Chess Players Who Quit

Chess Players Who Quit

Garry Kasparov retired from competitive chess in March, 2005. He gave up competitive chess after playing chess and being the best in the world for 20 years (1985 to 2005). He gave up chess to devote more time to politics. He is now thinking of running for the presidency of the world chess federation (FIDE).

Other prominent chess players gave up chess while in their prime, such as Paul Morphy at age 22, and Robert Fischer. Here are a few more players who gave up the game.

Kim Steven Commons (1951- ) was an international master who had won the California championship once and the American Open twice. He was a member of the victorious USA team at the Haifa Chess Olympiad in 1976, having the best score of the event. He gave up chess to become a real estate agent.

In the 1950s, Jim Cross (1930- ) was a rising chess master. At 18 he won the California State Championship and tied in the U.S. Junior Championship. But when his chess mentor, International Master Herman Steiner died of a heart attack at the age of 50 while playing chess, Jim decided to give up chess.

Max Dlugy (1966- ) became a Grandmaster in 1986. By the 1990s, he gave up chess to become a Wall Street securities trader. He had answered an ad by Bankers Trust and was hired and became involved in hedge funds. . Eventually, he became a principal of the Russian Growth Fund. In 2005, he was arrested in Moscow on securities fraud charges and was facing 10 years in a Russian prison. In December 2005, all the charges against him were dropped. He did play in the 2006 US Chess Championship and had a plus score.

Oldrich Duras (1882-1957) was one of the top players in the world from 1906 to 1914. He then met and married a wealthy woman and withdrew from chess, becoming a civil servant and, occasionally, a chess journalist. Duras requested ½ year off to prepare and play in chess tournaments, but his employer refused his request. During his retirement, he became involved in chess problem composition and was ranked one of the finest problemists of his day.

Reuben Fine (1914-1993) was one of the best chess players in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. He gave up chess to become a psychoanalyst, earning a doctorate in psychology. He devoted himself to a New York psychiatric practices and book writing.

Andrija Fuderer (1931-2011) was one of the strongest Yugoslav players in the mid 1950s. He then turned to chemical research, earned a PhD in chemistry from the University of Zagreb, and retired from serious chess play. He became a famous inventor and patented a compression process for refrigeration.

Albert Beauregard Hodges (1861-1944) was a former U.S. chess champion. He won it in 1894. After accomplishing his life’s goal of becoming the U.S. chess champion, he announced he was retiring from chess. He then became an accountant and businessman and gave up chess.

Ignaz Kolish (1837-1889) was one of the strongest chess players in the world in 1867. In 1867, he won the strongest chess tournament of the year, in Paris, ahead of Steinitz. He them met Baron Albert Rothschild and became involved in banking. He gave up chess and became a millionaire in the Viennese banking world and became a baron himself.

Lisa Lane (1938- ) was U.S. women’s champion in 1959-62 and 1966. She withdrew from the Hastings Reserves tournament stating she was in love. She gave up chess in 1966, got married, and started a natural food business in New York.

Srecko (1923-2011) and Vera Nedeljkovic (1924- ) were one of the strongest husband and wife chess playing partners. He was an international master and she was one of the strongest women players in the world. In the 1950s, he gave up chess to become a medical doctor (working with Dr. Michael DeBakey, a world-renowned cardiac surgeon), and she gave up chess to be a physicist. Their son became President of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Belgrade University.

Ken Rogoff (1953- ), pictured above, became a Grandmaster in 1978. He then retired from chess, earned a PhD in Economics from M.I.T. in 1980, and became the chief economist at the World Bank. He is currently a professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Gersh Rotlewi (1889-1920) was one of the strongest Polish players from 1909 to 1911. He took 2nd in the 1909 Russian championship, behind Alekhine. In 1911, he took 4th place, ahead of Alekhine, Marshall, Nimzovich, Vidmar, Tartakower, and others. The next year, at the age of 23, he dropped out of chess and never played again.

Carlos Torre (1905-1978) was one of the strongest players in the world from 124 to 1926. He defeated Emanuel Lasker and drew with Capablanca and Alekhine. He then had a nervous breakdown from the stress of chess and the social gathering invitations. His fiancée left him and married another man, and his teaching offer at the University of Mexico was turned down because Torre did not have any academic credentials. He gave up chess in 1926, never to play again.

Josh Waitzkin (1976- ) was one of the most promising juniors in the United States. He won the National Scholastic Chess Championship 8 times. In 1994, he won the U.S. Junior Championship. He was the subject in the book and the movie called Searching for Bobby Fischer. He then gave up chess and became involved in martial arts. He won the World Championship Tai Chi Chuan twice and won 13 National Championships.

– Bill Wall

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Who was Fischer's Father

Who was Fischer’s Father?

