The Immortal Game (35 page)

Both soldiers and players:
From obituary in French newspaper, September 1902.

Though for three decades:
He won the first French chess championship in 1880. See
http://www.logicalchess.com/info/history/1800–1899.htm
.

he “reigned supreme as the leader of Parisian chess”:
Chicago Tribune
, October 12, 1902, p. 12.

he managed to beat legendary players:
chessgames.com database has all actual games.

Franklin, who had described chess as battle without bloodshed:
Papers of Benjamin Franklin, XXXII, p. 54.

C
HAPTER 7

A number of chess masters:
Alfred Binet,
Mnemonic Virtuosity: A Study of Chess Players
, translated by Marianne L. Simmel and Susan B. Barron (Journal Press, 1966); S. Nicolas, “Memory in the Work of Binet, Alfred (1857–1911),”
Année Psychologique
94 (no. 2), pp. 257–82; Douwe Draaisma,
Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas about the Mind
(Cambridge University Press, 2000); Howard Gardner,
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
(Basic Books, 1993); F. Galton, “Psychology of Mental Arithmeticians and Blindfold Chess-Players” (Review of Alfred Binet,
Psychologie des grands calculateurs et joueurs d’échecs
),”
Nature
51: 73–74; O. D. Enersen,
Alfred Binet
,
whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/1299.htm
; René Zazzo, “Alfred Binet (1857–1911),”
Prospects: The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education
23, no.
¹
/2 (1993), pp. 101–12.

Binet’s original hypothesis might:
W. G. Chase and H. A. Simon, “The Mind’s Eye in Chess,”
Visual Information Processing: Proceedings of the 8th Annual Carnegie Psychology Symposium
(Academic Press, 1972); Herbert A. Simon and Jonathan Schaeffer, “The Game of Chess,”
Handbook of Game Theory
, edited by R. J. Aumann and S. Hart, vol. 1 (Elsevier, 1992); M. E. Glickman and C. F. Chabris, “Using Chess Ratings as Data in Psychological Research” (Unpublished article, 1996, available at
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Glickman1996.pdf
); D. Regis, “Chess and Psychology”; Fernand Gobet, “Chess,
Psychology of,”
The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences
, edited by R. A. Wilson and F. C. Keil (MIT Press, 1999); N. Charness, “The Impact of Chess Research on Cognitive Science,”
Psychological Research-Psychologische Forschung
54, no. 1, pp. 4–9: Helmut Pfleger and Gerd Treppner,
Chess: The Mechanics of the Mind
(David & Charles, 1989); William Bechtel and Tadeusz Zawidzki,
Biographies of Major Contributors to Cognitive Science
, online at
mechanism. ucsd.edu/~bill/research/ANAUT.htm
; “Brief survey of psychological studies of chess,” online at
jeays.net/files/psychchess.htm
; K. Anders Ericsson, “Superior Memory of Experts and Long-Term Working Memory,” online at
http://web. archive.org/web/20041019073517/http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.mem.exp.htm
.

young chess luminaries like Fischer and Waitzkin:
Michael J. A. Howe, Jane W. Davidson, and John A. Sloboda, “Innate Talents: Reality or Myth?”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
, no. 21 (1998), pp. 399–442; “Nature vs. Nurture in Intelligence,” online at
wilderdom.com/personality/L4-1IntelligenceNatureVsNurture.htm
; D. R. Shanks, “Outstanding Performers: Created, Not Born? New Results on Nature vs. Nurture,”
Science Spectra
, no. 18 (1999); K. Anders Ericsson and Neil Charness, “Expert Performance—Its Structure and Acquisition,”
American Psychologist
49, no. 8 (August 1994), pp. 725–47.

“He has become a fine player at a very young age”:
Tom Rose, “Can ‘old’ players improve all that much?” online at:
chessville.com/Editorials/Roses Rants/CanOldPlayersImproveAllThatMuch.htm
. Rose adds: “Of course he still had to do the hard work. With the same advantages many would not make such good use of them.”

C
HAPTER 8

“Chess-play is a good and witty exercise”:
Robert Burton,
The Anatomy of Melancholy
.

For about a decade:
Hooper and Whyld,
Oxford Companion to Chess
, p. 395.

“He approached the structure and dynamics”:
Anthony Saidy,
The March of Chess Ideas
(David McKay, 1994), pp. 14–15. Steinitz himself said, “Chess is a scientific game, and its literature ought to be placed on the basis of the strictest truthfulness, which is the foundation of all scientific research.”

