We are pleased to present our newest columnist, Jerry Spinrad. We will let Jerry’s own words tell you about himself – and his new column at ChessCafe.com. I am a professor at Vanderbilt University, where I teach theoretical computer science. My specific research area is graph algorithms, and I have been an author of two books on that subject. I have been playing tournament chess since my high school years during the Fischer boom. For many years, I have been either a high class A player or a low expert. My most impressive sounding achievement in chess is that I am 3-time quick chess champion of Tennessee; actually, the only time I
beat out strong masters for the title, I was helped by a ridiculously favorable pairing in the last round and a great deal of luck in the tiebreak system. I have coached my daughters' school chess teams since they started school, and once had a team win the state championship. When I started my investigations into chess history, I first considered writing an ambitious and scholarly review of a particular period of chess history. Although I might still like to write such a book, I found myself increasingly interested in the fascinating personalities of chess players in the time period, and these stories are the result. Introduction There have been many developments in chess history in recent years. Game scores of major tournaments, which once could only be found in old books, are now easily available on the Internet. Old chess journals have been reprinted, allowing anyone to own what once existed only in a small number of chess libraries. Some wonderful biographies of chess players have been published, as well as comprehensive game collections. This has been an exciting time for serious chess historians. Unfortunately, there are relatively few serious chess historians. There are, on the other hand, many chess players who have some interest in chess history. These players enjoy the stories of the bizarre, larger-than-life individuals who have always made the world of chess a fascinating place. We have not seen so many advances aimed at those who have a casual interest in chess history. There has been some work in this direction. There have always been many sloppy authors who repeat false stories, but we now have a zealot, Edward Winter, who is willing to separate fact from fiction and
embarrass the peddlers of tired old myths. Instead of looking at the same old stories, this column attempts to use the newly available sources to find new stories, which are both entertaining and
true, about old chess players. Some are actually much more interesting than the false stories, and this is a celebration of chess culture in all of its glorious strangeness. These columns will fall into several categories, each really a separate investigation into chess history. There are sections dealing with serious chess players who have been forgotten, and others dealing with bizarre incidents only tenuously connected to chess, but which I feel are very entertaining. Some stories will be of interest to non-players, others to all chess players, and still others primarily to chess history buffs. Some deal with individual figures from chess (and occasionally non-chess) history, some with groups of chess players, while others are organized around general themes rather than studies of a particular player or type of player. I hope that readers will come to realize that chess culture is much more than variations of obscure opening lines, and will thus have even more fun with the game. I hope non-playing readers will understand that chess is full of wild,
wacky characters, and thus may even be lured into playing and becoming part of our eccentric world. Chess historians, I hope you will forgive my occasional lack of academic rigor. My hope is that some readers will become intrigued and come to enjoy your scholarly work as much as I do.
beat out strong masters for the title, I was helped by a ridiculously favorable pairing in the last round and a great deal of luck in the tiebreak system. I have coached my daughters' school chess teams since they started school, and once had a team win the state championship. When I started my investigations into chess history, I first considered writing an ambitious and scholarly review of a particular period of chess history. Although I might still like to write such a book, I found myself increasingly interested in the fascinating personalities of chess players in the time period, and these stories are the result. Introduction There have been many developments in chess history in recent years. Game scores of major tournaments, which once could only be found in old books, are now easily available on the Internet. Old chess journals have been reprinted, allowing anyone to own what once existed only in a small number of chess libraries. Some wonderful biographies of chess players have been published, as well as comprehensive game collections. This has been an exciting time for serious chess historians. Unfortunately, there are relatively few serious chess historians. There are, on the other hand, many chess players who have some interest in chess history. These players enjoy the stories of the bizarre, larger-than-life individuals who have always made the world of chess a fascinating place. We have not seen so many advances aimed at those who have a casual interest in chess history. There has been some work in this direction. There have always been many sloppy authors who repeat false stories, but we now have a zealot, Edward Winter, who is willing to separate fact from fiction and
embarrass the peddlers of tired old myths. Instead of looking at the same old stories, this column attempts to use the newly available sources to find new stories, which are both entertaining and
true, about old chess players. Some are actually much more interesting than the false stories, and this is a celebration of chess culture in all of its glorious strangeness. These columns will fall into several categories, each really a separate investigation into chess history. There are sections dealing with serious chess players who have been forgotten, and others dealing with bizarre incidents only tenuously connected to chess, but which I feel are very entertaining. Some stories will be of interest to non-players, others to all chess players, and still others primarily to chess history buffs. Some deal with individual figures from chess (and occasionally non-chess) history, some with groups of chess players, while others are organized around general themes rather than studies of a particular player or type of player. I hope that readers will come to realize that chess culture is much more than variations of obscure opening lines, and will thus have even more fun with the game. I hope non-playing readers will understand that chess is full of wild,
wacky characters, and thus may even be lured into playing and becoming part of our eccentric world. Chess historians, I hope you will forgive my occasional lack of academic rigor. My hope is that some readers will become intrigued and come to enjoy your scholarly work as much as I do.