Who was Bobby Fischer’s real father? Was it Dr. Paul Nemenyi or Hans-Gerhardt Fischer? Robert James Fischer’s surname could just as easily have been Nemenyi or Wender.

Paul Felix Nemenyi (ne-MEN-yi) was born on June 5, 1895 in Fiume/Rijeka, Croatia (Austria-Hungary). He was a Jewish Hungarian mathematician and physicist specializing in fluid dynamics and continuum mechanics. From 1912 to 1918 he studied at the Polytechnical school in Budapest. He had to leave Hungary where anti-Semitic laws had been enacted. In 1922, he obtained his doctorate in mathematics in Berlin and lectured on engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1927, his son Peter (1927-2002), was born in Berlin. In the early 1930s, he published a textbook on mechanics that would be required reading in German universities. In 1933, he was sacked from his university duties because he was a Jew when the Nazis came to power. He was arrested on April 1, 1933 by SS troops for making “calumnious statements” against Hitler’s government. He was jailed for one day, then released because of the lack of evidence. Nemenyi belonged to a small Socialist party called the ITSK.

In 1934, he found work in Copenhagen, settling in a farm village on redistributed noble landholdings in Denmark. His wife fled to Paris and died some time later. He then went to Britain. He resettled in a collective of unemployed coal miners in an abandoned factory and manor in Wales. In the fall of 1938, he arrived in the USA to find a job. He left his son, Peter, behind in various Quakers’ homes and young refugee hostels in the United Kingdom. He visited Princeton to consult with Albert Einstein and gave his resume to the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars. The committee wrote in its files that Dr. Paul Nemenyi was an unstable and undesirable person. Dr. Theodore von Karman, a fellow Hungarian and leading aeronautical scientist, also proclaimed Nemenyi a misfit.

After being recommended by Albert Einstein, he took part in hydraulic research at the State University of Iowa, working for Albert Einstein’s son, Hans-Albert. In late 1941, he was appointed instructor at the University of Colorado and taught college freshman mathematics for $165 a month. He was an animal-rights support and refused to wear wool. In the winter, he wore pajamas underneath his clothes to stay warm and refused to wear a suit and tie.

Dr von Karman wrote about Nemenyi, “When he came to this country, he went to scientific meetings in an open shirt without a tie and was very much disappointed as I advised him to dress as anyone else. He told me that he thought this was a country of freedom, and the man is only judged according to his internal values and not his external appearance.”

In 1942, Dr. Paul Nemenyi, age 47, met Regina Wender Fischer (1913-1997), age 29, in Denver, according to FBI files. Regina was born in Zurich, Switzerland and the family moved to the United States in 1914. Regina was taking classes at the University of Denver while working at a company that made chicken incubators. She was a mother of a 5-year-old girl, Joan Fischer. Her husband, Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, was in Santiago, Chile. He was barred by immigration authorities from entering the United States. Paul met Regina at the University of Denver.

In 1942, Nemenyi told colleagues that he preferred communism to capitalism. Regina may have had the same preference. The FBI suspected Regina of communist sympathies after a babysitter found what she believed to be pro-communist letters from Chile belonging to her, then turned them over to the FBI after calling them. In the summer of 1942, Dr. Paul Nemenyi and Regina Fischer were romantically linked, probably had an affair, and he may have fathered Bobby Fischer. He did provide some financial support for Regina and the baby.

In 1942, the Encyclopedia Britannica commissioned Dr. Nemenyi to write an article on theoretical mechanics. The article was later rejected.

By 1943, Regina moved to Chicago and Paul Nemenyi moved to Rhode Island to teach.

Bobby Fischer was born on March 9, 1943, but Paul Nemenyi’s name was not on the birth certificate. Regina gave birth to her son alone, in a clinic for poor single mothers (Michael Reese Hospital). On the birth certificate, she listed Hans-Gerhard Fischer as the father. She briefly considered putting Bobby Fischer up for adoption, but decided not to after talking to a social worker. Regina then moved into a Chicago home for fatherless families. At one time, she was arrested at this home and charged with disturbing the peace (she encouraged other mothers to question the institution’s rules), but was acquitted. A court-ordered psychological exam found here to be paranoid.

From 1944 to 1947, Paul Nemenyi was an instructor at the State College of Washington (now Washington State University in Pullman, Washington). He also worked at Hanford, Washington on the Manhattan Project working on a mechanism which triggered the atomic bomb. Dr. Robert Oppenheimer may have helped Paul get work at Hanford. Peter Nemenyi joined his father, but was later drafted and served in Northern Italy, outside Trieste.

In 1947, he was appointed physicist with the Naval Ordinance Laboratory in White Oak, Maryland. He was head of the theoretical mechanics section of the laboratory. He was one of the world’s leading authorities on elasticity and fluid dynamics.

