Savielly Tartakower
Encyclopedia
Ksawery Tartakower was a leading Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 and French chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 Grandmaster. He was also a leading chess journalist of the 1920s and 30s. Tartakower is best remembered for his sharp wit and countless aphorisms which kept his audience bent over with laughter. His books remain very popular even today at all levels.

Early career

Tartakower was of Jewish origin, born on 22 February 1887 in Rostov-on-Don
Rostov-on-Don
-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...

, Russia to Austrian citizens. His parents were killed in a pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...

 in Rostov-on-Don in 1911 in spite of having adopted Christianity some time earlier. Tartakower stayed in Austria, where he graduated from the law faculties of universities in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

 and Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

. He spoke perfectly both German, and French. During his studies he became interested in chess and started attending chess meetings in various cafés for chess players in Vienna. He met many notable masters of the time, among them Carl Schlechter
Carl Schlechter
Carl Schlechter was a leading Austrian chess master and theoretician at the turn of the 20th century. He is best known for drawing a World Chess Championship match with Emanuel Lasker.-Early life:...

, Géza Maróczy
Géza Maróczy
Géza Maróczy was a leading Hungarian chess Grandmaster, one of the best players in the world in his time. He was also a practicing engineer.-Early career:...

 (against whom he later won what was probably his most famous brilliancy), Milan Vidmar
Milan Vidmar
Milan Vidmar was a Slovene electrical engineer, chess player, chess theorist, philosopher, and writer. He was a specialist in power transformers and transmission of electric current.- Biography :...

, and Richard Réti
Richard Réti
Réti composed one of the most famous chess studies, shown in this diagram. It was published in Ostrauer Morgenzeitung 4 December 1921. It seems impossible for the white king to catch the advanced black pawn, while the white pawn can be easily stopped by the black king...

. His first achievement was first place in a tournament in Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...

 in 1906. Three years later he achieved second place in the tournament in Vienna, losing only to Réti.

During World War I he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army, and served as a staff officer on various posts. He went to the Russian front with the Viennese infantry house-regiment.

After the war he emigrated to France, and settled in Paris. Although Tartakower did not even speak Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, after Poland regained its independence in 1918 he accepted Polish citizenship and became one of the most prominent honorary ambassadors of Poland abroad. He was the captain and trainer of Polish Chess Team in six international tournaments, winning a gold medal for Poland at the Hamburg Olympiad in 1930.

Chess professional

In France, he decided to become a professional chess player. He also started cooperating with various chess-related magazines, as well as writing several books and brochures related to chess. The most famous of these, Die Hypermoderne Schachpartie ("The Hypermodernist Chess Game") was published in 1924 and has been issued in almost a hundred editions since. Tartakower took part in many of the most important chess tournaments of the epoch. In 1927 and 1928 he won two tournaments in Hastings
Hastings International Chess Congress
The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess congress which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin tournament. In 2004/05 the tournament was played in the...

 and shared first place with Aron Nimzowitsch
Aron Nimzowitsch
Aron Nimzowitsch was a Russian-born Danish unofficial chess grandmaster and a very influential chess writer...

 in London. On the latter occasion, he defeated such notable players as Frank Marshall, Milan Vidmar
Milan Vidmar
Milan Vidmar was a Slovene electrical engineer, chess player, chess theorist, philosopher, and writer. He was a specialist in power transformers and transmission of electric current.- Biography :...

, and Efim Bogoljubov. In 1930 he won the Liège tournament, beating Mir Sultan Khan
Mir Sultan Khan
Malik Mir Sultan Khan was the strongest chess master of his time from Asia. This manservant from British India traveled with Colonel Nawab Sir Umar Hayat Khan , his master, to Britain, where he took the chess world by storm...

 by two points. Further down the list were, among others, Akiba Rubinstein
Akiba Rubinstein
Akiba Kiwelowicz Rubinstein was a famous Polish chess Grandmaster at the beginning of the 20th century. He was scheduled to play a match with Emanuel Lasker for the world championship in 1914, but it was cancelled because of the outbreak of World War I...

, Nimzowitsch, and Marshall.

He won twice the Polish Chess Championship
Polish Chess Championship
Individual Polish Chess Championship is the most important Polish chess tournament, aiming at selecting the best chess players in Poland. Based on the results of the tournament , the Polish Chess Federation selects the national and subsequently the olympiad team.The first men's championship took...

