In remembrance of Carlsbad 1907

In our so culturally rich game of chess it’s very common to remember great players of the past with memorials. Already in the sixties (and still going strong) you had the famous Capablanca Memorials on Cuba and nowadays there’s for example the Tal Memorial in the winter in Moscow. It’s something special when a tournament is remembered like this. This afternoon there will be the press conference, tonight the opening ceremony and tomorrow the first round of the “Carlsbad 1907 Memorial”: the Czech Coal Carlsbad Chess Tournament 2007 in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. The participants are Alexei Shirov, Ruslan Ponomariov, Vladimir Akopian, Viktor Korchnoi, Jan Timman, David Navara, Sergei Movsesian and Viktor Laznicka. Before you click on “read more” first try the trivia question: who won Carlsbad 1907?

This field of participants may well present us some great chess. Shirov, Ponomariov and Akopian, with their 2700+ rating, will fight for the first prize, chess legends and former world championship contenders Timman and Korchnoi will always be interesing to watch and the best player from the Czech Republic (Navara), the best Slovak player (Movsesian) and the best Czech junior player (Laznicka) will do their best to make sure the fans will watch them too.

And certainly ChessVibes fans. Because at the moment this article is being published, I’m on my way to Karlovy Vary. The tournament organizers invited me to make (video) reports and of course I couldn’t say no to this! On the contrary, this weekend (longer was impossible for me) I will do my best again to catch the atmosphere and make some nice interviews. Korchnoi tops my list of course and who knows…

For now we will go back one hundred years in history. The answer to the trivia question is the famous Polish chess player Akiba Rubinstein. He stayed ahead of his main rival in the tourney, the local hero Geza Maroczy, in a special way, as is described in part 1 of The Life & Games of Akiva Rubinstein by Donaldson and Minev.

In the last round Maroczy had already won while Rubinstein, one point clear, was playing against Maroczy’s friend Wolf. The night before Wolf had promised that despite the fact of being the underdog, he would still fight and try to win. However, the next day around move ten he offered a draw anyway.

To everybody’s surprise Rubinstein refused, and continued to outplay Wolf completely. In a won position he didn’t go for the win by an easy combination, but he exchanged some pieces and forced the draw anyway. “Of course I saw the combination,” the tournament winner said after the game. “With Wolf I make a draw when I want to, not when he wants to!”

Here some of Rubinstein’s games of a hundred years ago. His endgame technique is still as admirable as it was back then.

Click on the image for the final standings of Carlsbad 1907.