Chess Train

Famous tournaments in stage cities

[04.06.2013 00:00:00] - The 1st Prague international chess tournament in 1908 or chess Olympiad in 1931, these are the two famous historical milestones of chess in Prague. But what interesting tournaments were played in stage cities of Chess Train 2013? We can observe the history thanks to memory and archives of chess historian Jan Kalendovsky.

If we have on the top of chess ranking list a chess Mozart, how Lubomir Kavalek called Magnus Carlsen, we have to start with Mozart´s city. Salzburg can be proud of two war super tournaments and in both of them has always played six Europeans masters, including world champion Alexander Alekhine and crown prince of chess throne Paul Keres.

The tournament Salzburg 1942 hosted six greatest players of Germany, enemy-held and independent countries of Europe. It was held from 9th to 18th June 1942 in the Mirabella´s Palace and Alexander Alekhine, Efim Bogoliubov, Klaus Junge (who replaced Max Euwe), Paul Keres, Gösta Stoltz and Paul Felix Schmidt participated in it. The winner was Alexander Alekhine.



Duel Gösta Stoltz with Klaus Jung on Salzburg 1942 tournament.

A year later Grossdeutscher Schachbund held the tournament of six “greatest European masters” (how Karel Opocensky wrote in his article in the Czech Chess magazine in July 1943) in Salzburg for the second time. Salzburg 1943 tournament was held from 8th to 20th June and was dominated by two greatest players of that time: The 1st and the 2nd place was occupied and splitted by Paul Keres and Alexander Alekhine both with 7,5 points out of 10 games. On the other positions, with a huge distance was 3rd Paul Felix Schmidt (4,5 p.), 4th Efim Bogoliubov (4 p.), 5th Jan Foltys (3,5 p.) and 6th Ludwig Rellstab (3 p.). The most important theoretical innovation was Keres´s 6.g4! by which he fought against scheveningen´s variant of Sicilian defense.


Mirabella´s palace in Salzburg


Marble hall in Mirabella´s palace

The second Alpine city held VII. Congress of Bavarian chess association twenty years before the first Salzburg tournament. Ernst Grünfeld and Rudolf Spielmann won the Innsbruck 1922 tournament with 4 points out of 5 games. They won over Carl Carls and three other not well-known Austrian and German masters (Georg Kieninger, Hans Müller and Alfred Wolf). This tournament was held from 2nd to 9th September. It´s not commonly known that this tournament had to be canceled earlier than planned because of sudden increase of private costs of participants due to galloping inflation.

The match between Jaques Mieses and Rudolf Spielmann was played in 1910 in German Regensburg. It was held from 6th to 14th May to the opportunity of 25 years of existence of the local chess club. The winner of this match was without a doubt Rudolf Spielmann in a ratio 6:2 (+5, -1=2).

And a city of the five-petalled rose? There wasn´t any important game in Český Krumlov yet.

| Pavel Matocha | visits(4596x)