Instead we’ll listen to Leroy Van Dyke (born October 4, 1929) a country music singer best known for his hits, The Auctioneer (1956) and Walk On By (1961).
Van Dyke was born in Mora, Missouri. He lived in Spencer, Wisconsin but graduated from the University of Missouri majoring in agricultural journalism. He was catapulted into country music fame in 1956 with his composition "Auctioneer", (co-written with Buddy Black) which sold over 2.5 million records.
He wrote the song about the life of his cousin, National Auctioneers Association Hall of Famer Ray Sims, also a Missourian. Van Dyke had the lead role of a budding country music performer in the 1967 movie What Am I Bid?, in which Sims played himself as an auctioneer.
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Monday, September 16, 2019
Philip Richardson
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| Richardson in 1895 |
Whoever heard of the London-born Philip Richardson (November 12, 1841 – September 29, 1920)? Research didn’t turn up much although John S. Hilbert has written a biography of him that was published in 2009. The book which contains 193 games is a pricey $44.95.
In the 1890s Richardson was considered one of Brooklyn’s strongest players. Originally from England, Richardson’s family settled in Newburgh, New York in 1852 before moving to Brooklyn two years later. His early interest in chess was the result Morphy’s popularity and most of his games were published early in his career with many of them appearing in the New York Clipper. The New York Clipper, also known as just The Clipper, was a weekly entertainment newspaper published in New York City from 1853 to 1924. It covered many topics, including circuses, dance, music, the outdoors, sports, and theater.
Richardson, who also composed a few problems, was praised by George H. Mackenzie, the Scottish player who came to the US in 1863 and for 30 years was one of the best players in the country, when he wrote that Richardson was the most formidable opponent he met in the U.S. and sometime around 1880, Mackenzie gave Richardson the nickname of “the Stormy Petrel." The nickname doesn’t mean much to us, but, besides being a bird, the term “stormy petrel” is, according to Merriam-Webster, a) one fond of strife or b) a harbinger of trouble.
Besides Mackenzie, in his International Chess Magazine, Steinitz also praised Richardson’s play for his tactical prowess.
Richardson had good scores against Eugene Delmar (+9 -8 =2), Samuel Lipschutz (+1 -1 =4), Sam Loyd (+2 0 =0 ) and James Mason (+5 -7 =1).
Richardson and his brother owned a photography studio on Broadway in Brooklyn and given the necessity for sunlight for photography in that period, he would usually visit the clubs only when the weather was poor and he could not work. Although he was a founding member of the revived Brooklyn Chess Club in 1886 and most of his games were played there, he was also an honorary member of the Manhattan Chess Club which he often frequented.
The April 19, 1882 edition of the Journal of Indoor and Outdoor Amusements contained a brief sketch of Richardson. He was described as probably the “strongest of those American amateur players, who have never intruded themselves upon public notice by seeking reputation through display of their abilities.” The sketch continued: “He enjoys a national reputation as a player of the first rank, and...deservedly so.”
When Lipschutz and Richardson played their match in 1900, neither player was on the American team in the Anglo-American cable match of that year. Of course, there were no ratings in those days, but the estimated ratings according to Chessmetrics for the American team were: Pillsbury (2814) and Showalter (2664). They were followed by John F. Barry (2503), Albert B. Hodges (2555), Edward Hymes (2525), Hermann Voight (2580), Frank Marshall (2604), Samuel Bampton (2493), Charles Newman (2584) and Eugene Delmar (2444).
Lipschutz’ rating was 2737 and Richardson’s was 2655, so clearly both players could have been included on the U.S. team.
Saturday, September 14, 2019
First Anglo-American University Cable Match
Back in March the US team wanted to include students with more than five years standing to compete, but the British were having none of it. The five year limitation was blow to the US because E.E. Southard of Harvard was in his sixth year. At the time Southard was reported to be head and shoulders above his fellow representatives. In fact he was strong enough that he had been chosen as a reserve on the US team in the recent US vs. Britain cable match.
You’ve probably never heard of Elmer Southard (July 28, 1876 – February 8, 1920, 43 years old), but he was considered to be the most brilliant player who ever played for Harvard. A brilliant man, he achieved outstanding success in his profession as a neuropsychiatrist, neuropathologist, professor and author. Chessgames.com has only one of his games in its database; I suspect that scouring magazines of the period might turn up a couple, but they remain scarce. It was Southard who gave the Danvers Opening (1.e5 and 2.Qh5) its name which is named after the insane asylum where he worked.
