CHICAGO 1926 AND LAKE HOPATCONG 1926 CHESS TOURNAMENTS
Author: Robert Sherwood
Edited by Dale Brandreth
Caissa Editions (2009)
197 pages (hardcover)
$39.95
Reviewed by Paul Kane
This terrific book tells the tale of two tournaments.
Lake Hopatcong took place in July and it was won by Capablanca in comfortable fashion. He was in the lead after the second round and never faltered. As the then world champion exited stage right, the remaining competitors – Kupchik, Maroczy, Marshall and Edward Lasker – trooped (or perhaps better, ‘trouped’) towards the windy city. There is no evidence that they performed The Comedy of Errors en route mind.
In the absence of a dominating figure, Chicago was a quite different tournament. It sported a larger field (thirteen players in total) and was a much more closely contested affair. Maroczy led for most of it, but he was overtaken by Torre towards the end; and then Marshall, always in the reckoning, pipped them both to the post. The final standings were Marshall 8.5, Maroczy and Torre 8, etc.
About fifteen (by my reckoning) games from the Chicago tournament have incomplete scores, but only four are severely effected. By ‘severely effected’ I mean that we are given the opening moves only, so that whatever character the game later assumed has been lost.
Capablanca was in good form at Lake Hopatcong and played some fine, even classic games, but it is the minor skirmishes (such as the astounding, not to say crazy combination inaugurated by 26.Rxh7 in Fink-Kupchik: who was this guy by name of Fink?) and the marginal stories that the book really comes alive.
Maroczy got the better of Marshall at Lake Hopatcong (1.5 out of 2, each competitor playing the other twice there) but at Chicago Marshall got his revenge in a very fine game indeed. The contrast between Marshall’s pugnacious approach and Maroczy’s classy technique (seen to best advantage in the wins versus Banks, Kashdan and Factor at Chicago) made for some interesting clashes of style.
Another fascinating contrast is seen when we consider Torre and Kashdan, who were by a sizable margin the youngest players competing at Chicago. Both men were twenty years of age, and in fact were born within four days of each other. Torre’s career came to a virtual end with this tournament, despite his immense talent. Whereas Kashdan went on to enjoy a distinguished career, performing well in international tournaments and helping the USA to several Olympiad wins. Before Reshevsky and Fine got good, he was the leading American player. Fate can be both cruel and kind.
Sherwood’s annotations are excellent: perspicacious and fully detailed and not fooled or cowed by reputation. His notes to the round twelve encounter between Capablanca and Edward Lasker is a case in point in this regard: he tells it like it is. Above all, his notes possess or approach objectivity, which is what one wants most of all. There is an immensely rich amount of material for study here, both in the games and in Sherwood’s notes.
For the rest, this is a hardback of sturdy red cloth, attractively produced, with plenty of diagrams throughout, often three or four to a page. It is a magic carpet of a book.
