Miscellaneous

I discovered Chessville quotes by various players to be quite entertaining and they even offer some good advice.

365Chess online database of 3-1/2 million games  This site has games by players from Manfred Aab of Germany to Sofiya Zyzlova of the Soviet Union and includes unrateds to GM’s. For example GM Olivier Renet of France has 1070 games and Michal Maciazek, rated 1453, from Poland has 3 games.  My favorite player, Reshevsky, has 1356 games.  Maybe you have some games in it. You can search by openings…Grob’s Attack (1.g4) has 759 games.  Of which, by the way, White won 37.5% and lost 44.9% which isn’t too much worse than Bird’s Opening (1.f4) where White won 35.5% and lost 40.0%.  Also check out their chess puzzles. 

Best Game of the last century?  Kasparov-Topalov, Wijk aan Zee, 1999…with great notes

The case of the idiot tournament directors:

Arthur W. Dake was born on April 8, 1910 and learned chess at the age of 16 after leaving high school and working as a seaman. Dake's career was unusual in that he did not play in a tournament until he was very strong.  His first tournament was the 1930 New York State Championship where he finished 3^rd.  He was mostly active from 1930 to 1938 then dropped out of chess until he made a comeback at Lone Pine 1975.  On the basis of his early results a grandmaster title application was submitted on his behalf and awarded in 1986.

Dake's result in New York 1931 featured an unfair forfeit loss to Isador Turover. According to American Chess Bulletin, when Turover was short of time and was down to 15 minutes Dake came to the umpire, Dr. Norman Lederer, and asked him to watch Turover's clock. Lederer told Dake that it was none of Dake’s business!! In this tournament the clocks had no flag, and the rule was that a white space had to show between the black dot and the minute hand.

When Turover had no time left, Dake waved his hands several times pointing to the clock. Dake won the game but Lederer ruled that Dake had disturbed Turover's concentration and awarded the game to Turover by forfeit. Of course Dake appealed and the referee, Alvin Cass, ruled that he found the penalty to be harsh since Turover had a lost position but ruled "Discipline must be maintained..." and the forfeit stood.

Final Results, New York International Tournament 1931
J.R. Capablanca 10 (out of 11)
Isaac Kashdan  8.5

Alex Kevitz  7.0           

I.A. Horowitz  5.5             

Abraham Kupchik    5.5

Herman Steiner 5.5       

Anthony Santasiere   5.0          

Isadore Turover   4.5             

Arthur Dake      4.5

Edward Lasker  4.0        

Frank J. Marshall   4.0

Maurice Fox     2.5