For a time, he was confined to a Moscow asylum:
The Steinitz Papers: Letters and Documents of the First World Chess Champion
, edited by Kurt Landsberger (McFarland & Co., 2002).

In 1779 the accomplished French physician:
Franklin’s response is not recorded.

“A nameless excrescence upon life”:
H. G. Wells,
Certain Personal Matters
(1898), quoted in Norman Reider, “Chess, Oedipus, and the Mater Dolorosa,”
International Journal of Psychoanalysis
40 (1959), p. 442.

The tally included:
for Gustav Neumann, see Hooper and Whyld,
Oxford Companion to Chess
, p. 270; for Johannes Minckwitz, see
geocities.com/silicon valley/lab/7378/death.htm
; for George Rotlewi, see
chessgames.com/perl/chess player?pid=10262
; for Akiba Rubinstein, see Anne Sunnucks,
The Encyclopaedia of Chess
(St. Martin’s Press, 1976), p. 414; for Carlos Torre-Repetto, see
chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=12991
, for Aron Nimzowitsch, see Hans Kmoch, “Grandmasters I Have Known: Aaron Nimzovich (1886–1935),” online at
chesscafe.com//text/kmoch02.txt
(additional material online at
chessgames.com/player/aron_nimzowitsch.htm?kpage=1
); for Raymond Weinstein, see Sam Sloan, “I Have Found Raymond Weinstein,” online at
samsloan.com/weinste.htm
; for Bobby Fischer, see Rene Chun, “Bobby Fischer’s Pathetic Endgame,”
Atlantic Monthly
(December 2002). I found Rene Chun’s article on Fischer to be comprehensive, but also mean-spirited and grossly insensitive to the cruel realities of mental illness. Long after Chun establishes beyond any doubt that Fischer is crippled by mental illness, he rhetorically piles it on, ridiculing Fischer for his bizarre behavior.

“Most of his novels”:
Personal e-mail with Anna Dergatcheva.

Sigmund Freud’s biographer and protégé:
Alexander Cockburn,
Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death
(Simon & Schuster, 1974), pp. 22–23.

While Freud himself apparently never considered:
Sigmund Freud, “Further Recommendations in the Technique of Psycho-Analysis,”
Collected Papers
, vol. 2 (1913), p. 342.

In 1937 Isador Coriat:
Isador Coriat, “The Unconscious Motives of Interest in Chess,” based on a paper read before the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, October 12, 1937, online at
psychoanalysis.org.uk/chess.htm
.

In 1956 Reuben Fine’s:
Reuben Fine,
The Psychology of the Chess Player
(Dover, 1956).

Writer, psychiatrist, and serious chess player:
Charles Krauthammer, “The Romance of Chess,” in Hochberg,
The 64-Square Looking Glass
(Times Books, 1993).

A third plausible route to chess madness:
Gizycki,
A History of Chess
, pp. 259–61.

T
HE
I
MMORTAL
G
AME:
M
OVES
12–16

the leading Spanish player Lucena:
These are paraphrases, not quotes from Lucena.

C
HAPTER 9

A Nazified version of chess called
Tak Tik
:
Author’s direct observations of the game in Ströbeck chess museum.

After slipping in and out:
Andrew Soltis,
Soviet Chess, 1917–1991
(McFarland & Co., 2000), p. 7.

When the Germans captured France in 1940, Alekhine agreed:
Bill Wall, online at
geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/nazi.htm
.

There are persistent claims:
Nardshir
appears in the Kethuboth 61b tractate of the Babylonian Talmud. The Alexander Kohut quote is from Victor A. Keats,
Chess in Jewish History and Hebrew Literature
(Magnes Press, 1995), p. 26, also online at
mynetcologne.de/~nc-jostenge/keats.htm
.

Abraham ibn Ezra, the Spanish poet:
Keats,
Chess in Jewish History
.

World champion Wilhelm Steinitz:
There is some question about whether he was educated in a yeshiva.