James Mortimer
This article recalls a forgotten chess player of the past, James Mortimer. Born in 1833 in Richmond, Virginia, USA, Mortimer lived to 1911, and had a life full of great triumphs and great failures. It was the failures at the chess board that first brought Mortimer to my attention. To explain how he first caught my eye, I must make a small digression. I have wanted to get my hands on Gaige’s four-volume set of tournament crosstables for a long time, and finally was able to obtain them through interlibrary loan. Or at least, to obtain all of them except the one I wanted most, volume 1, which covers the years from 1851 to 1900. Frustrated, I hit upon a scheme of “reverse engineering” Gaige’s tables from Anders Thulin’s index to the tables, which is available on the net. During a month-long trip by my wife, I logged on late at night and managed to get the standings for the tournaments in Gaige’s book constructed; I am still in the process of
determining the players’ actual scores for as many tournaments as I can find. The process described above is long and tedious, and you may feel free to question my sanity. However, there are a few advantages of entering every score by hand as opposed to buying a book: you end up looking at all the data, and noticing oddities which cry out for further inspection. For example, there have been a number of unknowns who did extraordinarily well in some particular tournament, never to be heard of again. Sometimes the player simply was lucky, but there often is a compelling story: some players died young, some were forced into exile, some gave up chess for business, and inat least one case (which I will discuss in a different article) the player was
accused of cheating and was ostracized by the chess community.Mortimer stands out in a different way. Mortimer had a reverse clean score in an 1887 London tournament, going 0-9 against top-flight competition. This type of wipe-out is fairly rare, but Mortimer’s case is not the worst. Famously, Colonel Moreau went 0-26 at Monte Carlo 1903. Moreau’s case is very
different from Mortimer’s, however. Moreau agreed to be a last-minutesubstitute in a top-flight tournament; he does not appear anywhere else in Gaige’s books. Mortimer, however, continued to be invited regularly to topleveltournaments, almost always getting very low scores. These invitations seem odd because even when Mortimer played in non-master tournaments, he
was not winning them.
This article recalls a forgotten chess player of the past, James Mortimer. Born in 1833 in Richmond, Virginia, USA, Mortimer lived to 1911, and had a life full of great triumphs and great failures. It was the failures at the chess board that first brought Mortimer to my attention. To explain how he first caught my eye, I must make a small digression. I have wanted to get my hands on Gaige’s four-volume set of tournament crosstables for a long time, and finally was able to obtain them through interlibrary loan. Or at least, to obtain all of them except the one I wanted most, volume 1, which covers the years from 1851 to 1900. Frustrated, I hit upon a scheme of “reverse engineering” Gaige’s tables from Anders Thulin’s index to the tables, which is available on the net. During a month-long trip by my wife, I logged on late at night and managed to get the standings for the tournaments in Gaige’s book constructed; I am still in the process of
determining the players’ actual scores for as many tournaments as I can find. The process described above is long and tedious, and you may feel free to question my sanity. However, there are a few advantages of entering every score by hand as opposed to buying a book: you end up looking at all the data, and noticing oddities which cry out for further inspection. For example, there have been a number of unknowns who did extraordinarily well in some particular tournament, never to be heard of again. Sometimes the player simply was lucky, but there often is a compelling story: some players died young, some were forced into exile, some gave up chess for business, and inat least one case (which I will discuss in a different article) the player was
accused of cheating and was ostracized by the chess community.Mortimer stands out in a different way. Mortimer had a reverse clean score in an 1887 London tournament, going 0-9 against top-flight competition. This type of wipe-out is fairly rare, but Mortimer’s case is not the worst. Famously, Colonel Moreau went 0-26 at Monte Carlo 1903. Moreau’s case is very
different from Mortimer’s, however. Moreau agreed to be a last-minutesubstitute in a top-flight tournament; he does not appear anywhere else in Gaige’s books. Mortimer, however, continued to be invited regularly to topleveltournaments, almost always getting very low scores. These invitations seem odd because even when Mortimer played in non-master tournaments, he
was not winning them.
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