Irene Vines, Mystery Lady

     Irene Vines won the Louisiana State Championship in 1956 when she topped a strong field of 47 players with a score of +5 -0 =1. She was undefeated until the last round when she met the strong Tennessee player Robert S. Scrivener. 
     Vines was from New Orleans and in 1953 she tied for 1st place in the"C" section of the New Orleans Championship ahead of her husband, a doctor, who finished fourth. In 1954 she finished 7th. 
     Her finish in the 1954 U.S. Women's Open qualified her a spot in the 1955 U.S. Women's Championship. After six rounds she was leading the even with a score of 5-1, her one loss being against Willa Owens. After that she began to fade and the battle became a race between the 1954 US Women's Champion, Gisela Gresser of New York City and Nancy Roos of Los Angeles who ended up tied at 9-2 and were declared co-champions. Third place was taken by Mona Karff, fourth by Jacquelyn Piatagorsky. Vines finished fifth with a score of 7.5-3.5. 
     On the 1955 USCF rating list her rating was 1916. After the '55 US Women's championship she seems to have disappeared from the national chess scene and I wasn't able to uncover anything else about her.
 

A Tussle Over a Buick

     The 1955 US Open held in Long Beach, California had a rather bizarre and controversial finish. Reshevsky and Rossolimo tied for first place and cash prizes are generally split equally while trophies are awarded on tie breaks. The problem with this tournament was that first prize was a 1955 Buick Century that had been donated by a local dealer. 
     Tiebreaks involve adding up the adjusted scores of opponents and that was the problem. In this event adjustments were made by awarding a half point for unplayed games or a loss on a forfeit and subtracting a half point for a bye or a win on forfeit. It caused a problem. 
     In round two, Reshevsky defeated James Bolton who ultimately finished with 7 points. In round 7, Bolton received a forfeit win from Ronald Gross (who finished with 6 points). 
     Bolton had defeated Gross in a game that was actually played, but AFTER the game Bolton was informed by a spectator that while he was away from the board, Gross had made a move, taken it back and played another one.  An enraged Bolton demanded the TDs award him the game on a forfeit and they complied.  It's hard to imagine Bolton's demand because winning on a forfeit would mean no rating points. Bolton was rated 2110 and Gross 2123 at the time though both would eventually become strong masters.  However, at this time the rating system was new and players weren't so sensitive to such things as rating points. 
     Thus, because Bolton received a forfeit win, his adjusted final score for tiebreak purposes was 6.5, not 7.0 points, and that lowered Reshevsky's tiebreak score enough that Rossolimo got the car. 

        In today's dollars...$25,500

     As it turned out though, the decision was the right one because Kenneth Harkness later pointed out in Chess Review that even without deducting that half point, Rossolimo would have been awarded the car.  That was because the first two tiebreak systems would have resulted in a tie, but the third method would have given Rossolimo the Buick by a 0.25 point margin. The two players could have settled the issue themselves when they met in round 8, but they elected to play a 17-move draw. 
     Rossolimo's win over Irving Revise, who finished tied for places 6-9 with Anthony Saidy, Ivan Romanenko and James T. Sherwin with 8.5 points, was interesting. John W. Collins called it one of Rossolimo's most most clean-cut wins. It was anything but! When Collins annotated the game for Chess Life his notes were almost worthless because he missed so many points and made it look like Rossolimo's play was near perfect and Revise was the recipient of a stern thrashing. As is often the case, things weren't so clean-cut. If only one had Stockfish in 1955! 

