Chess Chats 15 Mar 1959, Sun The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, California) Newspapers.com
Chess Chats By George Koltanowski
International Chess Master
Problem No. 171. White to play and mate in two moves.
FEN 8/B6r/k5p1/1R6/8/8/KQ6/8 w - - 0 1
Solution: 1. Rh5 Kxa7 2. Ra5#
THE ENGLISH OPENING
Ruy Lopez, Kieseritzky, Muzio, Algaier, Max Lange, From, McCutcheon and others owe such immortality to some more or less vague connection with a chess opening or a mere variation. This may also apply to a country being honored by the French or Sicilian defense and a town basking in the glory of the Riga or Cambridge Springs variation; and whenever the Mayor of Hastings opens the annual congress there, he has usually been inducted in making the first move: 1. P-Q4, “The English” because Staunton played it in 1851.
It has recently become very popular (easily lending itself to transitions into various highly modern lines). It was considered almost a joke by old Tarrasch and it took three to four decades to climb from a measly half per cent to a creditable tournament frequency of almost 10 per cent.
Carl Carls, Bremen master, has played P-QB4 all the time in tournament play and all his followers in Bremen want the name changed from “English Opening” to the “Bremer Partie.”
Carls, who died recently, was mortified in one tournament when he found the QB pawn glued to the board, when he wanted to make his first move. Another famous story of Carls is that when he visited Paris, his old friend Bernstein tried to convince him that the huge C4 neon-light display at the Eiffel tower was meant to advertise “his” opening rather than the 4-cylinder Citreon. Here's a game he won in 1912 at Breslau, the victim being the great Dr. Tarrasch who had just pronounced 1. P-QB4 to be “the most stupid on the chess board.”
Carl Carls vs Siegbert Tarrasch
18th DSB Kongress (1912), Breslau GER, rd 17, Aug-02
English Opening: Agincourt Defense (A13) 1-0
Bobby Fischer, the 15-year-old Brooklyn champion of the United States held on to his title for the second year in a row. Bobby keeps up with all the latest traps in the opening. His victim in the sixth round was no one less than the great Sammy Reshevsky.
Robert James Fischer vs Samuel Reshevsky
US Championship (1958/59), New York, NY USA, rd 6, Dec-??
Sicilian Defense: Old Sicilian. Open (B32) 1-0
CHESS QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“Blessed be the memory of him who gave the world this immortal game. For the price of a taxicab or a visit to the theater you may possess a world of illimitable adventures. It is the very water of Lethe for sorrow or disappointment, for there is no oblivion more profound than that for which it offers you solace. And what satisfaction is comparable with a well-won mate? It is different from the joy any other games may offer. A perfect mate irradiates the mind with the calm of indisputable things. It has the absoluteness of mathematics and gives you the victory ennobled by the sense of intellectual struggle and stern justice.”—A. E. Gardiner.
