Trial by Tactics is our member-only Daily Chess Puzzle. Members enjoy access to all archived content, including thousands of PDFs and hundreds of Ebooks - all free! To join: make a $25 (or more) tax deductible donation to ChessEdu.org and we will send your log in details for one-year access. (It may take up to 72 hours to receive your log in.) In Trial by Tactics you are shown the position just before the tactic occurs and then asked to visualize the winning sequence. Thereby emulating a real game scenario. We also intersperse these puzzles with endgame studies and chess problems to explore the broad spectrum of chess creativity. Trial by Tactics can also be used as test questions in … [Read more...]
Master and Patron: Frank Marshall and Herman Behr
Master and Patron: Frank Marshall and Herman Behr By John S. Hilbert Love of chess takes many forms. Some very lucky individuals have the combination of ability, opportunity (some might say necessity) and personality that allows them to become great masters. Others love the goddess Caissa just as deeply, but are unable or unwilling to devote the lifetime of toil required by her for the highest honors. And sometimes lovers of the game are in a position to offer material assistance to those whose devotion has cost them material gain. Such was the case between Frank Marshall, long-time national champion of the United States, and Herman Behr, long-time lover of the game. When Marshall … [Read more...]
The Marshall – Jaffe 1909 Series, Part Two
The Marshall - Jaffe 1909 Series: Part Two By John S. Hilbert The fifth game was a fierce struggle with Marshall again sacrificing a piece, this time successfully: "Jaffe had the White pieces in a Queen's Pawn game, but Marshall instituted a violent attack at his earliest opportunity. Rather than retreat, Marshall sacrificed a bishop for two pawns, thereby jeopardizing his game, although he established a strong knight in hostile territory. With this the Brooklynite won the exchange, but was losing his grip somewhat when Jaffe resorted to an unsound counter combination, and was beaten after 55 moves." (BDE, February 8, 1909) As with Game 4, which concluded Part I of this extended … [Read more...]
The Marshall – Jaffe Series, Part One
The Marshall - Jaffe Series, February 1909: Win a Match, Drop a Tournament Part One by John S. Hilbert By January 1909, Frank Marshall, considered by most the rightful though unofficial United States chess champion, had been out of the country for nearly twenty months. He returned to New York on the steamer Batavia, arriving Friday, January 8, 1909, after a voyage of 17 days. Marshall's young son, Frank Rice Marshall, turned three during the voyage, on December 28. Eager to see Marshall perform, members of the Manhattan Chess Club, then housed in in the Carnegie Hall Building, were disappointed when the night after his arrival, Marshall's "indisposition" prevented him from starting a … [Read more...]
The Lost Match: Rubinstein – Marshall, Warsaw 1908
Inside Chess, 1988/9 The Lost Match: Rubinstein – Marshall, Warsaw 1908 by IM Nikolay Minev There are many famous and fascinating matches in chess history. This is the strange story about one of them: the match between Akiba Rubinstein and Frank Marshall held in Warsaw, October 25 -November 14, 1908. A match not mentioned anywhere at that time, and even now, after 80 years, one which still remains in shadows. That a match between these two all-time greats is virtually unknown may strain credulity. The facts – rather, the lack of facts – prove otherwise. The match is not reported in The Yearbook of Chess (London, 1907-1917); nor does it appear in the extremely popular series by … [Read more...]