 78 wins, 4 draws, and only 1 loss.  She was the women’s world champion from 1927 until 1944 when she and her family were killed by a Nazi bomb in England, during the Second World War.  She was only 38 years old.

Menchik was the first woman strong enough to compete with men and was the only woman to play in men’s international tournaments in the first half of the 20th century.   In 1929 she participated in an international tournament in Carlsbad. The Viennese master Albert Becker, who played in this event, said that anyone who lost to Menchik would have to be put into the “Vera Menchik Club”.  He wanted to ridicule any master who lost to this woman.  Becker turned out to be the first victim.  She finished last with a score of +2 –17 =2 at Carlsbad that year.

The “Vera Menchik Club” went on to include Max Euwe (twice), Samuel Reshevsky, Conel Alexander, Edgar Colle, Sultan Khan, Jacques Mieses, Karel Opocensky, Sir George Thomas, William Winter, Friedrich Saemisch, and Frederick Yates.  When the women’s Chess Olympiad began in 1957, the trophy for the victorious team was called the Vera Menchik Cup.  Her peak historical rating would be around 2390 in 1931. 

A fact that is not often mentioned is that she also played an important part in one of the strongest tournaments in the history of chess at Moscow in 1935.  Mikhail Botvinnik and Salo Flohr shared 1^st place, but it should me mentioned that Menchik’s draw with Flohr ultimately cost him an unshared title.  That game is shown below:

The 1936 Nottingham Tournament is one of the more legendary tournaments in the history of chess.  I previously constructed a page dedicated to the event at http://www.rookhouse.com/events/nott1936.html, but there is a lot more that can be mentioned about this great tournament.

Alexander Alekhine wrote a tremendous book about this event that is a must for every chess enthusiast.  The book is titled (appropriately enough) “The Book of the Nottingham International Chess Tournament”.  It was initially published by McKay in 1937 and reprinted in 1962 by Dover.

The book annotates nearly every game of the tournament in brilliant detail and it includes wonderful information on the background of the tournament, as well as various details of what occured during the event.  The brilliancy prize went to the 4th round game between Mikhail Botvinnik and Savielly Tartakower, which we now present to you, complete with Alekhine’s analysis of the game:

Sam Loyd (January 31, 1841-April 10, 1911) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA).  He spent most of his childhood in New York, where he played chess and developed a fascination for solving complicated chess problems.

He had one of his first chess puzzles published in the New York Saturday Courier in 1855 and the same puzzle was later published in the New York Clipper the following year.  The recognition landed him a job with Chess Monthly Magazine as a chess problem editor.

Loyd had several chess puzzle books published over the years, but eventually became more fascinated with mathematical puzzles and concentrated his energies on those after 1870.  Loyd was eventually inducted as a member of the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.

One his most famous chess puzzles was called “Excelsior”, which was named after a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.   This 1861 puzzle is shown below.  Can you solve it?

              White to Move and Checkmate in 5 Moves

Jackson Whipps Showalter was the reigning United States chess champion in 1897 when he extended a challenge to up and coming phenom Harry Nelson Pillsbury.  The match stipulations were that the first player to win seven games (draws not counting) was to be declared the winner.  In the event of a 6-6 score, the match would be extended to the first to win ten games.  Finally, in the event of a 9-9 score, the match would be declared drawn and the title would stay with the champion Showalter.

Pillsbury led early on in the match, but Showalter fought back to draw even at six games apiece, extending the match to the first player to win ten games.  Pillsbury would eventually prevail by the score of 10 wins, 8 losses, and 4 draws.  The two great players would have a rematch the following year, with Pillsbury winning a little more convincingly. 

The two of them are forever linked in chess history as a result of their two memorable matches against each other.  They additionally played the first two boards for the United States in several of the famous cable matches against Great Britain, as well as producing many memorable games when facing each other in tournament play over the years.

Below is one of their great games from the 1897 match:

I came across this hilarious article from an old Harper’s Weekly newspaper.  It portrays Paul Morphy as “Jack the Giant-Killer” and gives a spoof on his adventures in Europe in 1858.  Fair warning, fans of Staunton may not enjoy the article as much as I did. 

SOURCE: Harper’s Weekly - December 25th, 1858

The WCC semi-final match between Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and Gata Kamsky of the United States will take place from November 26th to December 11th, 2008.  The match will determine the challenger for the 2009 World Chess Championship.

The two camps are still arguing over the location of the much anticipated match.  Most recent reports have the Ukraine and Bulgaria as the leading contenders to host the event.  All match details are supposed to be finalized no later than Monday, May 12th.