Dr. Nemenyi took a deep interest in Bobby Fischer and even paid child support to Regina. At one time, in 1947, when Bobby was 3, he complained to a social worker about the way Regina was raising Bobby. He told the caseworker that Regina was mentally upset and Bobby was an upset child.

In 1947, an informant told the FBI that Paul Nemenyi remarked that the Soviet system was superior to that of the United States.

In 1949, Dr. Paul Nemenyi went to a social worker again, complaining that his son was not being brought up in desirable circumstances, due to the instability of Regina.

In 1951, he wrote a review of the Encyclopedia Britannica for The New Republic and declared it out of date. He suggested improvements in a variety of topics, including psychology and psychoanalysis.

Dr. Paul Nemenyi died of a heart attack on March 1, 1952, at the age of 56. He had just stopped at a dance at the International Student House in Washington, DC. There, he dropped dead of a heart attack. He was living in Washington, DC, and working at the U.S. Naval Research Lab. He was survived by his son, Peter, a civil-rights activist and a mathematics student at Princeton. Peter wrote that his father, Paul, was the father of Bobby Fischer.

At the time of his death, Paul was paying for 8-year-old Bobby’s education and sending $20 a week to Regina.

When Nemenyi died, he had an envelope full of letters. The police turned these letters over to the FBI. In one of the letters, a female friend wrote that he (Paul) should not spend too much time worrying about Peter and Bobby. She wrote, “I am sorry that you have so many sorrows with your children.”

At the time of Nemenyi’s death, Regina was in nursing school in Brooklyn, broke, and facing eviction.

Photos of Paul Nemenyi bear a striking physical resemblance to Bobby Fischer. The FBI file described Dr. Nenemyi “as having a large nose, large knobby fingers, and an awkward, slovenly walk and dress.”

When Dr. Paul Nemenyi died, Regina Fischer wrote to Peter Nemenyi, who was attending Black Mountain College in Asheville, NC. “Bobby has not had a decent meal at home this past month and was sick for two days with fever and sore throat and, of course, a doctor or medicine was out of the question. I don’t think Paul would have wanted to leave Bobby this way and would ask you most urgently to let me know if Paul left anything for Bobby. Bobby is still expecting Paul.” She also wrote that she could not afford to patch his torn shoes.

Regina did not want to tell Bobby of Paul Nemenyi’s death and was hoping that Peter Nemenyi would do it. He was not comfortable with that, so he consulted a family doctor for advice. He wrote to his family doctor, “I take it you know that Paul was Bobby Fischer’s father. The matter is further complicated by the false pretenses about Bobby’s identity and the parents’ difference of opinion over the question.” Peter felt he was not qualified to tell Bobby about Paul’s death since Peter had met Bobby only a few times.

In 1963, Peter Nemenyi received his Doctorate in mathematics from Princeton.

In the 1960s, Bobby’s half-brother, Peter Nemenyi, was beaten and arrested while trying to help black voters in Mississippi and trying to integrate coffee shops. In 2002, Peter killed himself in Durham, NC, at the age of 75, after suffering from prostrate cancer.

In 2002, an article by Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of The Philadelphia Inquirer suggests that Nemenyi may be the biological father of Bobby Fischer. Through the Freedom of Information Act, they were able to obtain a 750-page file (file 100-102290) that the FBI had on Regina Fischer.

An FBI report claimed that both Hans-Gerhardt Fischer and Dr, Paul Nemenyi harbored Soviet sympathies.

Hans-Gerhardt (sometimes written as Gerard or Gerhard) Fischer was born on September 28, 1908 in Berlin, Germany. He was a Jew and worked in Berlin in the early 1930s, where he met Regina Wender, whose father, Jacob (Jack) Wender, was a Polish dress cutter. Hans and Regina moved to Moscow in 1933 and were married in Moscow on November 4, 1933. She was 20, he was 25. He was a biophysicist and may have fought the Fascists in the Spanish civil war in the 1930s. She was studying medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute and he was studying biophysics. Regina stayed for a year in medical school but never graduated. Quitting school, she worked as a riveter in a defense plant in the Soviet Union.

Their first born child, Joan Fischer, was born in Moscow in 1938. She died in 1998.

In 1939, Regina and Hans left Moscow together and traveled first to Austria.

In 1939, Regina Fischer returned to the United States with her daughter, Joan. She was born in Switzerland but raised in St. Louis, Missouri and was a naturalized American citizen. She caught one of the last ships leaving France for America. It is not clear if Hans-Gerhardt was on this ship. The FBI does say that Hans-Gerhardt Fischer never entered the United States from any ship (was he a suspected Soviet spy?). The FBI file says that Hans Gerhardt Fischer (Gerardo Liebscher) lived for a time in Port San Antonio, Chile where he sold fluorescent lights and worked as a photographer.

The FBI suspected that Hans might be a Soviet spy targeting Nazis in South America. In one letter to Regina, he made what the FBI called a cryptic reference to photographing fisherman (Nazis?) at a Chilean port. During that time, several German agents had been arrested there, posing as fisherman.

