Chess News in 20th Century Newspapers

 

On May 17, 1901, Herr von Minckwitz, a former chess champion, who had been reduced to poverty, stepped in front of an electric car in Berlin and was cut to pieces.  – Chicago Daily Tribune, May 19, 1901.

The oldest chess player in the world is said to be the Dowager Lady Carew.  Born in 1798, she has lived in three centuries.  She was a good player in her youth, and still enjoys the game.  She resides at Woodstown, Waterford, has the appearance of a lady about 80, and reads without glasses.  – Chicago Daily Tribune, May 19, 1901.

Maxx Judd died on May 7, 1906 of heart disease in St Louis, superinduced by excitement over the chess tournament progressing here.  He had been warned by physicians not to participate.  – Daily Capital Journal (Salem, Oregon), May 7, 1906.  He died in his room at the Monticelio hotel of angina pectoris.   He was a prominent wholesale cloak dealer.  He served as minister to Austria under President Cleveland.  He leaves a widow but no children.  – Fort Wayne Journal, May 8, 1906.

In 1909, Jose Capablanca took a break from Columbia University and traveled throughout the United States and Canada and gave simultaneous chess exhibitions.  He played 480 games, winning 446, losing 15, and drawing 19.  – The Cincinnati Enquirer, Dec 28, 1909.

Norman T. Whitaker, former University of Pennsylvania chess champion, now a student at Georgetown University, won 25 out of 26 games against the combined high school chess teams in Philadelphia.  Whitaker has a lengthy chess record, and captained the All-Collegiate American chess team which defeated Oxford and Cambridge universities in 1910, Whitaker winning all his games.  – Washington Post, Mar 28, 1913.

Jose Capablanca, the Pan-American chess champion, while in Chicago, played 71 exhibition games of which he lost only one and won all the rest.  – Middletown Times, Feb 3, 1919.

Samuel Rzeschewski, nine-year-old chess marvel, who defeated 21 of Europe’s foremost players at the same sitting, is now in the U.S.  The child is accompanies by his father, a wealthy linen merchant of Lodz, Poland, and his physician, Dr. Rosen.  He was met by his manager, Max Rosenthal.  During the voyage over on the Olympic, he played 11 opponents from the passenger list, including one blindfold game, and he won all his games in an hour.  – NY Times Herald, Nov 11, 1920.

On November 4, 1923, Alexander Alekhine played 54 games simultaneously at the Montmarte Chess Club in Paris against the best players in Paris and the provinces.  He won 46, lost 3, and drew 5.  By profession he is an examining magistrate who was ruined by the Russian revolution.  – Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Nov 5, 1923.

Because he “exhibited the typically bourgeois vice of putting his pocket book above has principles,” E.D. Bogolubov, chess champion of the Soviet Union, has been officially excommunicated by the chess section of the All-Union Soviet of Physical Culture.  The chess section declares he is no longer champion.  He is also no longer a member of the Soviet chess organization.  He was expelled when he expressed the desire to give up his Soviet citizenship in order to be able to attend a tournament in Miarno, Italy.  He was unable to go because the Italian authorities refused to vise his Soviet passport.  He wrote the Soviet chess organization declaring that in view of the difficulties of moving about Europe with a Soviet passport, he was thinking of assuming the citizenship of another country.  – Bridgeport Telegram, Jan 21, 1927.

A chess game with the contestants 11,000 miles apart – one of them in Antarctica-may be the result of a challenge which Dr. Norman Shaw, of McGill University, Montreal, will issue to Frank C Davies, physicist of the Byrd expedition.    – Harrisburg Evening News, May 11, 1929.

Samuel Reshevsky, at 19, is a member of one of the tennis teams at the University of Detroit, where he is studying accounting.  In one month, he played 1,500 games in Chicago, winning all of them with one exception, which was a draw.  – Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 24, 1931.

Herman Steiner, international chess champion, poses with his bride, the former Miss Selma Siegelman, concert pianist.  They are in Hollywood, California, where Steiner teaches movie stars how to handle knights and pawns.   – San Bernadino County Sun, Feb 16, 1933.

Norman Whitaker, imprisoned lawyer companion of FBI agent Gaston B. Means, convicted of swindling Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean of $104,000 on the pretense of recovering the kidnapped Lindbergh baby, is attempting to bargain for his freedom by telling where the money is hidden.  Whitaker also is said to have declared that Means knows the “inside story” of the Lindbergh kidnapping.  – The Daily Republican (Monongahela, PA), March 15, 1934.

Albert Einstein, contrary to published statements, doesn’t play “three-dimensional” chess for recreation.  The fact is that he doesn’t even play chess in two dimensions.  He seems to think he has a better use for his mind.  He doesn’t play bridge either.  Bridge is work, he says, not relaxation.  What does he do for recreation?  He walks and plays the piano or violin.  Music and physical exercise are ideal for brain-workers.  – The Daily News (Canonsburg, PA), April 8, 1936.

