On Nov 25, 4:43 pm, "Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod)"
wrote:

As we all know, Levinfish was not a participant of the
great tournament, while he was already a very strong master,
who played in tournaments against players like Alechine, Burn,
(he won a game from him by that time), Marshall, Nimzovitz,
Rubinstein, Schlechter, Vidmar, ...

Yes, true, Levenfish won a game from Burn,
but also against Alechine.

However, in his words:

I was helping the organizing committee to place
[meaning: to find the room and bed for night]
participants. (p.46)

Thus Levenfish was very close to the tournament.

Regards,

Wlod

On Nov 25, 7:43 pm, "Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod)"
wrote:
On Nov 25, 6:43 am, "Chess One" wrote:

I always thought this was a Fide-originated title, but no! Its:

It was used earlier in an informal way. There were relatively many
(formal or informal) masters, and some of them deserved an
emphasis and more respect, so they were called by a stronger
word like "grandmaster" or similar.

Original Grandmasters: The first 5 players to be given the title

"Grandmaster" were Alexander Alekhine, Jose Capablanca,
Siegbert Tarrasch, Emanuel Lasker and Frank Marshall.
After the conclusion of the 1914 St Petersburg tournament,
Czar Nicholas II of Russia officially bestowed the
title of "Grandmaster of Chess" on these 5 players.

Do you really believe that it would be polite
to invite the chess world champion and tell him:

You know Emy, until now you didn't prove much.
But now we will give you a chance. Show that
you really know how to play chess and the Tsar
himself will name you his grandmaster. You can
forget your meaningless World Champion title.

Until Soviets there was no official interest in chess
in Russia that I know of. On the contrary, Soviets
were always stressing the fact that it was only in the SU
that chess got a serious consideration, while chess was
dramatically struggling during the tsars time. (BTW, I don't
like the "czar" spelling, because in Polish "cz" stands
for the English "ch" sounud, just like "sz" for "sh"; thus
word "czar" in Polish is what "charm" is in English; word
"czar" is related also to "magic").

I think that the autobiographic book by G. Levenfish

"Selected games and reminiscences"

is a strong, I'd say decisive(!), evidence against
claiming any involvement, direct or indirect, of Tsar
in the tournament. The book was published by
"Fizkultura i Sport", Moscow, 1967, six years
after Levenfish died (the delay was
"due to various circumstances" -- says the note from
publisher).

As we all know, Levinfish was not a participant of the
great tournament, while he was already a very strong master,
who played in tournaments against players like Alechine, Burn,
(he won a game from him by that time), Marshall, Nimzovitz,
Rubinstein, Schlechter, Vidmar, ... However, in his words:

I was helping the organizing committee to place
[meaning: to find the room and bed for night]
participants. (p.46)

Thus Levenfish was very close to the tournament.
Most likely he was helping in more than one way but
he mentions modestly just one aspect due to the needs
of narration.

Levenfish devotes to the tournamentover two and a half
pages, almost three (pp.45-48). The whole book has just
under 200 pages. At the end of page 45, Levenfish says
that Nimzovitz has caught up with Alechine in the last
day of the Russian championship (by beating Levenfish :-).
Then A & N played a match which ended in a draw [thus they
became co-champion; wh]. Levenfish writes casually:

"... and after the match between them ended in draw,
they were both admitted to the grandmaster tournament".

It's clear that Levenfish considers the Petersburg 1914
tournament so strong that he calls it a grandmaster tournament.
There is nothing official about it, nothing about any relation
between the result in Petersburg tournament (like reaching the
2nd stage) and the title. There is just this casual respect for
the level of the participants.

On page 45/46 Levenfish writes that the chess organization
was able to attract a very strong set of grandmasters. Once
again not a word about ESTABLISHING the title. On the contrary,
Levenfish considers the participants to be grandmasters to
start with, ALL of them. Next he writes (the beginning of
page 46):

"First of all, the world champion Lasker
gave his agreement, true, only for an extra
honorarium."

Once again, nothing about Tsar. Levenfish continues:

"Five prizes were established".

That's all! Not a word more about it. Nothing about
titles! Nothing about Tsar. The text devoted to the
Petersburg tournament ends in (p.48):

"The Petersburg tournament gave many examples of
real chess art, and it is too bad that to this
time there is no collection [tournament book; wh]
of the games of such a first class event [competition].

The Petersburg tournament ended near the end May,
and already for August the consecutive congress
of the German chess union in Mannheim."

After reading Levenfish, I don't believe for a moment
that Tsar was involved in the Petersburg tournament in
any way. I am sure, that always cultural Levenfish would
mention any such accent. Also, if Tsar would give the
titles then you could imagine that he would also contribute
some funds toward the organization of the tournament or,
certainly, toward the prizes. Not a word from Levenfish
about any of this, while we all know how important the
prizes were to the chessplayers. Even the lack of a Russian
tournament book is a pretty good evidence against any Tsar's
involvement. I am sure that Levenfish would say some
words about Rubinstein, one of the main favorites, missing
a chance for the title which he had deserved for a long
time. Levenfish was attached to Rubinstein. He writes how
Rubinstein was lost already before the tournament had started,
due to his psychological (psychiatric) state. Indeed,
Levenfish describes how it was impossible to find a room
for Rubinstein, be it in an excellent hotel or in a private
home, because each room was to Rubinstein too noisy or
too quiet. Not winning the GM title would be to Rubinstein
an insult added to injury. But Levenfish doesn't say a word
about any such considerations.