Joseph Redding

     In 1884 Johann Zukertort spent July 2nd to July 25th in San Francisco giving simultaneous chess exhibitions and his visit was arranged by Joseph D. Redding and J. E. Tippett. 
     At the time Redding was a young lawyer and Zukertort played a 5-game match against him on even terms. The conditions were that Redding played white in all five games and the opening was the Evans Gambit. Zukertort wrote that he considered Redding to be the strongest player in San Francisco and though he (Zukertort) won all five games the match “was a hard tussle.”
     Redding was born in Sacramento, California on September 13, 1858. Redding, California was named after his father. In 1871 he entered the California Military Academy at Oakland and graduated in 1873. From there he entered the Urban Academy which was a college prep-school. After graduating in 1876 he entered the scientific department of Harvard University, but attended lectures at the Harvard Law School. 
     In August, 1879, he took employment in the law offices of McAllister & Bergen in San Francisco and passed his law exams that same year. Besides practicing in San Francisco, Redding also appeared before the US Supreme Court to argue cases. In 1881 e also represented the Southern Pacific Railroad Company specializing in the land departments
     One of his more important legal cases argued before the Supreme Court was when the US government attempted to arrest and try one Indian for killing another Indian when both of them were on the reservation. Redding represented the Indian who was acquitted by the jury because the US government did not have jurisdiction on the reservation, at least at that time. Redding's legal practice was large and very lucrative for the day. It was estimated that his practice raked in somewhere close to half a million in today's currency. 
     Redding also had a passion for music and he began composing at an early age and successfully published numerous compositions. At the age of thirteen, he was was considered a “phenomenon” and accompanied the pianist Hugo Mansfeldt on a concert tour.   While in college he wrote several comedies which were produced in many of the colleges societies of New England. Later Redding collaborated with operetta writer Victor Herbert on a grand opera called Natoma, set in California in the 1820s. The opera has been called the greatest flop of all time. 
    One of Redding's major passions was pisciculture...yes, there really is such a thing...it's the controlled breeding and raising of fish. As a result, he was appointed special agent of the United States Fish Commission for the Pacific coast. He was instrumental in the passage of an act of Congress in getting the services of a ship to investigate the marine fisheries. Redding's attempt to change the fish-eating habits of Americans were immortalized in verse by Ambrose Bierce - Here lies Joseph Redding, who gave us the catfish. He dined upon every fish except that fish. 'Twas touching to hear him expounding his fad. With a heart full of zeal and a mouth full of shad. The catfish miaowed with unspeakable woe. When Death, the lone fisherman, landed their Jo. 
     Another major area of interest was charitable aid and he often contributed income from his plays to charity.  He frequently spoke to audiences on a variety of subjects and contributed articles to the leading magazines and literary journals of the day on a variety of subjects. 
     Redding was a social animal and was elected president of the Bohemian Club in 1885.  He appreciated art and was elected president of the San Francisco Art Association as well as being an esteemed member of several other clubs. 
     Redding was clearly a decent chess player. In addition to his games against Zukertort, in 1888 won a San Francisco tournament ahead of W.R. Lovegrove, a strong master Redding beat visiting G.H.D. Gossip in a match for a purse of $50. Jackson W. Showalter was impressed with Redding’s play during his 1891 visit to San Francisco, and delayed leaving the city to try to arrange a match against Redding, the results of which seem to have been lost. 
     In his later years Redding split his time between New York and San Francisco, appearing in various events at the famous Manhattan Chess Club. He played games with world champions Steinitz, Lasker, and José Raúl Capablanca and once gave a speech at the annual Manhattan Chess Club dinner in 1907. 

     Few of his games have survived. In spite of his accomplishments, what's he best remembered for?  His association with the Bohemian Club of San Francisco.  The Bohemian Club was envisioned as a place where interesting people could have fun without a lot of social rules. The club motto is "Weaving Spiders Come Not Here", a line taken from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The motto implies that outside concerns and business deals are to be left outside. Nowadays the club has been involved in controversy. See the Washington Post article Bohemian Grove: Where the rich and powerful go to misbehave.
     The following game is very instructive because of the K and P ending.  Studying it will pay dividends!
 