Dr. Robert B. Griffith, 58-year-old Beverly Hills physician who played for the University of Pennsylvania in the early days of the Triangular College Chess League, was killed in a head-on collision on the highway south of Ventura, California.  Herman Steiner, chess editor of the Los Angeles Times, was seriously injured.  – Brookyn Daily Eagle, June 10, 1937.

War in Europe has echoed in the world chess tournament here in Buenos Aires with the French and Polish players unwilling to face the Germans and Bohemia-Moravians “to move bits of wood while cannons are being moved at home.”  The French and Polish teams have asked the committee to call off their matches for the Hamilton Russell cup against representatives of the hostile nations.  – Pampa Daily News, Sep 7, 1939.

George Koltanowsku, Dallas Chess Club director, can’t send any more chess lessons to his students in South America.  Wartime mail regulations prevent mailing abroad any abbreviations, nicknames, and codes.  Koltanowski was told by Postmaster J. Howard Payne.  – Denton Record-Chronicle, March 31, 1942.

Humphrey Bogart, who became a chess expert while in the navy, plays his favorite game for the first time on the screen in “Casablanca,” being made at Warner Bros.  – Salt Lake Tribune, July 13, 1942.

Arnold Denker, the new US chess champion, was interviewed at his Forest Hills apartment.  “Back in 1936, the Russian government offered me a professorship in chess at a certain university.  It was a lucrative offer, but I did not care to leave my own country.  Naturally, I felt like going to a land where chess means so much – where crows of from 50,000 to 90,000 gather to watch a chess match.  It was a tempting offer.”  Denker is a representative of a firm of distributers of canned goods.  He is a former New York golden gloves boxer.  – The News-Herald (Franklin, PA), May 12, 1944.

Vera Menchik Stevenson, world champion among women chess players, was killed by a “robot” bomb in England.  Her sister, Olga Rubery, also a noted chess player, was killed by the same bomb.  – Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, July 14, 1944.

In his long trip by air via Dallas, Herman Pilnik of Argentina lost his plane priorities.  In an effort to get to Hollywood for the Pan American Congress, he proceeded by motor and the car, exceeding any normal speed limit, crashed into a parked and unlighted truck near El Centro.  Pilnik woke up in a hospital, where he was cared for two days.  He showed up with a thoroughly bandaged head.  – Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug 2, 1945.

The US and Russia will square-off for an international chess championship to be conducted by way of commercial short wave radio hookup between Moscow and New York City.  Each nation will be represented by 10 leading players.   The tournament will last 4 days.  Headquarters of the US contestants will be in the ballroom of the Henry Hudson Hotel.  The New York Chess Federation, sponsor of the match, has billed the contest as “the first international sports event since 1939.”  -- Kingsport News, Sep 1, 1945.

A book on chess published in 1474 and reputedly the second volume printed in the English language brought $7600 at a Southeby’s auction today.  “The Game and Playe of Chesse” by Jackobus De Cessolis, translated by William Caxton, once formed a portion of the library of Lord Cunliffe.  – Harrisburg Telegraph, May 13, 1946.

In his exhibition at the Brooklyn Library, Max Pavey played 13 games with different opponents without losing one.  He drew two games against Edmar Mednis, a junior member of the Marshall Chess Club, and Sylvan Katske.  The other 11, including eight-year-old Bobby Fischer, were defeated.  – Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan 18, 1951.

Oklahoma City: Bobby Fischer, the 13-year-old whiz, after playing his fourth master opponent in a row asked me: “When do I get a fish as an opponent?”  So I promptly gave him Fischeimer of Chicago.  George Koltanowski.  – The Corpus Christi Times, Nov 11, 1956.

Bobby Fischer is learning to ski under the tutelage of Olympic competitor Toni Kastner – and in return is teaching Kastner to play chess.  Many chess champs have been good atheletes.  Capablanca was a top tennis star and Boris Spassky clears six feet in the high jump.  – Ogden Standard-Examiner, Jan 27, 1958.

In June 1960, Clinton Curtis got in a fight with Michael George over a chess game in a Greenwich Village bar.  Curtis threw a punch at George but missed.  George then struck Curtis on the head with a beer glass and killed him.  – Anderson Herald, June 2, 1960.

Americans, Russians, and New Zealanders are deep in strategic moves in the Antarctic – fighting out an international chess tournament.  New Zealanders at Scott base are playing Lazarev base, a Russian base, while the Americans are playing the Russian station at Mirny.  – Kansas City Star, July 31, 1960.

Marcel Duchamp is interested in chess.  To raise funds for sending an American chess team abroad, he persuaded eminent painters to donate their work for a Parke-Bernet action.  He visited the set of “Paris Blues” to teach Duke Ellington to play chess.  Ellington watched Duchamp demonstrate the fundamental moves, then made his sole comment, “Crazy, man, crazy.”  -- Daily News-Texan, May 10, 1961.