The main thing is however, that in the light
of Levenfish book you can take just any strong tournament
and claim that a royalty gave the guys titles; it would
be an equally (un)founded statement. Why, in the case of a more
obscure (less famous) tournament you could try to make
a stronger argument :-) (saying that people have short
memory but for the most prestigious tournaments :-).

Regards,

Wlod

Thanks, Wlod. It's good to get information from sources like the
Levenfish book, that are not easily available in the West. That's the
sort of thing this group is supposed to be used for.

On Nov 25, 4:43 pm, "Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod)"
wrote:

The text devoted to the
Petersburg tournament ends in (p.48):

"The Petersburg tournament gave many examples of
real chess art, and it is too bad that to this
time there is no collection [tournament book; wh]
of the games of such a first class event [competition].

The Petersburg tournament ended near the end May,
and already for August the consecutive congress
of the German chess union in Mannheim."


The second part of the citation got garbled. Let me rewrite it:


"The Petersburg tournament ended near the end of May,
and already for August the consecutive congress
of the German chess union in Mannheim was announced."

Sorry, regards,

Wlod

On Nov 25, 4:43 pm, "Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod)"
wrote:


Levenfish devotes to the tournamentover two and a half
pages, almost three (pp.45-48).

All of it plain text, not a single diagram, not
a single chess move.

The whole book has just under 200 pages.

Regards,

Wlod

Here is what I wrote on this subject in a post
several years ago:

There is an often repeated story that the Czar
himself named five players as grandmasters
at the St. Petersburg tournament in 1914.
In some circles, there has been a lot of
skepticism about it lately. Searches have been
made through newspaper reports at the time
without finding any reference to the Czar in
connection with the tournament. The reports
seem to indicate that ALL the participants were
regarded as grandmasters BEFORE the start of
the event. I once found a book that indicated
that the Czar and his family were all out of
town at the time. Marshall's book seems
to be what got this Czar-story going. He
wrote that he and four others had been
given the grandmaster title by the Czar. Marshall
is the same fellow who said that one of his games
once thrilled spectators to such an extent that
they showered the board with gold coins.

It is completely speculation on my part, but
my guess is that all that happened in 1914
was that some official ceremoniously read
a statement on behalf of the Czar saying
something like, "Congratulations to the
grandmasters of chess."

More on the Czar-story can be found in the
works of Edward Winter.

On Nov 25, 5:11 pm, Taylor Kingston wrote:

[...] It's good to get information from sources like the
Levenfish book, that are not easily available in the West.
That's the sort of thing this group is supposed to be used
for.

Thank you Taylor. Levenfish' book is exceptional in
more than one way. I was thinking many times about
translating it simply for rgcm, (and started to do
so once or even twice), but the garbage we
have here on a daily basis was always stifling my
reflex. (These days I don't have energy even to
make a photocopy :-); actually, psychologically,
to make a photocopy is harder for me!).

I used to have a nice collection of "white crows"
(old and rare books), several of them were pre WWII.
Then the politics kicked in in 1967-8 in an extra
dirty way and I lost most of my findings. Well,
that's life, I guess.

Levenfish stresses how nice were Schlechter and Lasker.
After hours of playing in a dead draw position (the
whole game took 8 hours) Levenfish somehow lost a game
against Schlechter. I guess from their conversation
that somehow Levenfish' position had to be slightly
stronger or more comfortable. Schlechter asked his
parter after the game why he did not offer a draw, to
which Levenfish responded "but this game was of such
a great importance to you." (Schlechter was one of the
strongest players in the world at the time, while
Levenfish was still young, so he didn't offer the draw
out of his respect for the opponent). Then Schlecher told
Levenfish: "In a completely even position I have no right
to refuse draw". The conversatin took place after the next
to the last round of the Carlsbad, 1911. BTW, Rubinstein
was annoyed with Levenfish for losing that game against
Schlechter :-) - Teichman would win the tournament anyway,
but Schlecher caught up with Rubinstein, and the two of
them shared 2-3 place.

Note: the 1911 year entry in the

"TOURNAMENTS, INTERNATIONAL--1851-1951"

table of "The Encyclopedia of Chess", by Anne Sunnucks,
is messed up.

Both Lasker and Levenfish played in all three Moscow
tournaments. In the first one, in 1926, Lasker had
serious chances to win the tournament when he lost
to Levenfish. In the next two they drew their games.
Levenfish provides the annotated scores of all 3 games,
but about the last one he writes that it was a quite boring
game, which he includes only for what happened after
the game. The end position was a clear draw indeed.
But Lasker offered drawa also earlier; and for this
Lasker had apologized to Levenfish after the game:

"I had no right to propose draw, because you had
realistic chances, but I didn't see all the dangers
of my position."