, at Warsaw 1935 and Jurata 1937. In the 1930s Tartakower represented Poland in six Chess Olympiad
Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation.-Birth of the Olympiad:The first Olympiad was unofficial...

s, and France in 1950, winning three individual medals (gold in 1931 and bronze in 1933 and 1935), as well as five team medals (gold in 1930, two silver in 1931 and 1939, and two bronze in 1935 and 1937).
  • In 1930, at second board at 3rd Chess Olympiad
    3rd Chess Olympiad
    The 3rd Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 13 and July 27, 1930, in Hamburg, Germany...

     in Hamburg
    Hamburg
    -History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

     (+9 −1 =6);
  • In 1931, at second board at 4th Chess Olympiad
    4th Chess Olympiad
    The 4th Chess Olympiad, organized by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 11 and July 26, 1931, in Prague, Czechoslovakia...

     in Prague
    Prague
    Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

     (+10 −1 =7);
  • In 1933, at first board at 5th Chess Olympiad
    5th Chess Olympiad
    The 5th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 12 and July 23, 1933, in Folkestone, United Kingdom...

     in Folkestone
    Folkestone
    Folkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...

     (+6 −2 =6);
  • In 1935, at first board at 6th Chess Olympiad
    6th Chess Olympiad
    The 6th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between August 16 and August 31, 1935, in Warsaw, Poland...

     in Warsaw
    Warsaw
    Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

     (+6 −0 =11);
  • In 1937, at first board at 7th Chess Olympiad
    7th Chess Olympiad
    The 7th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 31 and August 14, 1937, in Stockholm, Sweden]....

     in Stockholm
    Stockholm
    Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

     (+1 −2 =10);
  • In 1939, at first board at 8th Chess Olympiad
    8th Chess Olympiad
    The 8th Chess Olympiad, organised by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs , comprised an 'open' tournament, as well as a Women's World Championship contest...

     in Buenos Aires
    Buenos Aires
    Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

     (+7 −3 =7);
  • In 1950, at first board at 9th Chess Olympiad
    9th Chess Olympiad
    The 9th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between August 20 and September 11, 1950, in Dubrovnik, SR Croatia, Yugoslavia .The final results were as follows:-Final :The...

     in Dubrovnik
    Dubrovnik
    Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...

     (+5 −5 =5).


In 1935 he was one of the main organizers of the Chess Olympiad in Warsaw.

In 1939, the outbreak of World War II found him in Buenos Aires, where he was playing the 8th Chess Olympiad, representing Poland on a team which included Mieczysław Najdorf, who always referred to Tartakower as "my teacher".

Final years

After a short stay in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 he decided to return to Europe. He arrived in France shortly before its collapse in 1940. Under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Cartier, he joined the forces of general Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....

.

After World War II and the communist takeover of power in Poland, Tartakower became a French citizen. He played in the first Interzonal
Interzonal
Interzonal chess tournaments were tournaments organized by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, and were a stage in the triennial World Chess Championship cycle.- Zonal tournaments :...

 tournament at Saltsjöbaden
Saltsjöbaden
Saltsjöbaden is a locality situated in Nacka Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden with 8,937 inhabitants in 2005. It is located on the coast of the Baltic Sea.- History :...

 1948, but did not qualify for the Candidates tournament. He represented France at the 1950 Chess Olympiad. FIDE instituted the title of International Grandmaster
International Grandmaster
The title Grandmaster is awarded to strong chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain....

 in 1950; Tartakower was in the first group of players to receive that title. In 1953, he won French Chess Championship
French Chess Championship
The French Chess Championship is the annual, national chess tournament of France. It was officially first played in 1923after the formation of the Fédération Française des Echecs in 1921. The first unofficial national tournament was played in 1880, in the Café de la Régence, where further edition...

 in Paris.

He died on 4 February 1956 in Paris, 18 days before his 69th birthday.

Personality and chess contributions

Tartakower is regarded as one of the most notable chess personalities of his time. Harry Golombek
Harry Golombek
Harry Golombek OBE , was a British chess International Master and honorary grandmaster, chess arbiter, and chess author. He was three times British chess champion, in 1947, 1949, and 1955 and finished second in 1948. He became a grandmaster in 1985.He was the chess correspondent of The Times...

 translated Tartakower's book of his best games, and in the foreword wrote:
Dr. Tartakower is far and away the most cultured and the wittiest of all the chess masters I have ever met. His extremely well stored mind and ever-flowing native wit make conversation with him a perpetual delight. So much so that I count it as one of the brightest attractions an international tournament can hold out for me that Dr. Tartakower should also be one of the participants. His talk and thought are rather like a modernized blend of Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...

 and Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

; and with it all a dash of paradoxical originality that is essential Tartakower.

A talented chess player, Tartakower is also known for his countless aphorism
Aphorism
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...

s, which are sometimes called Tartakoverisms. One of the variations of the Dutch Defence
Dutch Defence
The Dutch Defence is a chess opening characterised by the moves:-History:Elias Stein , an Alsatian who settled in The Hague, recommended the defence as the best reply to 1.d4 in his 1789 book Nouvel essai sur le jeu des échecs, avec des réflexions militaires relatives à ce jeu.-Theory:Black's 1.....

 is named after him. The Tartakower Defence in the Queen's Gambit Declined
Queen's Gambit Declined
The Queen's Gambit Declined is a chess opening in which Black declines a pawn offered by White in the Queen's Gambit:This is known as the Orthodox Line of the Queen's Gambit Declined...