Regina later divorced Hans-Gerhardt in 1945. He never lived with her in the United States. He remained a lifelong German citizen. Hans later married Renata Sternaux in Algarrobo, Chile.

Bobby Fischer’s only public statement about his father appeared in Start, a Zagreb newspaper. “My father left my mother when I was two. I have never seen him. My mother has only told me that his name was Gerhardt and that he was of German descent.” Fischer once said, “Children who miss a parent become wolves.”

Later, Bobby Fischer told a friend that he and Joan did not have the same father. Joan Fischer Targ always insisted that her father’s name was Hans-Gerhardt Fischer.

Hans-Gerhardt Fischer died on February 25, 1993 in Berlin, Germany.

Regina Wender was born on March 31, 1913 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Regina Wender Fischer Pustin died of cancer on July 27, 1997 at the age of 84 in the Stanford University Hospital. Bobby Fischer died on January 17, 2008 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

–Bill Wall

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History of chess computers

History of Chess Computers

In 1945 Alan Turing (1912-1954) used chess-playing as an example of what a computer could do. Turing himself was a weak chess player.

In 1946 Alan Turing made his first reference to machine intelligence in connection with chess-playing.

In 1947, Alan Turing specified the first chess program for chess.

In 1948 the UNIVAC computer was advertised as the strongest computer in the world. So strong, that it could play chess and gin rummy so perfectly that no human opponent could beat it.

In 1948 Turing challenged Donald Michie to see who could first write a simple chess-playing algorithm.

In March, 1949 Claude Shannon (1916-2001) described how to program a computer and a Ferranti digital machine was programmed to solve mates in two moves. He proposed basic strategies for restricting the number of possibilities to be considered in a game of chess. Shannon was an avid chess player. He first proposed his idea of programming a computer for chess at the National Institute for Radio Engineers (IRE) Convention in New York.

In 1950, Alan Turing wrote the first computer chess program. The same year he proposed the Turing Test that in time, a computer could be programmed (such as playing chess) to acquire abilities rivaling human intelligence. If a human did not see the other human or computer during an imitation game such as chess, he/she would not know the difference between the human and the computer.

In 1950 Shannon devised a chess playing program that appeared in the paper “Programming a computer for playing chess” published in Philosophical Magazine, Series 7, Vol. 41 (No. 314, March 1950). This was the first article on computer chess.

In November 1951, Dr. Dietrich Prinz wrote the original chess playing program for the Manchester Ferranti computer. The program could solve simple mates in two moves.

In 1952 Alick Glennie, who wrote the first computer compiler, defeated Alan Turing’s chess program, TurboChamp. He was the first person to beat a computer program at chess. Turing never finished his chess-playing program.

In 1953 Turing included an example of his chess program in action in chapter 25 (Digital Computers Applied to Games) of the book Faster than Thought by B. Bowden.

By 1956 experiments on a Univac MANIAC I computer (11,000 operations a second) at Los Alamos, using a 6×6 chessboard, was playing chess. This was the first documented account of a running chess program. It used a chess set without bishops. It took 12 minutes to search 4 moves deep. Adding the two bishops would have taken 3 hours to search 4 moves deep. MANIAC I had a memory of 600 words, storage of 80K, 11KHz speed, and had 2,400 vacuum tubes. The team that programmed MANIAC was led by Stan Ulam.

In 1957 a chess program was written by Alex Bernstein at MIT for an IBM 704. It could do 42,000 instructions per second and had a memory of 70 K. This was the first full-fledged game of chess by a computer. It did a 4-ply search in 8 minutes.

In 1957 Herbert Simon said that within 10 years, a digital computer would be the world’s chess champion.

In 1958 the alpha-beta pruning algorithm for chess was discovered by three scientists at Carnegie-Mellon (Allen Newell, John Shaw, and Herbert Simon). Here is how it works. A computer evaluates a move and starts working on its second move. As soon a single line shows that it will return a lower value than the first move, it can terminate the search. You could now chop off large parts of the search tree without affecting the final results.

In 1958, a chess program (NSS) beat a human player for the first time. The human player was a secretary who was taught how to play chess one hour before her game with the computer. The computer program was played on an IBM 704. The computer displayed a level of chess-playing expertise greater than an adult human could gain from one hour of chess instruction.

In 1959 some of the first chess computer programmers predicted that a chess computer would be world chess champion before 1970.

In 1962 the first MIT chess program was written. It was the first chess program that played regular chess credibly. It was written by Alan Kotok for his B.S. thesis project, assisted by John McCarthy of Stanford. The program ran on an IBM 7090, looking at 1100 positions per second.

In 1963 world chess champion Botvinnik predicted that a Russian chess playing program would eventually defeat the World Champion.