On March 2nd, local chess circles received punch in the gut when 18-year old “boy chess expert” as he was described in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, William E. Napier (1881-1952) who had been studying music in Chicago, sailed for London aboard the RMS Campania. He was going to spend a couple of weeks there where he hoped to witness the Anglo-American cable match (not the intercollegiate match). After that, Napier was going to Paris and then on to Berlin where he intended to pursue his music studies after ascertaining which branch of music he was suited for.
The Daily Eagle stated that Napier was without a doubt the strongest player of his age in the world. He came to Brooklyn at the age of 13 and learned nearly all of his chess there where he made rapid progress. There were even some who considered his better than Frank Marshall. That was on the basis of a match they played in 1896.
The match was played in the Brooklyn Chess Club. Marshall was nineteen years old and Napier was sixteen years old. The winner of the match was to be the first to win seven games. At the time, Marshall was the New York State Junior Champion. Napier crushed Marshall by a score of 7 wins, one loss and 3 draws.
The Eagle claimed that but for an accident of birth which made him an Englishman, as a chess player he was thoroughly a representative of the United States. In 1905, Napier withdrew from the international tournament arena, became an American citizen in 1908 and began a career at an insurance company, becoming vice president of the Scranton Insurance Company. See Story of Scranton by Bill Steinke, page 67.
When the match began on April 21 there were six students from Columbia, Harvard, Yale and Princeton against six students from Oxford and Cambridge. The line up and results with the winners in bold.
1. K.G. Falk (Columbia) vs. C.E.C. Tattersall (Cambridge)
Ruy Lopez
2. A.S. Meyer (Columbia) vs. A.H. W. George (Oxford)
King’s Gambit
3. C. Arensberg (Harvard) vs. L. McLean (Cambridge)
Vienna Game
4. L.A. Cook (Yale) vs. L. Hulbert (Oxford)
Petroff
5. W.W. Young (Princeton) vs. G.E.H. Ellis (Oxford)
Anderssen's Opening
6. W. Catchings (Harvard) vs. H.G. Softlaw (Cambridge)
Four Knights Game
For the American team, Falk on first board drew snide comments from the Eagle. It was pointed out that Vienna had a world wide reputation as home to a school of young drawing masters and if New York harbored many more players like Falk, Vienna’s reputation would pass to New York. Falk, it was said, played only the Ruy Lopez and was always satisfied with a draw if he cannot get anything. The December 1899 issue of the Harvard Crimson was in agreement with the Eagle stating that "Falk is very conservative and seldom makes more than a draw against a good player." His opponent Tattersall on the other hand had a reputation among his fellow students as always being able to win; he tried his best this time, but couldn’t.
Creasey Edward Cecil Tattersall (1877-1957) was a curator in the Department of Textiles for the Victoria and Albert Museum. He gave up chess to become an expert on Orential and British carpets. For many years was an authority on endings and authored A Thousand Chess Endings. It was said of him that if the time limit was a move a week he could probably win most tournaments. Sounds like Falk-Tattersall was a good match up!
On the 39th move Tattersall refused Falk’s draw offer and on his 49th move sacrificed a Bishop in order to Queen a Pawn. In the N vs. B ending that came about neither side could make progress and a draw was agreed to on move 58.
Originally I had intended to attach the game between Meyer and George, but had a change of mind. Nothing much is known of those two players. George played in the Anglo-American university cable match in 1900 and defeated Louis Cook. After that...nothing. Louis Cook apparently ended up in Santa Barbara, California as there was a game he played in a team match that appeared in Herman Steiner's chess column in the October 9, 1938 edition of the Los Angeles Times.
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| Meyer in his college days |
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| Meyer in 1937 |
Instead we’ll take a look at the game played on board 5 between William W. Young and Gerald E. H. Ellis.
Young disappeared into oblivion at least as far as the chess world is concerned. A little more is known about Ellis and you can read about him on Chessgames.com HERE.
Their game was described thus by the Eagle: After 7 moves the position looked somewhat like a QP opening except that both sides had full freedom for their Queen’s Bishops.
The verbal description of the action that appeared in the Eagle was, truth be told, quite wrong as the unknown columnist based his conclusion on the result, not on, as the Russians would come to say 50 years later, concrete analysis.
Ellis first declared himself by castling Q-side where Young then directed his attack and by move 27 he had a promising position. But, a slip on move 28 allowed Ellis to plant a N on c3 which abruptly put an end to white’s attack and seized the initiative. Ellis hiccuped on move 29, but Young replied with an elementary blunder when he overlooked a N fork and allowed his opponent a snappy finish.