A man was seized last night in the slaying of a 280-pound master chess player, whose body was found stuffed in a walk-in wall safe of a basement laboratory on Manhattan’s upper West Side.  The victim, Abe Turner, 38, had been stabbed 9 times.  Turner did general office work for “Chess Review” magazine.  He had been stabbed in a hallway of the building and his body dragged to a basement laboratory used by a doctor who has an office on the front floor.  Seized was Theodore Smith, 38, a clerk-typist with “Chess Review.”  He admitted to the slaying and said he threw away the knife in Central Park.  – Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Oct 26, 1962.

With a check, a mate, and a whirling of gears, a Soviet computer has defeated an American computer in a long-distance game of chess.  Three more games remain to be played by the computer at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics here and its adversary at Stanford Univeristy.  Tass said the Russians, with one game already in hand, had an unbeatable lead in a second game, led in a third, and trailed in only one game.  Institute director Abram Alikhanov said he had sent a telegram to Stanford reporting that the Soviet machine scored mate on the 19th move.  – Independent (Long Beach, CA), March 11, 1967.

During the Middle Ages, chess was outlawed at Oxford University in England.  It was called “noxious, inordinate and unhonest,” according to National Geographic.  – San Bernadino County Sun, April 12, 1970.

At speeds quicker than the eye can see, the 3rd annual U.S. Computer Chess Championship flashed to a close with the perennial champion still on top.  Northwestern University’s Control Data Corp 6400 computer, undefeated in the 3 years of competition, overwhelmed Carnegie-Mellon University’s Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-10 computer in the final game.  The event, part of the 25th annual conference of the Association of Computing Machinery, was played over 3 nights, with 8 computers entered in the single-elimination tournament.  Prof. Monty Newborn of Columbia University, said, “in possible 15 years computers will be able to beat the likes of Bobby Fischer.”  -- Fairbanks Daily News, Sep 2, 1974.

A new Bobby Fischer or the same one, just mellowed a bit because, as he put it, “the pressure is off” and he is enjoying a new lifestyle after winning the world chess title.  Fischer signed all the autographs the fans wanted, posed for all the pictures asked of him and smiled his way through a rare interview when he appeared Sunday in conjunction with the final round of the Church’s international chess tournament.  When asked why he wasn’t competing in the tournament, Fischer replied, this money is a joke.”  Although a performer in the Church’s field said Fischer may not choose to defend his world title in 1975, Fischer quashed the possibility with a loud laugh.  – The Childress Index, Dec 12, 1972.

Two convicted murderers overpowered a corrections officer in his apartment and escaped.  Sgt. George Winslow had been accompanying the two prisoners on a promotion tour for a chess tournament among inmates when the escape occurred.  The inmates were identified as Claude Bloodgood III, 49, and Lewis Capleaner, 30.  – Danville Register, Jan 6, 1974

Russian grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi has a present for his 140-year-old son, Igor – 44 “rock” record albums.  Korchnoi, who is playing Brazilian Henrique Mecking in Augusta, Georgia, was presented the albums by radio station WBBQ.  Igor had sent a list of the albums he wanted to his father and WBBQ got in touch with distributers who supplied the records.  The albums included records by Alice Cooper, the Beatles, Brocul Harum, Moody Blues, Simon and Garfunkle, and the Osmonds.  – Aiken Standard, Jan 29, 1974.

Paul Keres was stricken with a heart attack at Helsinki, Finland, where his plane touched down returning from his Canadian visit and before he could cross by boat to Estonia.  His wife was notified by phone, but the shock hospitalized her, too, with a heart attack.  Keres was under intensive care for several days before succumbing on June 5, 1975.  His body lay in state in the city’s concert hall and tens of thousands filed past.  His obituary ran three pages in a local paper. – Ottawa Journal, July 15, 1975

I interviewed Walter Browne in Henderson, NC  on Dec 3, 1975 during his USA simul tour.  He started playing chess at 8, but wasn’t aware of chess books and magazines until age 11.  He later joined the Manhattan Chess Club and became quite active.   He had no chess trainer and was basically self-taught, but studied chess every day and practiced.  He became a GM in 1969.  As an Australian citizen, he could represent Australia and that zone easier than an American to participate in zonal tournaments to get his International Master title first.  He sees chess in a depression after Fischer, being on the decline since early 1974.   Europe Is much better for tournaments.  He had just played in a tournament in Milan, which had 400 spectators.  America doesn’t support chess and he was trying to encourage chess through his American tour.  He set a record of playing over 1,000 players in a 30 day period.  He had over 100 players in Denver and Pittsburgh.   There was no question that Fischer could beat Karpov in a world championship match.  – Pawn Power weekly article by Bill Wall, published in Statesville Record & Landmark, Statesville, NC, Dec 13, 1975.  I wrote a weekly chess column from 1975 to 1978.

12-year-old Harry Kasparov became the youngest winner in the 30-year history of Soviet youth chess championships when he topped the list of 66 under-18 competing at Tbilisi.  Kasparov is a pupil of ex-world champion Mikhail Botvinnik. – Lincoln Star, Jan 20, 1976