In 1965 the Soviets designed a chess program developed at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) in Moscow. ITEP’s programming team was led by Georgi Adelson-Velskiy.

On November 22, 1966 a USSR chess program began a correspondence match with the Kotok-McCarthy MIT chess program. The match lasted 9 months and was won by the Soviet computer, with 3 wins and 1 loss.

The first chess computer to play in a tournament was MAC HACK VI, written for a DEC PDP-6 with 16K of memory. It was written at MIT in assembly language (MIDAS) by Richard Greenblatt and could evaluate 10 positions per second. The computer entered the 1966 Massachusetts Amateur championship, scoring 1 draw and 4 losses for a USCF rating of 1243.

In the spring of 1967, MacHACK VI became the first program to beat a human (1510 USCF rating), at the Massachusetts State Championship held in Boston. By the end of the year, it had played in four chess tournaments. It won 3 games, lost 12, and drew 3. In 1967 MacHACK VI was made an honorary member of the US Chess Federation. The MAC HACK program was the first widely distributed chess program, running on many of the PDP machines. It was also the first to have an opening chess book programmed with it.

In 1968 International Master David Levy made a $3,000 bet that no chess computer would beat him in 10 years. He won his bet. The original bet was with John McCarthy, a distinguished researcher in Artificial Intelligence at Stanford. The bet was made at the 1968 Machine Intelligence Workshop in Edinburgh University.

At the end of 1968, MAC Hack VI had a USCF rating of 1529. The average rating in the USCF was around 1500.

In 1970 the first all-computer championship was held in New York and won by CHESS 3.0 (CDC 6400), a program written by Slate, Atkin and Gorlen at Northwestern University. Six programs had entered the first Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) North American Computer Championships. The event was organized by Monty Newborn. The other programs were DALY CP, J Brit, COKO III, SCHACH, and the Marsland CP.

History of Chess Problems

History of chess problems

A chess problem, also called a chess composition, is a puzzle set by somebody using chess pieces on a chess board, that presents the solver with a particular task to be achieved.

Caliph al-Mutasim Billah, caliph of Baghdad from 833 to 842, perhaps composed the earliest chess problem on record. He was the third son of Harum (Haroun) al-Rashid who is supposed to have played an early form of chess. His problem can be found from folio 29B of the Asiatic Society’s manuscript of chess problems. The problem is for White to move and give checkmate in 9 moves. The pieces do not move the same way as today. In the problem, the queen could only move one square and the bishop could give check, even if something was in front of it. The queen was called the firzan and the bishop was called the fils.

Around 840 A.D., al-Adli ar-Rumi (800-870) wrote Kitab ash-shatranj (Book of the chess) in Arabic. This is a lost manuscript, but referenced in later works. It was considered the first comprehensive book dealing with chess. We know of it through referring manuscripts that preserved some of its texts and chess problems. The text included chess history, openings, endings and mansubat (chess problems). The collection had hundreds of chess problems. He also classified chess players into five distinct classes. He also found a system for sorting out the openings into positions, which he called Tabiya. He was the first compiler of a collection of chess (shatranj) problems. He divided his collection into won endings, drawn endings, and undecided games.

Around 845, an Arabic manuscript of mansubat was written by ar-Razi, called Latif fi-sh shatranj (Elegance in Chess). He also wrote Kitab ash-shatranj, which has since been lost. All that has survived in ar-Razi’s book is a few opinions on the endgame and a couple of chess problems.

Around 890 Abu-Bakr Muhammad ben Yahya as-Suli (854-946) co-authored a book of problems (mansubat) and a book of openings (ta-biyat) for Shatranj, called Kitab-ash-shatranj (Book of Chess), volume one and two. He was assisted by Abu l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad as-Sarakhsi, a physician. One of as-Suli’s book was a critique on al-Adli’s book. He was the author of the first book describing a systematic way of playing shatranj. He wrote two textbooks on chess, now lost. His book on chess are only known to us through extracts in later works. His principle contribution to the strategy of shatranj was his advocacy of flank openings. As-Suli first came into notice by defeating Almawardi, the caliph Almuktafi’s best player. After Almuktafi’s death in 908, he remained in the service of his successor Almuktadir (908-932), and was tutor to his successor Arradi Billah (934-940).

Around 930 Abu’l-Faraj ibn al-Muzaffar ibn Sa’id al-Lajlaj (900-970) wrote Kitab mansubat ash-shatranj (book of chess problems). It is another lost chess book. Manuscripts containing some of its contents have survived. He may have been the first person to analyze and publish chess openings. The oldest chess game comes from a match between as-Suli and al-Lajlaj.

The library of Caliph Hakam II of Cordova (961-976) contained an Arabic manuscript on chess problems.