Friday, September 13, 2019
Former World Champion Resigns From Manhattan Chess Club
When the word leaked out it created a big stir especially since two years earlier Pillsbury had resigned from the club on account of trouble with a member who had stolen his umbrella and the club declined to discipline the thief in accordance with Pillsbury’s demands.
Steinitz’ grievance concerned his perception of the club’s attitude toward professionals. At the recent club elections several new officers were voted in and the Eagle felt the decision to accept his resignation might have been different had it been left up to them and not the old guard. Steinitz was also in a snit that the affair was not made public by the club.
His problem stemmed from three years earlier when a report reached him while he was in St. Petersburg, Russia that a speech had been made at the annual meeting in which it was declared, “This is not a club for professional players. Any two gentleman may sit down to play a game of chess without prostituting it by playing for money.” At the end of the speech the speaker was loudly applauded.
Steinitz had sent word back to the club by Pillsbury and others that if he had been in New York at the time he would have asked for the immediate expulsion of the “learned judge” who made the speech.
In regards to the recent club elections, Steinitz stated that he believed that president Aristides Martinez and vice president Dr. Louis Cohn were the right men for the job, however, Cohn was critical of Steinitz for both resigning and making his complaints public.
According to Cohn, Steinitz was mistaken about the club’s attitude towards professionals. Cohn pointed out that all masters who had ever taken advantage of the club’s hospitality were treated with great fairness and consideration.
Cohn admitted that the club’s members were divided with some preferring to encourage amateur play instead of spending the club’s money on engagements for professional players. But, as a body, the club was fully aware of the importance of promoting big events and chess in general and in that respect professionals had nothing to complain about.
Cohn also emphasized that the remark alluded to by Steinitz was part of a long speech and the applause at it conclusion should not have been interpreted as an endorsement by the club.
Steinitz has pretty much been forgotten by chess history these days, but his contributions live on. Chess.com has a short article, Equilibrium, An Important Chess Concept Of Steinitz, that is worth checking out.
10 Best Chess Games by Wilhelm Steinitz (annotated)
Thursday, September 12, 2019
The Immortal Correspondence Game
The game has been considered by some as the Immortal Correspondence Game. Of course, what constitutes an immortal game is open to debate. Generally immortal games are ones that are so memorable that they are remembered and enjoyed by players down through the generations. As is always the case, engine analysis reveals flaws in the play of both sides, but that does not take anything away from the games...they are still classics and that is certainly the case with the following game. It’s a wild tactical fight that begins around move 27 and the advantage see-saws back and forth until, as Tartakower said, it was won by the player who made the next to the last error.
I did a post on the loser, Ramon Rey-Ardid a few years back (the game has disappeared from the post). The winner, Nils Johansson, was a Stockholm railway official who later changed his name to Tegelman.
Born in 1897, Tegelman learned chess in 1911 and began his first correspondence tournament in 1927. In 1930 he won the annual congress of the Swedish Chess Federation and earned the title of Swedish master.
Nils Johansson-Tegelman was a pillar in Swedish correspondence chess starting in 1929. During the Second World War activities grew under his leadership, but when he suddenly died on September 30, 1946, at the age of 49 after failing to overcome a long and painful illness, correspondence chess in Sweden was dealt a severe blow.
After his death, the Swedish Federation launched a correspondence tournament in his memory, in which it was mandatory to start with a variation of the Ruy Lopez which was not very popular, but frequently played by Johansson.
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
The Grungy World of Big Time Chess
Waitzkin also wrote an article that appeared in the December 17, 1984 issue of New York Magazine starting on page 45 about the his trip to Moscow along with his son Josh and Bruce Pandolfini for the purpose of observing the world championship match and checking out the Soviet chess educational system. During the trip Waitzkin also managed a visit with dissident Boris Gulko before he left the Soviet Union.
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
A Man With a Legacy of Losses
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| Our hotel marina |
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.
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| 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
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
How To Improve Minute By Minute
His main contention was that first and foremost you must avoid oversights. His recommendation was that while blunders can’t be avoided entirely, by applying examining a position for tactical threats at every move mistakes can be drastically reduced.
His conclusion was that one should do what he did as a 14 year old. He played over games by covering the moves with a card and then trying to guess the next move. Good annotated games help, but are not essential because what really matters is that you put in some work and then compare your move to the one actually played.