 (also known as the Tartakower-Makogonov–Bondarevsky System) also bears his name, as does the most common variation of the Torre Attack
Torre Attack
The Torre Attack is a chess opening characterized by the moves:The opening is named after the Mexican grandmaster Carlos Torre Repetto. The variation was also employed by Savielly Tartakower, and the young Tigran Petrosian on occasion...

. He is alleged to be the inventor of the Orangutan Opening 1.b4 ..., so named after Tartakower fell in love with a great ape during his visit to the zoo whilst playing in the great 1924 tournament in New York. Tartakower originated the Catalan Opening
Catalan Opening
The Catalan is a chess opening which can be considered to be White adopting a mixture of the Queen's Gambit and Réti Opening: White plays d4 and c4 and fianchettoes the white bishop on g2. A common opening sequence is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2, though the opening can arise from a large number...

 at Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 1929. This system starts with 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.g3. It remains very popular today at all levels.

José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play...

 scored +5-0=7 against Tartakower, but they had many hard fights. After their fighting draw in London 1922 (where Tartakower played his new defense), Capablanca said, "You are lacking in solidity", and Tartakower replied in his usual banter, "That is my saving grace". But in Capablanca's reports of the 1939 Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires for the Argentine newspaper Crítica, he wrote:
The Polish team … is captained and led by Dr S. Tartakower, a master with profound knowledge and great imagination, qualities which make him a formidable adversary.  … Luckily for the others, the Polish team has only one Tartakower.


Sugden and Damsky stated that like other chess players of all ages and ranks among whom there is generally no lack of idiosyncrasy-or little superstition, Tartakower, a trenchant wit, took a most unsightly old hat with him from tournament to tournament. "He would only wear it on the last round and he would win. Notably this hat did not guarantee him success in casinos, which he visited as though it were a job of work. The roulette table would regularly acquire both the Grandmaster's prizes and the numerous fees from his endless string of articles."

Quotations

  • "It's always better to sacrifice your opponent's men."
  • "An isolated pawn
    Pawn (chess)
    The pawn is the most numerous and weakest piece in the game of chess, historically representing infantry, or more particularly armed peasants or pikemen. Each player begins the game with eight pawns, one on each square of the rank immediately in front of the other pieces...

     spreads gloom all over the chessboard."
  • "The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made."
  • "The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
  • "It is not enough to be a good player; you must also play well."
  • "The move is there, but you must see it."
  • "No game was ever won by resigning."
  • "I never defeated a healthy opponent." This quotation refers to players who blame an illness, sometimes imaginary, for their loss.
  • "Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do. Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do."
  • "Moral victories do not count."
  • "Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders."

Notable chess games


Writings of Savielly Tartakower

  • 500 Master Games of Chess by Savielly Tartakower and Julius du Mont
    Julius du Mont
    Julius du Mont was a pianist, piano teacher, chess player, journalist, editor and writer. He studied music at the Frankfurt Conservatoire and at Heidelberg, and became a concert pianist. He emigrated to England as a young man and became a successful piano teacher. Amongst his pupils was Edna Iles...

    , Dover Publications, June 1, 1975, ISBN 0-486-23208-5. (Previously published in two volumes by G. Bell & Sons, 1952.)
  • Bréviaire des échecs, one of the best known introductory texts for chess in the French language.
  • My Best Games Of Chess 1905–1954 by S.G. Tartakower, Dover Publications, 1985, ISBN 0-486-24807-0. The definitive recollection of Tartakower's career, written in his unique style; translated by Harry Golombek
    Harry Golombek
    Harry Golombek OBE , was a British chess International Master and honorary grandmaster, chess arbiter, and chess author. He was three times British chess champion, in 1947, 1949, and 1955 and finished second in 1948. He became a grandmaster in 1985.He was the chess correspondent of The Times...

    .

See also

  • Hypermodernism
    Hypermodernism (chess)
    Hypermodernism is a school of chess that emerged after World War I. It featured challenges on the chess ideologies presented by central European masters, such as on Wilhelm Steinitz’ approach to the centre. It also challenged in particular the dogmatic rules set down by Siegbert Tarrasch...

  • List of chess grandmasters
  • List of chess games

External links

  • Kmoch, Hans
    Hans Kmoch
    Johann "Hans" Joseph Kmoch was an Austrian-Dutch-American chess International Master , International Arbiter , and a chess journalist and author, for which he is best known....

     (2004). .
  • Ree, Hans
    Hans Ree
    Hans Ree is a Dutch Grandmaster of chess and is a columnist and chess writer for the NRC Handelsblad. He contributes to the leading chess magazines New In Chess and ChessCafe.com...

     (2006) Tartakower's Poetry
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