In 1140, an incomplete manuscript called the Abdul Hamid (Abd-al-Hamid I or Abdalhamid I) Arabic collection (known as AH) was written (copied) by Abu Ishaq Ibrahim b. al-Mubarek b. Ali al-Madhahhab al Baghdadi. It is also called Risala fi’sh-shatranj by Abu’l-Abbas Ahmad al-Adli. It has nearly 200 problems. It contains problems composed by Muslim composers such as al-Aldi in 840 and as-Suli in 940. The manuscript contains a short treatise on chess principles by al-Lajlaj.

In the 12th century Abu ‘l-fath Ahmad as-Sinjari was a player and author. Three copies of his manuscript was discovered in 1951, the earliest dating from 1665. The original was written 500 years earlier. The contents contain 10 opening system and 287 mansubat (problems). Three of his problems were based on the work of as-Suli. A mansuba is an Arabic term for a composed middle game or endgame position that is set for instruction or for solving.

The first European reference to chess problems was during the reign of Richard 1 (1189-1199), when Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) wrote Gemma Ecclesiastica (Jewel of the Church) and mentioned chess problems.

In 1221, a manuscript of mansubat, claimed to have used the original collections of ar-Razi, al-Adli, and as-Suli.

There is an Arabic manuscript (No. 7515) in the British Museum written (copied) in 1257 attributed to Hasan of Basra (who died in 728). It gives the relative value of the various pieces. There are 200 diagrams in this manuscript, containing openings of the writer’s time and problems that lead to mate or draw. All the problems are accompanied with a solution. It is a copy of a work written between 1150 and 1250. It made liberal use of al-Adli’s work and quotes from al-Lajlaj.

In 1273, the earliest known English source of chess problems, the Cotton Manuscript, was written. It was followed by the King’s Library manuscript and a manuscript in Trinity College Library, Cambridge. They were written by Benedictine monks from Dorset.

In 1283, the Alfonso manuscript was completed. It is an important historical source of information about chess and other indoor diversions. It was completed by order of Alfonso the Wise (1221-1284). It contained 98 pages and 103 problems in both Arabic (mansubat) and European. The principal European innovation was the requirement to give mate in a set number of moves (mate in 2, mate in 3, etc). The manuscript was written by the monks of the St. Lorenzo del Escorial monastery, near Madrid, Spain.

Around 1295, Nicholas de Saint-Nicholai from Lombardy, Italy, wrote the Bonus Socius (Good Companion), the first great compilation of chess problems from medieval Europe. It contained 194 chess positions or problems of the old game, some Arabic, some European.

Of the 30 or more surviving medieval European problem collections, the earliest date from the second half of the 13th century, when problems of European origin seem to have become more established.

In 1370, an incomplete manuscript, found in the Khedivial Library in Cairo (Mustafa Pasha, 8201) was written. It belonged to Qaitbai (1468-1496) a sultan of Egypt. It seems to be a copy of earlier manuscripts on chess problems.

Chess problems were constructed by Khwaja ‘Ali Shatranji (Master Ali the chessplayer) who resided in the court of Timur (died in 1405) at the end of the 14th century. There have been 18 chess problems associated with Khwaja.

Around 1440, an anonymous writer, Civis Bononiae (Citizen of Bologna), wrote a manuscript collection of 288 problems. He included 191 problems from the Bonus Socius. The introduction lists several ways to trick your opponent with a chess problem. It stated, “Again, you ought to appear cautious in wagering and to not carefully whether he takes the problem with a tremulous voice, or after a moderate amount of consideration, or whether he is ready to wager large sums, or whether he wished to take other problems which have been set up, for all these things show whether he knows the problem or not.”

Chess problems became popular in the 15th century because there was a demand for a quick, decisive ending adaptable to gambling purposes.

Around 1475, the fers was displaced by the queen, the aufin by the bishop, and the pace of the game was quickened. All of the older problems became obsolete after the introduction of the modern game of chess and the new moves of the bishop and queen, and the promotion of a pawn to a queen.

In 1495 Libre dels jochs partits dels schacs en nombre de 100 from Francesch Vicent was published in Valencia. It is a lost book. The last known copy was seen in 1811. It mentioned the first modern move of the Queen and Bishop and was a book of chess openings. It was the first treatise on modern chess.

In 1503, Firdewsi at-Tahihal (b. 1453) wrote the world’s longest poem after working on it for almost 50 years. He decided to use in a story a famous 10th century problem attributed to as-Suli. Unfortunately, he copied the position incorrectly. A prince wagered and lost his fortune to another prince during a chess match. In desperation, he offered as stake his favorite wife, Dilaram. When he seemed lost, she gave him a hint on how to win.

In 1737, Stamma published his 100 positions (modern mansubat, not problems), called Essai sur le Jeu des Echecs. In some cases he added extra pieces to original mansubat to make the solution seem more difficult to discover.

Das Erste Jartausend der Schachlitteratur (850-1880) by Antonius van der Linde and published in 1881, listed 3,362 articles comprising all known ancient and modern manuscripts that mention chess or its derivatives.

