CHICAGO 1926 and LAKE HOPATCONG 1926 CHESS TOURNAMENTS

Author: Bob Sherwood

Caissa Editions (2009)

197 pages (Hardback)

$40.00

Reviewed by John Donaldson

Sandwiched in between the great New York tournaments of 1924 and 1927, were strong events at Lake Hopatcong and Chicago in 1926. The former is better known thanks to the participation of World Champion Jose Capablanca and a book devoted to the tournament (The Book of the Pan-American Chess Tournament of 1926 published by The American Chess Bulletin). Chicago 1926, which was held along side the Western Chess Association Championship, has all but been forgotten. Until recently, less than 25 percent of the games were available. This was quite a sad state of affairs considering that players of the caliber of Marshall, Maroczy, Torre, Showalter, and Edward Lasker participated. Now, thanks to the efforts of Bob Sherwood and publisher Dale Brandreth, this situation has been rectified

CHICAGO 1926 and LAKE HOPATCONG 1926 CHESS TOURNAMENTS, published in a limited edition of 600 copies, is a handsomely produced book that offers all 20 games for Lake Hopatcong (it was a five player double round robin). All games are annotated, some quite extensively. There are numerous photos from the event and around the time of tournament that do no replicate those that appeared in the American Chess Bulletin publication. Rounding out coverage of the event, held in a resort in northern New Jersey less than a hour from New York City, is a report by Norbert Lederer and tournament crosstable followed by round by round scores.

While the coverage of Lake Hoptacong 1926 is important, what really gives this book lasting value is the appearance of almost all the games from Chicago 1926. Publisher Dale Brandreth, who has done so much to preserve American chess history, bought photostats of the game scores from Albrecht Buschke many years ago, but unfortunately not of both players’ scores for each game. The result is that a dozen or so could not be fully transcribed. Still, 66 complete games out of 78 is quite an impressive discovery for an event held over 80 years ago that previous to this book’s publication had less than twenty published in scattered sources.

Chicago 1926 was a 13 player round robin featuring an interesting mixture of veterans and youngsters. Marshall, Maroczy and Showalter (66 years old!) were past their prime but still formidable players while Torre and 20-year-old Isaac Kashdan were on the rise. Checker champion Newell Banks was among the competitors as was the famous problemist A.J. Fink. Robert Sherwood, using both contemporary sources and Rybka, has done a good job of annotating the games with a nice mixture of prose and concrete variations. The liberal use of diagrams allows the reader to follow the action without use of the board if so inclined or to easily reset the position after playing through a long note.

The only thing missing from this book is more color on Chicago 1926. It may be that the author and publisher did not wish to reproduce material they deemed to be readily available but it should be mentioned that Edward Lasker writes about Chicago in his Chess Secrets. He mentions the classy speech that Marshall gave at the closing ceremony where he thanked Lasker for defeating Torre in the last round, which made his first place result possible. This speech cleared the bad blood created between Marshall and Lasker that developed during their US Championship match in 1923.

One player this reviewer would have loved to read more about, and who performed quite well in both Lake Hopatcong  (2nd ahead of Marshall and Maroczy) and Chicago 1926 (= 4th) was Abraham Kupchik. This book features an excellent portrait of Kupchik with Marshall but doesn’t offer much in the way of personal details beyond basic biographical information. This is regrettable as Kupchik, who was the number two American player after Marshall from 1915 to the late 1920s, and who was still a strong enough player in his early 50s to compete for the US against the Soviet Union in the 1945 radio match, is a neglected figure in American chess. He certainly doesn’t get his due in Arnold Denker and Larry Parr’s THE BOBBY FISCHER I KNEW, where Denker, who purports to be his friend, writes very unfairly about him. IM Walter Shipman, who knew both Denker and Kupchik, always noticed but never understood why Denker routinely treated Kupchik poorly. He suspects a substantial plus score for Kupchik in their individual games may have colored their relationship.

CHICAGO 1926 and LAKE HOPATCONG 1926 CHESS TOURNAMENTS is strongly recommended for all those who have an interest in American chess history.