Then in October 1929, the U.S. stock market crashed and sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. As a result everything came crashing down which resulted in the Great Depression, a severe worldwide economic depression that was the longest, deepest and most widespread depression of the 20th century. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investing dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and employment as failing companies laid off workers. The United States did not fully recover until about 1939!
In chess the year 1930 started off with the end of the Hastings Christmas Congress. The Premier Section was won by Capablanca and the Premier Reserves section was won by George Koltanowski and T.H. Tylor.
From January 16 to February 4, the great international tournament was held in San Remo, Italy. The winner was Alexander Alekhine, who scored an incredible +13 -0 =2. And, this was no weak tournament; the top finishers were followed by Nimzovich, Rubinstein, Bogoljubow and Yates.
On May 2, 1930, Isidor Gunsberg (1854-1930) died in London. He was German champion in 1885. In 1890, he lost a world championship match to Steinitz by a score of +4 -6 =9.
In July the chess Olympiad was held in Hamburg and the gold medal was won by the Poland team (Rubinstein, Tartakower, Przepiorka, and Frydman). The silver medal went to Hungary and the bronze to Germany. There were only 18 teams and the U.S. team (Isaac Kashdan, Frank Marshall, Harold Phillips, Herman Steiner and James Anderson) finished sixth.
Players on the U.S. team are well known except for Phillips and Anderson. Harold M. Phillips (1874-1967) played in tournaments for 0ver 70 years and he was also an organizer. A lawyer by profession, in 1903, he won Manhattan Chess Club Championship. In the first half of the 20th century he was one of the leading organizers of American chess life.
He was the organizer and director of the great New York Tournament (1924), President of the Manhattan Chess Club in the 1930s, President of the Marshall Chess Club, President of the Intercollegiate Chess League. At third board in the 1930 Olympiad he scored +0 -1 =1.
Mystery man James A. Anderson (1906-1991) was a three-time St. Louis Chess Champion who defeated Alekhine in a simultaneous exhibition in 1929. He finished second in the 1929 Western Chess Association Championship ahead of Herman Steiner, Norman Whitaker and Samuel Factor.
As a reserve in the 1930 Olympiad he scored _3 -7 =7.
Anderson finished fourth at the 1931 Western Chess Association Championship in Tulsa and won the St. Louis championship in 1932 with 8.5-0.5 before disappearing from the chess world at the age of 26. He died in Antioch, California.
Also, during the Olympiad the second Women's World Championship was contested and Vera Menchik defended her title in a five player double round tournament. The other players were Paula Wolf-Kalmar, Wally Henschel, Katarina Beskow and Agnes Stevenson.
On August 17, 1930, Leo Forgacs (aka Leo Fleishmann), the 1907 Hungarian champion, died in Berettyoujfalu, Hungary at the age of 48.
In September of 1930 a long forgotten international tournament was held in Frankfurt that was attended by notable participants Nimzovich, Mieses, Saemisch and Kashdan.
Nimzovich was fresh off his win at Karlsbad the previous year and took clear first here continuing his campaign to challenge Alekhine to a match for the World Championship.
Second place went to Isaac Kashdan, the recent Manhattan Chess Club champion, who went undefeated a full two points ahead of the third place finishers.
Kashdan (1905-1985) was twice U.S. Open champion (1938, 1947) and played five times in chess Olympiads, winning a total of nine medals and his Olympiad record is the all-time best among American players. At one time he as considered a possible world champion candidate.
He was never able to win the U.S. Championship because during his prime years Frank Marshall steadfastly refuse to accept a challenge for Kashdan. After Marshall died Rebuen Fine and Samuel Reshevsky had surpassed his as the best U.S. players.
As good as Kashdan was there was never a book of his best games published, probably because although he was a powerful tactician, his real strength was in the endgame and he rarely played flash, eye-catching games. Arnold Denker pointed out that a slight touch of rigidity occasionally crept into Kashdan's play and he sometimes resorted to artificial maneuvers to obtain the two Bishops.
The following short, sharp game against Natha Mannheimer (1885-1951) is an exception to Kashdan's usual games. Mannheimer was was born in Birkenau, Germany. In 1884, he became a religious education teacher. He moved to Heidelberg in 1893 and studied mathematics and natural sciences at Heidelberg University, receiving his PhD 1898.