Murray examined over 1,600 mansubat from Persian and Arabic sources and identified 553 distinctly different positions. He believed that about 200 were composed before 1000 A.D.

One of the first chess problems to be published in a newspaper was called the “Indian problem.” It was printed in The Chess Player’s Chronicle in 1845.

–Bill Wall

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Chess Trivia

Chess Trivia Manuel Aaron (born in 1935) is India’s first International Master, in 1961. He won the championship of India 9 times. Viswanathan Anand is India’s first Grandmaster, in 1987. There are now 26 Indian Grandmasters, 12 Women Grandmasters and 68 Indian International Masters and 17 Women International Masters. In 1995, Robert Smeltzer (born in 1930) of Dallas played the most USCF games in one year – 2,266 games. Michael Adams (born in 1971) is the youngest player to win the British Chess Championship at 17. His wife is a British actress. Bobby Fischer was the youngest player to win the US Chess Championship at 14 in 1957-58. Hikaru Nakamura was the 2nd youngest player to win the US Chess Championship at 16 in 2004. Utat Adianto (born in 1965) was the first Indonesian Grandmaster, in 1986. He became a GM at age 21. The youngest Indonesian GM is Susanto Megaranto, who became a GM at age 17. Simen Agdestein (born in 1967) was Norway’s first Grandmaster, in 1985. He won the championship of Norway 7 times. He was Norwegian champion at 15, International Master at 16, and GM at 18. He was once a professional soccer player. He was an early coach of Magnus Carlsen, the world’s highest rated player. In 1967, Bent Larsen (1935-2010) won the first chess Oscar informally. In 1968, it was formally won by Spassky. Kasparov has won the chess Oscar the most, 11 times. In 1920, Alexander Alekhine won the first Soviet Chess Championship. There have been 58 Soviet championships from 1920 to 1991. Botvinnik and Tal have each won it 6 times. The first Russian Chess Federation formed in 1914. It had 865 members. It was first called the All-Russia Chess Union, then renamed the All-Russia Chess Society. Chess was first mentioned in America in 1641 in a book called “Dutch New York” by Esther Singleton. It described that “cards, chess, backgammon, dice-throwing, were among the pleasures of the age” of the Dutch in New York. In 1786, Benjamin Franklin published the first chess writing in America with his “The Morals of Chess,” first drafted in 1732 for his Philadelphia Junto discussions and his own newspaper. In his essay, he attributed chess being introduced into America by the Spaniards. In 1839, the New York Chess Club was formed by James Thompson. The first American chess tournament may have been held in 1843 in New York. In 1857, Paul Morphy won the first American Chess Congress. It was the only tournament he ever won. Adolf Anderssen (1818-1879) won the first international chess tournament in London in 1851. He didn’t have the money for the travel costs, so Howard Staunton offered to pay for Anderssen’s travel expenses out of his own pocket. Anderssen accepted, won the tournament, and paid Staunton back for his travel expenses. Maurice Ashley (born 1966) of New York (born in Jamaica) was the first Black grandmaster, in 1999. He once appeared on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? Jonathan Penrose (born in 1933) has won the British chess championship the most. He won it 10 times between 1958 and 1969. He was given the GM title, although he was strong enough, but he became a GM in Correspondence chess in 1983. Wolfgang von Kempelen’s (1734-1804) “The Turk” was the first chess automaton, in 1769. It was destroyed by fire in 1854. It defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. Baden-Baden 1870 was the first strong international tournament. It was the first tournament to introduce chess clocks. It was the first tournament that draws counted as ½ points. Adolf Anderssen won the event. BELLE was the first computer built for the sole purpose of playing chess. In 1980, it won the world computer chess championship. In 1983, BELLE became the first computer to be awarded the title of US Chess Master. Caissa is the goddess or muse (dryad or tree nymph) of chess, from a poem by Hieronymus Vida in 1527. In 1763, Sir William Jones re-used Vida’s character Caissa in his own poem, written in Latin, and later published in English. St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) is the patron saint of chess. In the 16th century, she was proclaimed patroness of chess players by the church authorities in Spain. She used chess as a metaphor in her classic work “the Way of Perfection.” The longest running annual match in chess is the annual Cambridge vs. Oxford match, starting in 1873. As of 2012, there have been 130 matches between the two. Cambridge has won 57, Oxford has won 53, with 20 draws. The World Chess Federation (FIDE) estimates that there are over 600 million chess players in the world, with a potential global audience of 1 billion chess players. In 1977 Larry Christiansen became a Grandmaster without ever being an International Master. The first chess club was organized in Italy in 1550. The first newspaper column was published in 1813 in the Liverpool Mercury. The first computer program