Tarrasch and Lasker became such bitter rivals:
J. O. Sossnitsky cites Soltis,
The Great Chess Tournaments and Their Stories
(Chilton Book Co., 1975).

six pro-Nazi essays:
Brian Reilly, distinguished editor of the
British Chess Magazine
, was the one to actually see Alekhine’s Nazi letters. He reported it to several people in the field, but was later reluctant to see himself credited for this. In his reluctance he inadvertently cast some confusion on the matter. The chess historian Edward Winter definitively puts the issue to rest with a juxtaposition of letters and conversations collected on his “Chess Notes Archives” page, online at
chesshistory.com/winter/winter06.htm
.

the first ever official team sporting event for the USSR:
Denker–Botvinnik, USA–USSR Radio Match, 1945.1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 c6 4. Nf3 Nf6 5. Bg5 dxc4 6. e4 b5 7. e5 h6 8. Bh4 g5 9. Nxg5 hxg5 10. Bxg5 Nbd7 11. exf6 Bb7 12. Be2 Qb6 13. O-O O-O-O14. a4 b4 15. Ne4 c5 16. Qb1 Qc7 17. Ng3 cxd4 18. Bxc4 Qc6 19. f3 d3 20. Qc1 Bc5+ 21. Kh1 Qd6 22. Qf4? Rxh2+! 23. Kxh2 Rh8+ 24. Qh4 Rxh4+25. Bxh4 Qf4

One pithy illustration:
Bill Wall, online at
geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/nazi.htm.

Russia had a special relationship with chess:
I. M. Linder,
Chess in Old Russia
(Michael Kühnle, 1979), p. 62.

“Marx adored chess”:
Daniel Johnson,
Prospect
, no. 111 (June 2005), online at
tiea.us/5195.htm
.

“grew angry when he lost”:
Maksum Gorky,
V. I. Lenin
(first published 1924), online at
marxists.org/archive/gorky-maxim/1924/01/x01.htm
.

Russian prime minister Alexander Kerensky:
Gizycki,
A History of Chess
, pp. 169, 170.

Not long after the 1917 takeover:
Larry Parr and Lev Alburt, “Life Itself,”
National Review
, September 9, 1991.

“Take chess to the workers”:
Soltis,
Soviet Chess
, p. 25.

“The Bolsheviks’ motives”:
Checkmate,
BBC Radio 4, online at
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:cIlITNvUY5wJ:www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/discover/archive_features/22.shtml+The+Bolsheviks%27+motives+for+promoting+chess+were+both+ideological+and+political,+Daniel+King&hl=en& client=firefox-a.

By 1929, 150,000 serious amateur players:
Soltis,
Soviet Chess
, p. 82.

“a dialectical game”:
Taylor Kingston, “Recounting the Course of Empire,” cited by Soltis,
Soviet Chess
, p. 25.

“Following every move”:
Italics mine.

“I had an adjourned game”:
Rene Chun, “The Madness of King Bobby,”
Guardian
, online at
observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,6903,870785,00.htm
.

Bobby Fischer

“I’ll never play in one of those rigged tournaments again”:
Chun, “The Madness of King Bobby.”

“There were some agreed draws at Curaçao”:
Chun, “The Madness of King Bobby.”

After a tournament in Yugoslavia:
“Robert Fischer, The World’s Greatest Chess Player,” online at
chess-poster.com/great_players/fischer.htm
.

“If you were out to dinner with Bobby in the Sixties”:
The friend is Don Schultz. Source: Rene Chun.

“I told Fischer to get his butt over to Iceland”:
Rene Chun.

the match began:
All Fischer–Spassky games are online at
chess-poster.com/great_games/fischer_spassky_en/game_1.htm
.

Spassky was world champion for a reason:
Boris Spassky, Wikipedia, online at
onelang.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Boris_V. Spassky
.

Ironically, just as Fischer:
Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson, “Files Reveal How FBI Hounded Chess King,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, March 31, 2005.

“Spassky stood on stage applauding”:
Archived online at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041014080956/http://www.chessclub.demon.co.uk/culture/worldchampions/fischer/fischer_spassky_match.htm
.

C
HAPTER 10

“I always loved complexity”:
These two statements came from different interviews. The first sentence comes from Achille Bonito Oliva, editor of
The Delicate Chessboard: Marcel Duchamp: 1902/1968
(Centro Di, 1973). “With chess one creates beautiful problems” comes from Yves Arman,
Marcel Duchamp: Plays and Wins
(Galerie Yves Arman, 1984).

“As metaphor, model and allegory”:
Martin Rosenberg, “Chess Rhizome: Mapping Metaphor Theory in Hypertext,” archived online at
http://web.archive.org/web/20041030015424/http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/sls/abstracts/rosenberg.htm
.

“All chess-players are artists”:
Calvin Tomkins,
Duchamp: A Biography
, p. 211.

Cuban sensation José Raul Capablanca:
C. H. O. Alexander,
A Book of Chess
(Harper & Row, 1973), p. 52.

The Hypermodernists

“The essence of the Hypermodern philosophy was the affirmation of individuality of each position,” writes Anthony Saidy, “and thus a rejection of the notion of the Scientific school that general rules always apply.”