He recommended the first book that should be used for such a method was Chernev’s Logical Chess Move By Move because there are notes after every move. After that, you are ready for other books.
He also claimed that while it was good to read chess text books, they are in no way a substitute for playing over games. Reading theory helps in the long run, but don’t expect steady improvement...improvement will come in spurts as one suddenly grasps a principle. He wrote: Playing over games and solving problems from actual play...is quite different. It improves you minute by minute. You can feel it doing you good.
The idea that you could play better if only you knew the openings “is really crazy,” he wrote. Chess skill has very to do with openings and a basic knowledge of openings is good enough until you become “fairly good.”
If you feel like putting in some effort another good way at improving is to force yourself to play through games blindfold. He pointed out that when you don’t have to play over games blindfold doing so is irksome, but if you make yourself do it, it becomes easier. The reason this helps is because a lot of chess is visualization and playing over games without a board helps in this area.
Purdy correctly pointed out that positional play is necessary only when there aren’t any sound tactical threats in a position, but that is going to be the case most of the time. Let me emphasize the sound part. I have seen many players who think they are playing tactical chess simply because they sacrificed something. Many times the "sacrifice" is nothing more than a voluntary parting with material.
Purdy, writing in the late 1950s and early 1960s, recommended two books as must study ones. How to Force Checkmate by Fred Reinfeld contains 300 diagrammed positions, subdivided into mate in one, two, or three moves. It introduces you to a vast array of mate situations and you need no board.
Purdy’s other recommendation was Win At Chess, also by Reinfeld. The 300 practical chess problems are taken from actual tournament play, contain traps, sacrifices, mates, winning combinations, and exchanges that will help sharpen players' eyes. Helpful hints are given for each problem and a table of solutions and alternative moves shows players how to evaluate their attacks. The three books Purdy recommended are good even today!
An astute observation was made by Purdy when he said he had seen players go right off their game after being frequently inveigled into playing against weaker opponents. Apparently one should try to be the “inveigler.”
He advised that when playing over games you should not spend a great deal of time trying to figure out where you went wrong. Even if you understand only half of the moves you are learning something and your percentage will eventually start to go up.
For further reading see my posts Editorial On Positional Play, What is Positional Play? and Tactics, the Pornography of Chess.
Much of what Purdy recommended was later advocated by Kenneth Smith and you can download Smith’s improvement course from Dropbox HERE.
Monday, September 2, 2019
United States To Import Babies From France by 2020
The first international tournament for ladies was held in London from June 23 until July 3, 1897, and was won by Miss Mary Rudge. Later in the year the Internationales Turnier Berlin celebrated seventy years of the Berliner Schachgesellschaft and was played from September 13 to October 4, 1897. It was a race between young masters Rudolf Charousek and Carl Walbrodt with Charousek eventually prevailing. Unfortunately, they both would die within a few years, Charousek in 1900 and Walbrodt in 1902.
In Moscow between November 6 1896 and January 14, 1897, Emanuel Lasker defended his world championship for the first time when he defeated William Steinitz whose title he had taken in 1894.
The New York Times ran a story about the pathetic mental condition of Steinitz at the time. While he was in Moscow someone presented him with a device that looked like a silver snuffbox and told him that it was a new invention like a telephone.
He was told that when he spoke into a hole in the box, the sound would be transmitted to a wire and could be heard at any distance. Steinitz took the box to his room and began experimenting, imagining that he had a wonderful invention which would bring him a fortune. His secretary told him his son in America could hear him. He was not feeling well at the time; his nerves were unstrung because of his chess and the statement of his secretary made him even more nervous. Later he was taken to an asylum on the recommendation of his secretary.
When Steinitz died on August 12, 1900, the Times reported “...he would experiment with his wireless telephone. His theory was that he could use his willpower to convey words any distance. For hours he would stand in his room trying to call up various people he knew in Europe. After he was tired of these experiments he would devote his time to writing his books.”
Newspapers have been known to blare erroneous headlines and this report of his death was the second one they had published, but at least this time it was true.
New Iberia, the newspaper of the Parish of St. Martin, Louisiana, ran a headline on September 20, 1862 that read: Glorious news! And then reported that the Confederacy had captured Washington, D.C.
In 1905, the Saint Paul (Minnesota) Globe warned that sea otters, elephants, kangaroos and giraffes were going to be extinct in the near future. Several newspapers published articles in 1910 that reported on the studies of one Professor Walter F. Wilcox, a statistician at Cornell University. He predicted that American women would stop having babies by 2015 and that by 2020, the country would be forced to import infants from France.