These two great players have only squared off against each other 8 times over the years, as Kamsky took a long hiatus from the game from 1995 to 2004.  Topalov has a decisive edge (+4 -0 =4) in their previous encounters and has actually never lost a game to Kamsky.

Listed below are their head-to-head matchups, as well as their last encounter at the 2007 MTel Masters (pictured above) for you to play through at your leisure.

Can you name the two players sitting at the table?  The two players depicted in the pictures on the wall?  The year and location of this photograph?

 John Finan Barry was a great American chess player from Boston, who once challenged Jackson W. Showalter for the U.S. Championship (losing -7 +2 =4) in 1896.  Mr. Barry was also an excellent chess columnist and a true ambassador for the game of chess.  He additionally represented the United States in many of the famous cable matches against Great Britain from 1896-1901, compiling an impressive record of 5 wins, 0 losses, and 1 draw.

In September of 1917, Barry had an article published in British Chess Magazine.  The article was in response to BCM’s April edition of the same year, in which they talked about Mr. Franklin K. Young’s “Major Tactics of Chess”.   Barry wrote in to display the differences in his belief of chess fundamentals, as opposed to the aforementioned author’s writings.

Barry included a game in his notes to BCM that took place on the event of Wilhelm Steinitz’s last visit to Boston in 1892.  It was a consultation game in which Barry refers to himself, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, and Mr. S. B. Snow as the “Allies”.  Their opponent was then world champion Steinitz, who was playing by himself.  Barry refers to this particular game as one of the finest illustrations for fundamentals that he had ever seen, stressing the minor right formation versus stategic counter-attack.

We present this rare game to you as seen below, complete with Mr. Barry’s commentary.  Steinitz had the White pieces and the “Allies” had the Black pieces.

SOURCE: British Chess Magazine, September, 1917

During my research on various historical chess facts, I frequently come across items of unexpected interest and curiosity.  Here is an article from the Indiana (USA) Evening Gazette in 1980, concerning Bobby Fischer that completely baffled me. 

 If anyone has any further information on this, please post here or e-mail me at admin@rookhouse.com:

Chess Tourney Brings Top Talent

GREENVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Bobby Fischer will be among 14 elite players who will compete in the U.S. Chess Championship that begins Thursday at Thiel College in this Mercer County community.  Fischer, the former World Chess Champion from Brooklyn, has won the title a record eight times.  He logged an 11-0 sweep in the 1963-64 tournament.  The U.S. Chess Federation calls the participants “the cream of American chess and some of the finest players in the world”.

The federation, along with the American Chess Foundation, are sponsoring the tournament.  The 14 players from around the nation include nine grandmasters, four international masters, and a top national master.  The tournament includes current and World Junior Champion Yasser Seirawan and former World Junior Champion Mark Diesen.  Most of the other players have distinguished themselves in top chess events around the world.  Most of the players were selected on the basis of their highest published federation rating since the last U.S. championship was held in June, 1978, in Pasadena, California.

National Master Joseph Bradford was seeded as the 1978 U.S. Open Champion; had Grandmaster Arthur Bisguier and International Master Sierawan not qualified on the basis of their ratings, they would have been seeded as the 1979 Grand Prix Champion and the 1979 U.S. Junior Champion respectively.  Three of the players originally invited were unable to play.  They were replaced by Grandmaster Pal Benko, International Master John Peters and Grandmaster Larry Evans.

Other participants include International Grandmaster Anatoly Lein, who emigrated to the United States from Russia in 1976 and International Grandmaster Robert Byrne.  The defending champion is Lubomir Kavalek, who won the title at the 1978 championship in Pasadena.  He will not attend the tournament.  The championship will begin with the first round Thursday afternoon and continue through June 28.  A closing luncheon and awards ceremony will be held June 29.  The tournament was brought to Greenville through the help of Thiel music professor Ivan Ramanenko, a chess Master acquainted with a number of the participants.

The winner of this year’s tournament will join an elite group of players that includes Paul Morphy, Jackson Showalter, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, Frank Marshall, and Samuel Reshevsky.  The U.S. Chess Federation, headquartered in New Windsor, N.Y., claims 50,000 members.

SOURCE: Indiana Evening Gazette - June 11, 1980

A few weeks ago we posted an article on the Reichhelm form of chess notation that was used back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s for overseas cable matches.  Fellow chess enthusiast Taylor Kingston pointed out that this particular form of notation was eventually replaced by the Gringmuth Telegraphic Code, which was developed by Mr. D. Gringmuth of Russia.

Mr. Kingston was kind enough to send us an article that explains the use of this particular form of chess notation, as seen below:

SOURCE: William Steinitz, The Modern Chess Instructor (1889)