Here is an unusual puzzle created in 1873 by British chess legend, Joseph Henry Blackburne.

White to Move.   Checkmate in 4 moves.

The final teams had been decided just before the start of the 1896 cable match.  The Americans were to be represented by H.N. Pillsbury, J.W. Showalter, C.F. Burille, J.F. Barry, E. Hymes, A.B. Hodges, E. Delmar, and D.G. Baird.

The eight players chosen to represent the British side were J.H. Blackburne, A. Burn, H.E. Bird, S. Tinsley, C.D. Locock, D.Y. Mills, H.E. Atkins, and E.M. Jackson.

The American team won the toss and had the White pieces on boards 1, 3, 5, and 7.  By the time the 7:00pm adjournment arrived, none of the games had been decided.  Showalter had the most dominating position at board # 2 against Burn.  Blackburne looked to have a slight edge on Pillsbury at board # 1, after a poor start in the opening.  Jackson had an impressive attacking position on Baird at board # 8.  All other games appeared to be fairly even going into the second day.

Play was resumed at 10:00am (EST) the following day on Saturday, March 14th.  Showalter won his game over Burn as expected.  Bird surprisingly lost his game to Burille at board # 3, which proved to be costly to the British hopes.  Barry outplayed Tinsley in the end game on board # 4.  This gave the Americans three outright victories thus far, a commanding lead. 

Jackson would go on to win his game over Baird, and Pillsbury would eventually succumb to Blackburne.  The rest of the games ended in fiercely contested draws, giving the Americans the overall victory by the score of 4 1/2 – 3 1/2.  The game that seemed to decide the match between C.F. Burille and H.E. Bird is shown below, as well as the final results:

The 1896 cable match between the United States and Great Britain took place on Friday, March 13th and Saturday, March 14th.  The final rosters for each team were to be decided in the last few days leading up to the actual match.  Pictured below are the potential participants for each country.  Brooklyn and London were the respective locations for each of the teams, who were competing for both patriotic pride and the $800 Sir George Newnes Cup (also pictured below).

The moves of the match were transmitted by telegraph over a distance of 3,483 miles and were received in a matter of seconds.  The Brooklyn team was headquartered in the assembly hall of the Bank building at the corner of Remsen and Court streets in Brooklyn, New York.

The hall occupied the entire 2nd floor of the building and had 8 giant chess boards suspended from the ceiling of the south wall, with movableable pieces for public display.  A platform was erected at the east end of the hall for the 8 players, the 4 official scorers, the team captain, and the British umpire.  Telegraph transmitters and receivers were set up at their own tables at each end of the platform.  The layout of the room as shown in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle is displayed below:

The drawing of colors was to begin on Friday at 9:30am (EST) and consisted of drawing either a 1 or a 2.  The referee, Baron de Rothschild, would draw for the British side.  The drawing of a 1 would mean that team would have White on boards 1, 3, 5, and 7.  Similarly, the drawing of a 2 would give that team White on boards 2, 4, 6, and 8.

Clocks were to be started at 10:00am with an hour intermission at 2:00pm.  Unfinished games would be adjourned at 7:00pm and resumed at 10:00am the following morning.

Next Week: Part 2 with results and games.

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?