Tuesday, September 10, 2019

A Man With a Legacy of Losses

Our hotel marina
     Now that we are back from a mini-vacation things have returned to normal. Last week saw us leaving on Tuesday and making a 600 mile drive to Hampton, Virginia in spite of the possibility that we could encounter hurricane Dorian.
     Dorian was an extremely powerful, long-lived and destructive storm that devastated the northwestern Bahamas and caused significant damage from Florida to North Carolina and eastern Canada. 
     When we arrived in Hampton it was not clear how close the hurricane would come, but they were predicting damaging winds and dangerous storm surges. With our hotel being very near the mouth of the Hampton River, storm surges could have presented a serious problem. While the residents seemed unconcerned about the possibility, we were concerned enough that we bought some food to keep in the hotel room just in case. 
Interstate Route 66 near Front Royal, Virginia

     As it turned out, on Friday there was some gusty wind and light drizzle that lasted until about 7:00 in the evening when things cleared up and the storm was past us and headed for Canada where it inflicted even more damage.
     An amusing comment on Chessgames.com says the player whose game is featured today has one of the most impressive lists of lost games the commentator had ever seen for a relatively little-known player. He lost to Mieses, Euwe, Tartakower, Znosko-Borovsky, Smyslov, Najdorf, Keres, Larsen, and Kasparov...a legacy of losses anyone could be proud of! 
      “He” was Dr. Martin Christoffel (September,2, 1922 – April 3, 2001, 78 years old) of Switzerland. Christoffel was born in Basel and was Swiss co-champion in 1942 and won it outright in 1943, 1945, 1948 and 1952. 
     He was awarded the IM title in 1952, became a correspondence IM in 1989 and a Senior Correspondence IM in 2000. He won the Swiss Senior Championship in 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1994. From 1987 to 1991, he was president of the Swiss Chess Federation. 
     In January 1946, less than one week after the Hastings Christmas tournament, the newspaper Sunday Chronicle sponsored a Victory Tournament in London. The idea was to celebrate the end of the war with masters from all over the world playing. 
     It soon became clear that Botvinnik and the Russians weren’t going to show up and the participation of the World Champion Alekhine was protested against by Max Euwe and the Dutch Chess Federation and by Arnold Denker and the USCF, because of alleged Nazi sympathies. The result was Alekhine was uninvited. 
     The players were divided into two equally strong groups, A and B. The A-group consisted of California Champion Herman Steiner, Dr. Ossip Bernstein who had quit chess back in 1907 and the nearly sixty year old Tartakower who was the recent Hastings winner. 
     Also playing were the Czech Champion Karel Opocensky and Paul List (1887-1954), a Russian Jewish player, who emigrated to Britain in 1937 but never took British citizenship. Rounding out the list were Spain’s child prodigy Arturo Pomar, W.A. Fairhurst, British and Scottish champion, Reginald Broadbent, the UK Northern Counties champion, Harry Golombek, soon to become British champion and Joe Stone. 
     Joe Stone was born as Joseph Strachstein on March 16, 1906 in London. The British Chess Magazine has some games for him in 1933 as J. Strachstein. One assumes his name change was made shortly before or during WW2. He died in 1972 in London. The identity of the Czech player Friedmann is an enigma. See HERE 
     In the A Group Herman Steiner lost one game (to Bernstein), but still finished first a half point ahead of Bernstein. Tartakower was third. 
     The Group B consisted of Dutch champion and former World champion Dr. Max Euwe, US champion Arnold Denker, Christoffel, the former British champion 64-year old Sir George Thomas, Gerald Abrahams a strong British amateur and chess book author and Imre Konig. 

     Konig was a strong Hungarian amateur who lived in Austria, the UK and the United States. In 1938, he emigrated to England and in 1949, he became a naturalized British citizen; in 1953 he moved to California. 
     The others in the B Group were: Antonio Medina, the Spanish champion, Francisco Lupi, a Portuguese master and a friend of Alekhine, the Belgian champion Paul Devos, William Winter the former British champion (1935, 1936), Gabriel Wood, the London champion and Richard Newman the British Army champion. 

Group B 
Euwe lost one game (to Devos) and drew one (to Konig). Christoffel had no draws and lost three games: Euwe, Denker and Konig. 

1) Euwe 9.5 
2) Christoffel 8.0 
3) Denker 7.0 
4-6) Thomas, Abrahams and Konig 6.5 
7-8) Newman and Medina 45 
9-11) Devos, Winter and Wood 3.5 
12) Lupi 2.5 

     Christoffel’s game against Devos was a comedy of errors as both players were for many moves under the misapprehension that black couldn’t win white’s N with ...exd4. Still, it was an entertaining game with a nice finish. 
 

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