In 1912, the Salt Lake (Utah) Tribune published some ideas theorizing that Mars had canals created by some giant biomass and suggested they were caused by a giant eyeball growing up from the surface of the planet. They did admit that no evidence had been found to support the theory.
On April 15, 1912, headlines from the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Daily Province, and the World reported the morning after the disaster that nobody had died on the Titanic. In reality, over 1,500 people died.
On November 11, 1918, the Chicago Herald Examiner declared there would be peace on earth after World War I ended.
On December 21, 1924, The New York Times claimed that Adolf Hitler was a changed man after a stint behind bars and his behavior during imprisonment convinced the authorities that, like his political organization, he was no longer to be feared. The article stated that it was believed he would retire to private life and return to Austria.
On November 3, 1948, the Chicago Tribune printed papers declaring Thomas Dewey had defeated Harry Truman in the presidential election. On August 17, 1977, The Guardian proclaimed that since Elvis was dead, rock was too.
In December 1956, the New York Times (them again!) was in error when they ran an item claiming Fidel Castro was among the 40 revolutionaries killed by the Cuban government.
In February 1897, the New York Times reported that Steinitz had died in a New York mental asylum. That was odd because at the time he was still in Moscow!
In a February 26, 1897, article the New York Journal reported that while the rumor of his death was erroneous, he was suffering from an incurable “ulceration of the brain.”
The article added that the cause of the rumor was probably due to the fact that he had a fainting spell. It also said he had forgotten all about chess and between attacks of delirium he was writing what he called essays on philosophy.
Friday, August 30, 2019
Interesting reading
It’s a blog by Douglas Griffin of Scotland. At the age of 12, in 1979, Griffin began competitive play and in 1980-1989 represented Scotland at every level from Under-14 to international. In the early 1990s his professional career caused him to gradually give up over-the-board play. His FIDE rating is 2270.
Griffin has a fascination with the Russian language and culture and over the the past 15 years he has translated the annotations to a great many games from classic Soviet-era books and periodicals. On his website he shares some of the results of his labor. There are only 17 posts dating from 2016 although some months actually have more than one subject. The blog also has some nice photos which I have never seen before. Definitely a blog worth visiting. I only wish Mr. Griffin would do more material. Visit
There is also an interesting old (2015) article in The Guardian titled "Grandmaster crash: the inside story of how English chess pawned its future: In the 80s, English chess was second only to the Soviet Union in the world game. Now we’re being outdone by Egypt and Peru. This is the tale of how a defecting grandmaster, an ousted chief executive and a spot of online mudslinging left the most cerebral of contests in raucous meltdown.” Read article
If you can read Russian you can occasionally find Russian chess books that make for great reading.
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| My book of Lilienthal's best games |
What you can do is download this Excel spreadsheet: Chess Vocabulary in 17 Languages
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Lady Champion Murdered
Born in Florence, at the age of fifteen she found herself fatherless when Giuseppe Benini died while she was playing in a tournament. After the death of her parents she devoted herself to chess and became a close friend of Marquis Stefano Rosselli del Turco (1877-1947) who was also from Florence.
A dangerous attacker, she was always going after the opponent’s King, usually with exceptional creativity and violence. Take a look at her game against Chaude de Silans below!
She was the twice Italian women's champion (1938 and 1939). At the women's super-tournament at Semmering 1936, won by Sonja Graf, she finished 2nd.
Then she was a surprise at the Women's World Championship at Stockholm 1937, when she finished second behind Vera Menchik. This event took place during the 1937 Stockholm Olympiad.
In 1949/50, she finished 9th in the Women's World Championship in Moscow; it was won by Lyudmila Rudenko. The title had been vacant since the death of Vera Menchik in 1944.
For Benini the Moscow tournament was a long-awaited event after the war years during which time chess in Italy had suffered badly under the Italian fascist regime. Though her youth was gone and she had been threatened by her employer in the new post-fascist Italy with losing her job if she went to the Soviet Union, she didn’t think twice about it and undertook the fifteen-day train trip anyway. She traveled to Moscow at her own expense and when she arrived there it was 32 below zero.
Benini continued to play in Italian women’s events and at the Florence chess club, but then had to abandon competitive activity in the mid-Sixties due to an eye disease.
She moved to the countryside where she owned a small house in Borgo Nuovo in northwestern Italy not far from the French and Swiss borders. It was there that she suffered an untimely end when an insane farmer murdered his wife and children and then murdered Benini who was his neighbor.
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