Dr. Bela Rozsa

     Dr. Bela Rozsa (February 14, 1905 - 1977) was born in Kecskemet, Hungary. His father was the opera singer Lajos Sandor Rozsa, a leading baritone in Vienna and Budapest. Bela Rozsa was a concert pianist, composer, and professor of music theory at several southwestern United States universities, primarily the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. He taught at The University of Tulsa School of Music from 1945 to 1974, serving as head of the department of music theory and director of graduate study. 
     He began his musical studies at the Liszt Academy in Budapest and at age thirteen began to accompany his father in concerts. In 1921, the family came to the United States where his father joined the New York Metropolitan Opera. The day after Rozsa arrived in the United States he applied for US citizenship. 
     His father died in tragic circumstances a year after joining the Metropolitan Opera and as a teenager Rozsa had to support himself and his mother, working as a stockboy and a movie pianist playing in one of those cheap theaters of the day. At the same time he continued his musical studies at the Institute of Musical Art (later the Juilliard School of Music), receiving a diploma in composition in 1928. 
     After winning the Seligman Prize for chamber music composition he had the opportunity for further study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Rozsa continued to live in New York City, conducting orchestras and choruses, producing operas, and serving for five years as staff pianist and organist at the National Broadcasting Company. He began graduate studies at the University of Iowa and in 1943 and was awarded a doctorate in Composition and Psychology of Music. Before joining the faculty of the School of Music at Tulsa University, he taught at Baylor University and was the head of the music department at Iowa Wesleyan University. 
     Rozsa left a great legacy of music and scholarship. Tulsa University hired him in 1945 as a composer and for the next 30 years he made a huge impression on his students as he served as head of the department of music theory, director of graduate study and teacher of organ and piano. To honor his heritage, the School of Music established the Bela Rozsa Memorial Concert and Composition Competition. 
     The chairman of of the university's theater department described Rozsa as a colorful fixture on campus who would cruise around in his red Corvette and often dance a jig for his students. One former student described him as a perfect teacher who gave each student a life long appreciation of fine music. In a 1960 class memory book one former student had a different opinion. He did not approve of Dr. Rozsa, his most memorable professor, and did not think he was a good teacher, but at the same time added that he learned a great deal from him, so was forced to admit that perhaps he taught well after all. 
     Rozsa was a latecomer to chess who did not learn how to play until he was 34 years old.  His his progress was rapid and in 1940, only a year after learning how to play, he won the North Texas Championship and followed up by winning it in 1942 and 1948. In 1948 he also tied for first in the Southwestern Open. Rozsa was a ten-time Oklahoma State Champion and in 1952 won the Correspondence Chess League of America's Tenth Grand National Correspondence Championship.
     The following game is from the 46th US Open held in Peoria, Ilinois July 9-21, 1945. The 33-player turnout was the second best since 1938, but most of the top players were missing. The annual tournament in Ventnor City ended one day before Peoria and the Pan American event in Hollywood started a week afterward. 
     The 1945 US Open was divided into six preliminary sections and Rozsa played in Section B where he finished first ahead of Einar Michelsen with an undefeated 5-0.   The top two finishers from each section were seeded into the finals. 
     Michelsen (born 1885, died May 15, 1952 at the age of 66) was born in Odense, Denmark. In 1903 Michelsen helped found the Danish chess magazine Skakbladet. He emigrated to the US in 1905, living in Chicago except for a few years in New York during World War I. In 1907, he won the championship of the Western Chess Association in Excelsior, Minn. In 1908 he won the Kansas City chess championship and in 1909 was champion of the Chicago Chess and Checker Club. He placed fourth in the 1945 US Open at the age of 60. 

Finals result: 
1) Anthony Santasiere 9.5 
2) Frederic Anderson 7.0 
3) Albert Sandrin 6.5 
4) Einar Michelsen 6.0 
5-7) William Byland, Milton Finkelstein and Roger Johnson 5.5 
8-10) Earl Davidson, Robert Konkel and Bela Rozsa 5.0 
11) Constantine Rasis 4.5 
12) L. Walter Stephens 1.0 

     On the USCF Spring 1955 rating list Rozsa was rated 2101 which is not very high by today's standards, but on that list there were only 42 players with ratings of Master or above. His opponent, Robert Konkel of San Francisco, was rated 2204. In those days Masters were rated 2300 and over while Experts were rated 2100-2299. 

  
     When Tartakower wrote the winner is the player who makes the next to last blunder he could have used this game as an example. It's exciting though!
 

General Government Chess Championships

Karl Gilg

     The General Government chess championships (Schachmeisterschaft des Generalgouvernements) were a series of five Nazi tournaments held during World War II that took place in occupied central Poland. 
     Hans Frank (May 23, 1900 – October 16, 1946), the Governor-General of General Government, was the patron of those tournaments because he was an avid chess player. He possessed an extensive library of chess literature but was also a good player and at one time Bogoljubow was a guest at Frank's castle. 
     Frank, who became known as the Butcher of Poland, was a German lawyer who worked for the Nazi Party during the 1920s and 1930s and later became Adolf Hitler's personal lawyer. After the invasion of Poland, Frank became Nazi Germany's chief jurist in the occupied Poland "General Government" territory. During his tenure throughout World War II (1939–45) he instituted a reign of terror against the civilian population and became directly involved in the mass murder of Jews. Frank publicly boasted that there were not enough trees in the General Government to cut down to make the paper required to list all of those people he had had killed in his capacity as Governor General. 
     Frank was captured in southern Bavaria by American troops on May 3, 1945. He attempted suicide twice but failed both times. He voluntarily surrendered many of his personal diaries to the Allies, which were then used against him when he was indicted for war crimes and tried before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg from November 1945 to October 1946. 
     During the trial he converted to Roman Catholicism and claimed to have had a series of religious experiences. Frank confessed to some of the charges and supposedly expressed remorse on the witness stand. He and Albert Speer were the only defendants to show any remorse at their trials. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and was hung. 