to play a proper game of chess was in 1959, at MIT. KAISSA of the USSR won the first world computer championship, held in Stockholm in 1974. Nathaniel Cook and John Jacques designed the first Staunton pattern chess set in 1835. In 1981 Cray Blitz won the first state championship, when it won the championship of Mississippi. Arthur Dake (1910-2000) was the oldest competitive grandmaster, still playing in his late 80s. Cecil de Vere was the first official British chess champion, in 1866. Charles Stanley was the first US chess champion, in 1845. He defeated Eugene Rousseau. FIDE, the World Chess Federation, was founded in 1924 by Pierre Vincent of France. Alexandre Rueb was the first FIDE president. He was president from 1924 to 1949. The record for the most games played simultaneously blindfolded in 52 games, by Janos Flesch in 1960. The Fredkin Prize was a $100,000 prize for the first computer to beat a reigning world champion. The inventors (Hsu, Campbell, and Hoane) of Deep Blue won the Fredkin Prize in 1997. In 1978, Nona Gaprindashvili was the first woman to achieve the men’s grandmaster title. In 1977, Nona Gaprindashvili tied for 1st place at Lone Pine. In 1914 the Russian Czar gave the title of grandmaster to Lasker, Alekhine, Capablanca, Tarrasch, and Marshall. Gisela Gresser (1906-2000) was the first U.S. woman to achieve a master’s rating. The first major tournament after WW II was Groningen, in 1946. It was won by Botvinnik. Boris Gulko won the USSR championship in 1977 and the US championship in 1994 and 1999. In 1963, Walter Harris became the first African-American master. Hasting is the oldest and longest running tournament in the world. It was first held in 1895. In 1981, Rea Hayes won the first US Senior Open, held in Sun City, Arizona. Hermann Helms (1870-1963) was the first Dean of American Chess. Iceland has the highest per capita chess population in the world. Borislav Ivkov of Yugoslavia won the first World Junior Chess Championship, held in England in 1951. Anatoly Karpov has won more chess tournaments (over 160 tournaments) than any other person. Raymond Keene was the first British player to achieve a FIDE Grandmaster norm in over-the-board chess. In 1947, George Koltanowski introduced the Swiss System at the 1947 US Open in Corpus Christi, Texas. In 1982, Vasily Smyslov qualified for the Candidates match by taking 2nd at the Palma Interzonal at age 61. In 1976 Tony Miles became the first British Grandmaster in OTB play. The USCF formed in 1939 from the merger of the American Chess Federation and the National Chess Federation. Geller, Tal, and Janosevic have all defeated Fischer more times than they have lost to him. Edward Lasker won Paris in 1912, London in 1914, New York in 1915, and Chicago in 1916. Le Palamede was the first magazine devoted entirely to chess. It ran from 1836 to 1839, then 1842 to 1847. Vladimir Liberzon was the first grandmaster to immigrate to Israel, in 1973. The Liverpool Mercury was the first English newspaper to publish a chess column, in 1813. Bill Lombardy was the first American to win an official world chess championship, the World Junior Ch in 1957. Johann Lowenthall invented the demonstration chess board in 1857. The Manchester Chess Club was the oldest chess club in Britain, formed in 1817. Sergio Mariotti was the first Italian Grandmaster, who gained his title in 1974. Frank Marshall was the first American to defeat a Soviet player in international competition, New York 1924. Edgar McCormick played in more US Opens than any other player, playing in 37 US Opens. The New York State Championship is America’s longest running tournament, which began in 1878. Alberic O’Kelly de Galway became the first GM of OTB and correspondence chess. Oxford was the first university to have a chess club. Bulgaria issued the first chess stamp, in 1947, on the occasion of the Balkan games. In 1845, Dr. Peter Mark Roget (Roget’s Thesaurus) devised the first pocket chess set. Judith Price was the oldest person to win a national championship when she won the British Ladies Ch at age 76. Cecil Purdy won the first world correspondence chess championship (1950-1953). The 1945 USA-USSR Radio Chess Match was the first international sports event after World War II. The first international rating list appeared in 1969. Fischer topped the list at 2720. Keith Richardson was the 1st British player to be awarded the Grandmaster title, for Correspondence Chess, in 1975. Alexander Rueb was the first president of FIDE. He was president from 1924 to 1949. The first Interzonal tournament was held in Saltsjobaden, Sweden in 1958 and won by David Bronstein. Lothar Schmid has the largest private chess library in the world with over 30,000 chess books and magazines. Yassar Seirawan was the first American to beat a reigning world champion when he beat Karpov in 1982. Nigel Short was the youngest to qualify for the British Championship, at age 11. Jackson Showalter was the first official US Chess Champion, in 1890. George Sturgis was the first President of the US Chess Federation, in 1939. The first telegraph match was played in 1844, between Washington DC and Baltimore. The first telephone chess game was played in 1878, between two players is Derbyshire, England. –Bill Wall Be Sociable, Share!