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Chessville
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The Mad Aussie's Chess Trivia From the Mad Aussie, Graham Clayton Reprinted from past issues of The Chessville Weekly, "The Mad Aussie's Chess Trivia", brought to you by the Mad Aussie himself, Graham Clayton. Graham earned his nickname from fellow ChessChatters because of his penchant for playing unusual openings in his correspondence games. Trivia Taking A Break: Between August 1922 and November 1925, the only "serious" chess that Jose Capablanca played was to compete in the 1924 New York international tournament. Give Me A Break: In all of the game scores that have survived, there are no examples of Andre Philidor playing the Philidor's Defence as Black. Chess Problems: During the first round of the 1931 Bled international tournament, spectators created so much noise and distraction that the remainder of the tournament was held in a smaller hall, with spectators forbidden to smoke and make noise. Chess Politics: When FIDE was established in 1924, the USSR did not become a member, as it believed that FIDE was a "bourgeois" political organization. The USSR did not join FIDE until 1946. Playing Rarely: After defeating Jackson Showalter in a match in 1909 for the title of US chess champion, Frank Marshall defended his title only once, against Edward Lasker in 1923. He remained champion until 1936, when he voluntary relinquished the crown so that a tournament could be organized to determine who the next US chess champion would be. Playing Elsewhere: In July 1963, Bobby Fischer declined an invitation to compete in the first Piatigorsky Cup tournament in California, which featured players such as Petrosian, Keres, Gligoric, Reshevsky and Benko. This was probably due to the way his match with Reshevsky ended, a match also sponsored by Ms. Piatagorsky. He instead traveled to Wisconsin to take part in the Western Open in Bay City, which was a weekend Swiss tournament with a first prize of $750. Fischer won the tournament with a +7, =1 record. Young Understudy: One of Ruslan Ponomariov's "seconds" during his 2001 FIDE WC match against Vassily Ivanchuk at Moscow was the IM Sergei Karjakin, who was only 12 years of age at the time. Chess Professionals: From 1775 to 1792, Andre Philidor would spend February to May giving chess lessons and blindfold displays at Parsloe's Chess Club in St James Street, London. Philidor would charge a crown for a lesson. In the early 1850's, Bernhard Horwiz was similarly engaged as the chess "professional" at the Chess and Coffee Room in Oxford Street that was established by problem composer and author Josef Kling. Different Names: Hungarian GM Andreas Adorjan competed in junior tournaments in his home country using the surname "Jocha". Thanks to VD Pandit of India for this piece of trivia! Lawrence Ball adds, "In Adorjan's book Black is OK (Batsford 1988) he says, "At that time I was called Jocha. In 1968 I adopted my mother's surname, Adorjan." Same Name: Both Howard Staunton and Aron Nimzovich published books with the title Chess Praxis! Long Title: One of the longest, if not the longest title for a chess book was the title of a book published in India in 1829. The full title of the book was:
Long Games: In 2003, German correspondence chess GM Arno Nickel started playing simultaneously 6 computer programs. The computers were given the nicknames "Pluto", "Mars", "Saturn", "Jupiter", "Venus" and "Neptune". Nickel was not told of the real identity of each computer's program, so that he could not take advantage of any known vulnerabilities of a particular program. One of the Greatest Players: Prior to his loss to Teimor Radjabov at Linares in 2003, Garry Kasparov's last loss with the White pieces against a human rival at "classical" chess was back in 1996, when he was defeated by Vladimir Kramnik at Dos Hermanas. One of the Greatest Games: When Russian GM G Serper defeated I Nikolaidis at St Petersburg in 1993, he achieved the extraordinary feat of sacrificing ALL of his pieces in the course of the 48 moves. As well as the sacrifice of all 7 pieces, he managed to queen 2 pawns as well! Serper,G (2575) - Nikolaidis,I (2440) [E70] St Petersburg op St Petersburg, 1993 1.c4 g6 2.e4 Bg7 3.d4 d6 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.Nge2 Nbd7 6.Ng3 c6 7.Be2 a6 8.Be3 h5 9.f3 b5 10.c5 dxc5 11.dxc5 Qc7 12.0-0 h4 13.Nh1 Nh5 14.Qd2 e5 15.Nf2 Nf8 16.a4 b4 17.Nd5 cxd5 18.exd5 f5 19.d6 Qc6 20.Bb5 axb5 21.axb5 Qxb5 22.Rxa8 Qc6 23.Rfa1 f4 24.R1a7 Nd7 25.Rxc8+ Qxc8 26.Qd5 fxe3 27.Qe6+ Kf8 28.Rxd7 exf2+ 29.Kf1 Qe8 30.Rf7+ Qxf7 31.Qc8+ Qe8 32.d7 Kf7 33.dxe8Q+ Rxe8 34.Qb7+ Re7 35.c6 e4 36.c7 e3 37.Qd5+ Kf6 38.Qd6+ Kf7 39.Qd5+ Kf6 40.Qd6+ Kf7 41.Qxe7+ Kxe7 42.c8Q Bh6 43.Qc5+ Ke8 44.Qb5+ Kd8 45.Qb6+ Kd7 46.Qxg6 e2+ 47.Kxf2 Be3+ 48.Ke1 1-0 Greatness At Work: In 1919, Jose Capablanca gave a simultaneous exhibition in the House of Commons in London against Members of Parliament. One of Capablanca's opponents was Andrew Bonar Law, who went on to become Prime Minister in 1922 and 1923. Greatness In Decline: When Jose Capablanca scored 6/14 at the 1938 AVRO tournament in Holland, it was the first time in his international tournament career that he had failed to score 50%. Losing Queens: The 2003 Australian Correspondence Chess Championship featured three games in which a player lost a piece to a "clerical error" in setting up the position for analysis. Even more unusual was the fact that all three players lost their Queen due to the error. Losing Kings: There have been two unfortunate examples of where a player has passed away while competing in the final of the ICCF World Correspondence Chess Championship: V Ragozin (USSR) passed away during final #6, which was held between 1962 and 1965; and Y Shteynsapir (RUS) passed away during final #15, which was held between 1996 and 2002. In both examples their scores were annulled, and a replacement player was not chosen to take their place in the final. Champion of Champions: In 2001, the International Correspondence Chess Federation started a tournament to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the ICCF. The tournament featured all nine living ICCF World Correspondence Chess Champions:
The event was won by Mikhail Umansky of Russia, with the fantastic score of 7/8. Visit the ICCF site to learn more, and to download all the games from this once in a lifetime event. Champion of No One?: Being a CC player, I was saddened to read the following quote from Slovakian CC GM Dr Jozef Franzen, who finished second in the 12th ICCF WCCC (1984-91). "It is not very optimistic, but I think normal correspondence chess - I have liked it for 30 or 40 years - but it is destroyed, and it is finished by computers."
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