Hans Frank after he was hung

     The General Government tournaments began when Frank organized a chess congress in Krakow in November, 1940. Six months later he announced the establishment of a chess school lead by Efim Bogoljubov and Alexander Alekhine. When Joseph Goebbels heard of Frank's chess activities he was enraged. Goebbels wrote, “Frank is pursuing a policy which is anything but that sanctioned by the Reich. I have been shown letters in which he orders the setting up of a chess seminar in Krakow under Polish management. That is evidently now very important when it comes to providing the necessary basic foodstuffs for the Reich and to putting together the organization that this requires. Frank sometimes gives the impression of being half mad. Some of the incidents that have been reported to me concerning his work are simply dreadful.” 
     The main participants in these events were: Alexander Alekhine, Efim Bogoljubow, Paul F. Schmidt, Klaus Junge, Karl Gilg, Josef Lokvenc, Hans Mueller, Wolfgang Weil, Paul Mross, Teodor Regedzinski, Leon Tuhan-Baranowski and Fedir Bohatyrchuk. Other minor German masters participated on occasion. 
     The first General Government Championship was held in Krakow/Krynica/Warsaw in November,1940 and resulted in a tie between Bogoljubow and Anton Kohler ahead of Kurt Richter. The second event was held in Krakow and Warsaw in October, 1941 and ended in a tie between Alekhine and Schmidt with Bogoljubow third. 
     The third Championship was held in Warsaw/Lublin/Krakow in October, 1942. Alekhine finished ahead of Junge and Bogoljubow. The fourth was held in Krynica in November–December, 1943. Josef Lokvenc finished ahead of Wilhelm Kuppe and Bogoljubow who shared second and third. The fifth, and weakest, Championship was held in Radom in February 1944 and Bogolojubow won it ahead of Bohatyrchuk and a player named Hans Roepstorff. 
     Krakow (also Cracow or Krakow) is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River, the city dates back to the 7th century. The city has traditionally been one of the leading centers of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life and is one of Poland's most important economic hubs. 
     After the invasion of Poland at the start of World War II, Krakow became the capital of Germany's General Government. The Jewish population of the city was forced into a walled zone known as the Krakow Ghetto, from which they were sent to German extermination camps such as nearby Auschwitz and concentration camps like Płaszow. 
      In the first event the unheralded Anton Kohler (circa 1907 – September 7, 1961), a German master from Munich, tied Bogoljubow for first place. Their individual game was drawn and both players lost one game to also-rans. Kohler to last place Max Eisinger and Bogojubow to Paul Mross 
     In 1937 Kohler shared 3rd in Stadtprozelten and took 12th in the German Championship. In 1938 he came first in Heilbronn and tied for 8–9th in the German Championship. In 1938/39 he tied for 1st–3rd in Karlsruhe. And, in 1939, he tied for 4–5th in the German Championship as well as sharing first in the first General Government tournament in 1940 in which the below game was played. 
     He did not play much after World War II, but in 1952 he won the Bavarian Championship and finished 27th in the 1953 German Championship. 
     Karl Gilg (January 20, 1901 - December 4, 1981) was a German master. Gilg belonged to the German minority in the newly-formed Czechoslovakia after the end of the First World War.  He learned chess as a 4-year-old and took an active part in Czechoslovakian chess, representing them in the Olympiads in 1927, 1928 and 1931. 
     Gilg participated in numerous international tournaments with modest success. In Semmering in 1926 though he finished poorly he defeated Alekhine in their game.   After Czechoslovakia had been occupied by the Germans, Gilg began taking part in the German championships. 
     Gilg served in the military during World War Two and after the war he lived in West Germany where he was a teacher and continued to play in German tournaments. He won the city championship 25 times and the Bavarian championship four times. He was awarded the IM title in 1953. 

1) Anton Kohler and Efim Bogoljubow 7.5 
3) Kurt Richter 7.0 
4) Josef Lokvenc 6.0 
5) Paul Mross, Hans Mueller, Max Blumich and Carl Ahues 5.5 
9) Karl Gilg 4.5 
10-11) Georg Kieninger and Ludwig Rellstab 4.0 
12) Max Eisinger 3.5 

Kohler's win in the following game is most interesting. 
 