He worked as a mathematics teacher from 1897 to 1900 and then moved to Frankfurt where he won the city championship in 1908 and 1920.
As a result of the Krystalnacht in November of 1938, in late 1939 or early 1940, Mannheimer emigrated to Rio de Janeiro and lived there for the rest of his life.
Nathan Mannheimer–Isaac Kashdan0–1E10FrankfurtFrankfurt08.09.1930Stockfish 14.1
Queen's Gambit Declined 1.d4 f6 2.c4 e6 3.f3 d5 4.f4 This seldom
played move poses black a surprising number of problems and in recent years
has been tried by players such as Ding Liren and Magnus Carlsen. Nevertheless,
with careful play black should be able to equalize. dxc4 Seldom played, but
not bad. Besides the text black has a couple of other reasonable tries to
equalize. 4...e7 This routine move is also a reasonable try, but it makes
no attempt to gain any advantage. 5.e3 0-0 6.c3 b6 7.cxd5 xd5 8.xd5 exd5 9.e2 c5 10.dxc5 bxc5 11.0-0 c6 12.c1 e6 with an equal position.
Lindstedt,J (2345)-Raaste,E (2370)/ Tampere 1991 4...b6 The Q-side
fianchetto also works well for black against 4.Bf4 5.e3 d6 6.xd6 xd6 7.c3 0-0 8.d3 a6 9.cxd5 exd5 10.0-0 xd3 11.xd3 c6 A draw was agreed in
a few more moves. Grela,K (2305)-Cukrowski,F (2416)/Krakow 2018 5.e3 b4+ 6.fd2 Right square, wrong N. b5 Already white is in a difficult position
plus he is a P down. 7.a4 c6 8.axb5 White is barking up the wrong tree. He
sees a chance to win a P, but in the process loses the game. 8.b3 trying
to break up the Q-side P mass runs into c3 and black wins. 8.e2
is his best chance. d5 9.g3 0-0 10.0-0 d7 11.c2 and black is better,
but at least white's position is not yet so bad that he has to resign! 8...cxb5 White's position is probably lost 9.xb8 White's position completely
falls apart after this move. 9.f3 is his only hope, but after d5 10.b3 a6 11.e2 Black has the happy choice of either 11...O-O or 11...c3 c3
This results in a lot of fireworks so castling was safer. 11...0-0 12.bxc4 bxc4 13.0-0 c3 14.xa6 xa6 15.xa6 cxd2 Black s better without having had
to wade through a lot of tactical complications. 12.0-0 12.f1 a5 13.xa5 c2+ 14.bd2 c1+ 15.d1 xa5 and wins. 12...0-0 Taking the N was
also good. 13.xb8 b7 14.e5 cxd2 15.xb5 f6 16.g3 xe3 17.xe3 d5 18.f3 xb5 19.xd2 e5 black is better. 9...xb8 10.xa7 a5 10...e5
also packs a wallop. 11.dxe5 e4 12.e2 xd2 13.xd2 0-0 with a winning
position. 11.f3 b6 This gives white a chance to stay in the game. 11...0-0 was safe and solid. 12.c6 d7 13.d6 a8 14.a6 c6 15.xa8 xa8 16.xa8 xa8 Black's position is such that in Kashdan's hands the win would be a
matter of technique. 12.a8 A blunder in a bad position. 12.xa5
would at least have given him a fighting chance. xa5 13.g3 attacking the
R and the g-Pawn. d7 14.xg7 f8 15.xh7 with at least some counterplay.
In fact. in Shootouts white managed to draw 3 games while losing two, so 12.
Rxa5 was clearly worth trying. 12...xa8 13.xa8 0-0 White's Q is in
danger and he now loses time getting it to safety. 14.f3 b7 15.f4 15.d1 Hoping to defend the Q-side is not much help. e5 16.e2 exd4 17.exd4 xg2 is just awful for white. 15...e4 16.f3 xd2 17.xd2 e8 To
support ...e5 18.h4 Well, he had to move a piece and this is as good as
any. e5 19.f2 exd4 20.e4 f5 21.d1 xd2 22.xd2 fxe4 23.fxe4 a5+
White resigned. 23...a5+ 24.e2 d3+ 25.f3 f8+ 26.g3 c7+ 27.e5 xe5+ 28.h4 xf2 29.e2 dxe2 30.b3 f6+ 31.g3 xg2+ 32.h3 h6# 0–1
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