***** quiz6 ***** ICC Chess History and Trivia Quiz #6 - By Naisortep Ever wonder why chess players waste so much time on the game? Here are a few attempts at an explanation: "On the Chess Board lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, culminating in a checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite. Our little Chess is one of the sanctuaries where this principle of justice has occasionally had to hide to gain sustenance and respite,after the army of mediocrities had driven it from the market-place. And many a man, struck by injustice as say, Socrates and Shakespere were struck, has found justice realized on the chess board and has thereby recovered his courage and his vitality to continue to play the game of Life." [Emanuel Lasker] "Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness, therein lies its peculiar charm. Intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys-if not the greatest one-of human existence. It is not everyone who can write a play, or build a bridge, or even make a good joke. But in chess everyone can, everyone must, be intellectually productive and so can share in this select delight..Chess like love,like music, has the power to make men happy."[Dr.Siegbert Tarrasch] "One of the things that appeals to me about competitive chess(I mean over-the-board chess,though presumably the same goes for correspondence chess if there is not too much collusion)is that it is, as games go, VERY FAIR. There is quite a lot of luck in chess over the short term. But on the whole it tends to cancel out. Certainly chess compares very favourably with all the things that go under the designation 'real life',with all the stacked decks, silver spoons, nepotism,favouritism and disastrous misfortunes that attend. In comparison with the crazy unpredictability and uncontrollability of most of human existence playing chess(even in a time-scramble!)is like a paradise of rationality. I really do mean that..." [IM George Botterill] "But is it not an offensively narrow construction to call chess a game?Is it not a science, a technique, an art, that sways among these categories as Mahomet's coffin does between heaven and earth, at once a union of all contradictory concepts:primeval yet ever new;mechanical in operation yet effective only through the imagination;bounded in geometric space though boundless in its combinations; ever developing yet sterile;thought that leads to nothing;mathematics that produce no results;art without works;architecture without substance, and nevertheless, as proved by evidence, more lasting in its being and presence that all books and achievements;the only game that belongs to all people and all ages; of which none knows the divinity that bestowed it on the world, to slay boredom, to sharpen the senses, to exhilarate the spirit. One searches for its beginning and for its end. Children can learn its simple rules, duffers succumb to its temptation, yet within this immutable tight square it creates a particular species of master not to be compared with any other- persons destined for chess alone, specific geniuses in whom vision, patience and technique are operative through a distribution no less precisely ordained than in mathematicians, poets, composers, but merely united on a different level"[Stefan Zweig] "The game of chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualitites of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions:for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or of the want of it." [Benjamin Franklin] Chess anniversaries this week (If you like this section message HWR about receiving his famous International Chess Calendar). 9/17 Rubinstein first at Carlsbad over Maroczy,Leonhardt, Nimzovich,and Schlecter(1907) Birthdates(*) George Koltanowsky(1903) Deaths (+) Daniel Fiske (1904) 9/18 Stahlberg first at TrentchinTeplitz(1949) * Curt Hansen(1964) +Frank Anderson(1980) 9/19 German Team led by Eliskases wins international team championship(1939) *Rudolph Charosek(1873) +Mikhail Yudovich(1987) 9/20 *Friedrich Saimisch(1896) 9/21 Alekhine wins Hastings International Masters Chess Tournament(1922) * P.R.von Bilguer(1815),Martner Letelier(1915) 9/22 Vasiukov first at Varna over Hort, Bilek and Geller(1964) *Gia Nadareishvilli 9/23 Fischer first at Vikovci,Yugoslavia over Hort, Matulovic,Gheorghiu and Ivkov * John Collins CHESS TRIVIA QUESTION (Message Naisortep with answers.):Name three world champions which Adolf Andersson played in a match.(*Note two were unofficial and one had not yet gained the throne) ANSWER AND WINNERS OF LAST WEEKS QUIZ: Kasparov and before him, Tal-Congratulations-Nukenut, Frucht, Sol, Topquark, Fisscher, Kaon, ChessT, Jdoss,Dondo, Larryp(two in a row), Tassilolasa(two in a row), amd Neruda(5 in a row!)* (Note I forgot to mention Verlager won two in a row last week. Sorry Verl:<) Book probably deserves double credit for pointing out that Maya Chiburdanidze is in reality the current record holder for youngest World Chess Champion. She won the Women's World Chess Championship title at the age of 17!