Wetzell on Chess

     I mentioned Rolf Wetzell's book Chess Master at Any Age in the previous post and thought it would be interesting to take a look at one of his games. Wetzell was a National Master although these days his rating has slipped to Expert which isn't bad for a guy who is 81 years old. 
     Wetzell's flash card method included tactics and positional ideas that he missed in his own play as well as those he missed when playing over one side of master games (using a clock) and trying to guess the next move. His idea was that by concentrating on those positions where he missed something important he could build a mental database of patterns he would recognize the next time they appeared. This is really another method of note taking and studies conclude that good note taking improves the learning and retention. See the post on Chess Notebooks. 
     In this game I mention that the win would require technique. What, exactly, is technique and how do you acquire it? According to Frank Marshall the hardest thing to do is to win a won game. It often requires technique, the ability to convert an advantage into a full point. As GM Daniel Naroditsky stated, simply sitting on a position and squeezing the life out of your opponent is sometimes not enough; even if you have outplayed your opponent positionally you must often switch to concrete calculations that involve tactics to finish them off. I guess knowing when and how to that also could be considered “technique” because it also comes under the heading of knowing how to win a won game. So, how do you get technique? I have no idea. 
     The following game is filled with a lot of tactics, most of which Wetzell either missed or didn't comment on in his book. And, it also shows that even masters can make a lot of mistakes. I believe that his opponent in this game was rated somewhere near Expert (2000) strength at the time this game was played and, as should be no surprise, it was insufficient tactical skills that prevented him from taking advantage of the opportunities the master presented him. 
     The lesson to be learned is that in addition to endgame knowledge, we all need to hone our technique, positional skills and tactical ability. Not to discourage anybody, but even after reaching the coveted 2200 mark, you will still be a long way from being anywhere near as good as a Grandmaster. Just see my anecdote about Quniteros at the end of THIS post.
 

Learning Chess by Spaced Repitition and Flash Cards

A FLASH CARD by ROLF WETZELL

     Alexey Suetin wrote in How to Play the Opening that the study of openings requires a good memory, but one should not blindly memorize as many variations as possible. Players should find games that illustrate the variations that they have chosen to learn. He also notes that some people are better at remembering visual features such as positions, while others are better at remembering move sequences and it is not feasible to provide a recipe that works for everyone. 
     Spaced repetition is a learning technique that repeats content after increasing time spans according to learning success, i.e. faster for stuff you haven't grasped yet, longer if you do well. In chess it is either used to learn a certain set of easy tactical exercises by heart, what Michael de la Maza called the "woodpecker method." This technique is supposed to improve your tactical pattern recognition. It can also be used to learn an opening repertoire by heart.
     Thousands of studies have replicated the finding that people forget what they’ve learned at a predictable rate, but relearning the material at spaced intervals dramatically improves long-term recall. 
     Spaced repetition is a learning technique that incorporates increasing intervals of time between subsequent review of previously learned material in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect. The method is commonly used in situations where a learner must acquire a large number of items and retain them indefinitely in memory, so the method is well suited for learning a second language learning. 
     For most students cramming for tests is a common practice when they need to learn a large amount of material that is going to be on the exam, but doesn't work for long-term retention. 
     We learn most things through intense focus on one topic, testing our knowledge of the topic, then moving onto the next in a never ending series. Skills and knowledge build on one another and a review what we’ve learned before moving on to the next subject is normally the way we approach learning. This works for getting to proficiency quickly but falls apart when it comes to retention. 
     Short version: after you have memorized something, you need to review it or you will forget it. But, it is much more effective to space out reviews over the course over several days, rather than cramming all the revisions in a single session. This is what is called the spacing effect. 
     Some chess players have tried this approach using flash cards. Rolf Wetzell used this method and described it in his book Chess Master At Any Age. 
     When it comes to using flash cards, research has shown that in order to get the best results, the intervals between review of old cards should gradually increase which allows you to focus on things you still haven't mastered, while not wasting time on cards you remember very well. A computer program can be very valuable in assisting in this process by keeping track of how difficult you find a card. 
     There is free software for spaced repetition based learning called Mnemosyne. It's a free flash card generator which uses an advanced algorithm to schedule the best time for a card to come up for review. The flash cards with content that you find difficult to recall will come up more often, while Mnemosyne will display what you remember well less frequently. Mnemosyne uses the method of spaced repetition to firm up your memory against the content that you tend to forget easily. The initial setup will involve some work as you have to manually insert the content that you are studying and create the flash cards. I am not sure how well this software would work for chess, but there are other free programs available for download that players might find valuable for making flash cards. 
     One free program is Open Flash Cards that is based on Power Point. Another easy way to make flash cards is with Power Point itself. One chess player used the Mnemosyne system and credits it with raising his USCF rating from 1800 to over 2000. He describes the method in a three part Blog article.  Part 1  Part 2  Part 3
     You can also use a chess program to create flash cards. An example of a player who used Wetzell's method in conjunction with Fritz can be seen HERE. 
     The biggest advantage I see to this method is that it helps remember postions that are important to YOU personally.