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| Harry Borochow |
The temperature dropped from 90 degrees to 70 in a matter of minutes and trees and power lines were down all around town and our cable TV was out for several hours.
Today let's take a look at National Master Harry Borochow. He was born in what is now the Ukraine on June 15, 1898 and passed away at the age of 95 on October 20, 1993 in San Luis Obispo, California.
The Borochow family immigrated to the US in 1903, when Harry was five years old. He was the youngest brother of Ber Borochov, a Marxist Zionist leader and one of the founders of the Labor Zionist movement. Ber was also a pioneer in the study of the Yiddish language. Harry visited Israel several times and was in a continuous touch with David Borochov, Ber's son.
Borochow had a long chess career, but I could find little on his life. He started playing at the age of eight, but did not get beyond the being an average player until 1917 when he won the Central College of New York Championship, scoring 15.5 out of 16 games and the New York City Chess Club Championship with a score of 7-1.
From 1930 to 1932, he won the California State Championship. He directed the First Piatigorsky Cup (1963) and Second Piatigorsky Cup (1966) tournament.
In 1928, he won the Correspondence Chess League of America's North American Championship which was actually concluded in
1930.
You can read an interesting letter Borochow wrote in 1961 to Walter Fried, President of the American Chess Foundation in which he discussed the circumstances surrounded the infamous aborted Reshevsky-Fischer match. He ended the letter with the statement that unless Fischer changed his behavior, the Steiner Chess Club would do nothing in the future to support any of his chess activities. READ
Borochow had wins over a number of very strong players, but, oddly, the game he thought his best ever was a postal game he played against the obscure A. H. Palmi from Jackson, Michigan. Palmi's wife tied for first in the 1933 Western Open women's championship with Mrs. P. H. Sagerdorph, also of Jackson. In that game Borochow's opponent resigned in a drawn position!
The game we will be looking at today was the game he thought was the second best he ever played. His opponent was A. H. Bierwirth. I was unable to uncover any information on Bierwirth other than in 1911-1912 he was playing for the Manhattan and Brooklyn Chess Clubs. Then between 1927-1931 he played in three California Championships.
The game was played in the 1925 Los Angeles Championship. The 1920s were a prosperous time for Los Angeles. That was the era when the name Hollywood became synonymous with the film industry and plentiful job openings attracted a lot of immigration, especially from the rural Midwest and Mexico.
The city's population more than doubled in size from 577,000 to over 1.2 million.
Extensive modernization took place with a dramatic increase in automobile traffic, suburban sprawl and the formation of western business and financial centers.
In 1925, professional boxing was very popular which was under the new 10 round boxing rules. After the Olympic Auditorium, constructed for the 1932 Summer Olympic Games was opened in January of 1925, the first heavyweight fight was also held between Jimmy McLarnin and Fidel LaBarba.
In the movees, the Hollywood film Ben Hur premiered in December 1925 at the Million Dollar Theater and it ran for six months. The occasion was a grand affair with a grand orchestra and stage show.
A. H. Bierwirth–Harry Borochow0–1A48Los Angeles City Championship1925Stockfish 15
London System 1.d4 f6 2.f4 British player James Mason was the first
well-known proponent of the London System which came to prominence in an
international tournament held in London in 1922. It was a way of countering
the Orthodox Queen's Gambit Declined and the hypermodern setups that began
rising in popularity during the 1920's. It gives white a solid position and
sometimes it can lead to sharp attacks. d6 3.e3 bd7 4.f3 g6 It's my
belief that the fianchetto is the most solid way of meeting the London and
Colle. 5.d3 g7 6.h3 This move was favored by Janowski in order to
preserve the B on f4, but Borochow questioned why it was necessary to lose a
tempo when black is not compelled to eliminate the B. Still, because white has
an extra move, 6.h3 cannot be considered bad. 0-0 7.g4 This is injudicious
as white, whose development is nowhere near complete, is not yet in a position
to launch an attack. 7.h2 e8 8.0-0 e5 9.dxe5 dxe5 10.e4 with equal
chances. Senger,R-Vogel,R (2245) Germany 1982 7...e8 7...e5 at once is
also quite strong. 8.dxe5 dxe5 9.xe5 Correct was 9.Bg5, but black still
has a considerable advantage. xe5 10.xe5 d5 Black is winning. Canicio
Navarro,S (1895)-Prol Nogueira,I (2183) Cartagena 2007 7...e8 was played
in Stadelmeier,M-Bracker,A (1905) Berlin 2005 8.g5 d5 9.c4 xf4 10.exf4 e5 Black is much better. 8.e4 Threatened with the advance of black's
e-Pawn, ...e5. ...e4, white loses another tempo. e5 9.dxe5 xe5 10.xe5 xe4 Borochow mistakenly thought this sacrifice was warranted by the fact that
white has lost three tempi, thus exposing his K on the open e-file and the
square b2 will be under attack. Also, if he played any other move the center
would be blocked which would be to white's advantage. 10...dxe5 was the
best move and after 11.g5 e6 12.f3 h6 13.e3 e7 14.c3 d7 15.h4
and the chances are equal. 11.xe4 xe5 12.xe5 xe5 13.c3 White better.
f5 This is best although it should not have yielded black any advantage. 13...e7 is met by 14.d4 f5 15.f4 xe4+ 16.xe4 xe4+ 17.xe4 fxe4 18.f2 which is to white's advantage. In Shootouts white scored 5-0. 14.f4
Borochow (again incorrectly) state that this is the beginning of a tactical
sequence in which he had seen further that his opponent. In his opinion white
should have played on with a P down, but with some compensation for black's
positional weakness. It is, in fact, white's best move and Stockfish give
white a one P advantage here. e8 15.0-0 fxe4 16.xe4 This
move is where white went astray and lost the game. 16.d4 h4 17.xe4 xh3 18.f6+ f8 19.xe8 g3+ draws. 16.d4 c5 is possible if black wants
to avoid the draw, but after 17.e3 d5 18.xc5 h4 19.f2 e3 20.g2 e6 21.xd5 ac8 22.d4 ed8 23.c4 xh3 24.f5 xd5 25.cxd5 f3 26.f1 xd5 27.xe3 the game is still drawish. 16...xe4 A well played sacrifice.
Borochow points out, this time correctly, that failure to play this would lead
to white establishing a post for his N on f6 and, after preparation, the
advance of the g-Pawn leading to a winning position. 17.d5+ e6 18.f5 gxf5 19.gxf5 g5+ 20.h1 h8 21.g1 h5 22.g2 g6
The only move that does not lose. White finally picks up the R which was the
aim of his 14th move, but it doesn't matter because his position is lost. 23.fxg6 xh3 24.g3 24.g7+ This leads nowhere. g8 25.f2 f1+ 26.h2 f3+ 27.g2 e8 Against Re1 28.xf1 xf1+ 29.g1 f3 30.f2 xf2 31.xf2 xg7 with a won ending. 24...f1+ 25.h2 f3+ 26.g2 xg2+ 27.xg2 xg2+ 28.xg2 hxg6 The ending is lost so white resigned. All-in-all a nice game by
Borochow. Even if the initial concept was flawed, his finish was flawless. 0–1
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