Then Levenfish wants his young readers to think
about Lasker's honorable attitude.

For a contrast, Levenfish writes that Vidmar and Marshall
were playing in copletely dead draw positions, back and force,
until indeed he finally deconcentrated, made an error, and
let them win.

I've written earlier that Levenfish won a tournament
game from Alechine. They spent some years in Petersburg
and played one another quitre a bit. Levenfish
admires Alechine talent, and he writes that "advantage
in our meetings was on the Alechine's side". This sounds
to me like Levenfish was doing not too bad, perhaps something
like 4:6 on average? -- but I don't know.

Regards,

Wlod

WHAT MARSHALL WROTE

Supposedly the source for this story is Marshall's 1942 memoir "My
Fifty Years of Chess." Anyone have that book? How does it describe
the
titles being bestowed: by the Tsar in person or in absentia? If in
person in St. Pete, that would be hard to reconcile with the Tsar
being in the Crimea. -- Taylor Kingston

Here's what Marshall wrote in MY FIFTY YEARS OF CHESS (page 20-1)

In the Spring of the fateful year 1914 I took part in one of the most
notable chess events which has ever taken place -- the St. Petersburg
Grand International Masters Tournament.

The participants included the reigning world champion, Dr. E. Lasker
and two future world champions, Capablanca and Alekhine. The latter, a
young man of 21 in the uniform of the Military School of St.
Petersburg, and the youthful Aaron Nimzovich, had both qualified for
the tournament by tying for first place in the Russian National which
had just concluded.

Russia was also represented by Akiba Rubinstein and Dr. O.S.
Bernstein; Germany by Dr. S. Tarrasch; France by D. Janowski; Great
Britain by J.H. Blackburne and I. Gunsberg; the U.S.A. by myself.

The St. Petersburg Chess Society was responsible for the organization
and conduct of the Tournament, the Tsar himself subscribing 1000
roubles towards the prize fund. As it turned out, the prizes were more
than covered by the record gate of 6,000 roubles....It was at this
tournament (see Games 83 and 84) that the Tsar of Russia conferred on
each of the five finalists the title "Grandmaster of Chess."



Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod) wrote:
On Nov 25, 4:43 pm, "Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod)"
wrote:


Levenfish devotes to the tournamentover two and a half
pages, almost three (pp.45-48).

All of it plain text, not a single diagram, not
a single chess move.

The whole book has just under 200 pages.

Regards,

Wlod

On Nov 25, 7:18 pm, Louis Blair wrote:


It is completely speculation on my part, but
my guess is that all that happened in 1914
was that some official ceremoniously read
a statement on behalf of the Czar saying
something like, "Congratulations to the
grandmasters of chess."


Sure, one may try to be devil's advocate,
but I doubt that even that much had happened.

Wlod

On Nov 25, 7:21 pm, "Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod)"
wrote:


Note: the 1911 year entry in the

"TOURNAMENTS, INTERNATIONAL--1851-1951"

table of "The Encyclopedia of Chess", by Anne Sunnucks,
is messed up.

The whole table has the columns misaligned and perhaps worse.

Wlod

On Nov 25, 7:25 pm, " wrote:
WHAT MARSHALL WROTE

Here's what Marshall wrote in MY FIFTY YEARS OF CHESS (page 20-1)

In the Spring of the fateful year 1914 I took part in one of the most
notable chess events which has ever taken place -- the St. Petersburg
Grand International Masters Tournament.

The participants included the reigning world champion, Dr. E. Lasker
and two future world champions, Capablanca and Alekhine. The latter, a
young man of 21 in the uniform of the Military School of St.
Petersburg,

It was not a "Military School of St. Petersburg"
but a school for future lawyers and diplomats,
for students from good (aristocratic) and well
to do families. I wonder what the pictures show.


and the youthful Aaron Nimzovich, had both qualified for
the tournament by tying for first place in the Russian
National which had just concluded.

[...]

The St. Petersburg Chess Society was responsible for
the organization and conduct of the Tournament, the
Tsar himself subscribing 1000 roubles towards the prize
fund. As it turned out, the prizes were more
than covered by the record gate of 6,000 roubles....

How was Marshall so familiar with the financial
aspect of the tournament? Do we have any historians-
economists around? The claim to me seems not plausible
on the historic-psychological-custom grounds. An eastern
autocrat like Tsar plays a God-like figure. When he gives
an award it should blind you with its excess. And here
Tsar would donate merely 1/6 of what the gate brought?!
That would be highly EMBARRASSING for Tsar, he would
be laughed at, he would be widely known for being
stingy, he would be a butt of the jokes a 100 times
more popular than the whole chess itself.

It was at this tournament (see Games 83 and 84)
that the Tsar of Russia conferred on
each of the five finalists the title "Grandmaster of Chess."



And what about earlier Marshall's comments about
the same games and the St. Petersburg 1914 tournament?

When FIDE introduced the formal title, were there any
stories published, be it FIDE or anybody else, about
the history of the title? Wasn't it exact time to
dwell on the tradition and previous history?

Regards,

Wlod